The Postmodern Performance Of Ritual In Who’s Afraid Of Viginia Woolf?

Although there is no actual ritual performance in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of VirginiaWoolf?, the ritual elements can be seen in its plot, characterization, dialogue, etc, whichhelps this play to achieve a new level of actor-audience relationship. The cleveremployment of language and the arrangement of suspense have successfully involved theaudience into the ritual performance, making them grow together with the characters, thusrealizes ritual’s function of a spiritual baptism. However, there hasn’t been any systematicresearch on the ritual elements of this play. Most of the studies focus on the theme andcharacters. This essay holds that the whole play can be viewed as a postmodernperformance of ritual on the stage.The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter regards the whole play as aperformance of ritual and discusses from act to act the ritual elements in this play and theireffect on the characters’ personal growth and plot development. It holds that the first act,"Fun and Games", represents the co-presence of the participators; the second act,"Walpurgisnacht", witnesses the manifestation of the evil spirits; and the third act,"TheExorcism" demonstrates the purification of the soul. This chapter tries to advance theunderstanding of ritual practice by integrating sociological and psychologicalunderstandings of human behaviour.The second chapter focuses on the employment of ritual language in the play. It holds thatthe whole play of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? can be viewed as a postmodernistgame of ritual language on the stage. In order to look further into the power of language inthe theatre, this chapter is divided into three parts. First, it demonstrates how languagedetermines the development of this ritual performance; second, it examines theemployment of divine speeches in the dialogue of this play and how it strips the characters’individual choice; in the end, it discusses the effect of absurd elements on people’s subjective status: it suspend people’s default assumption and force them to participate intothe ritual performance.The third chapter examines the effect of audience involvement in the theatre. To haveemotional connection to the characters means that the audience must to some extent sharethe same kind of feeling or problem with the characters in the play, while the clever use ofsuspense helps to draw the audience’s attention and to search for the truth by themselves,thus realize ritual’s efficacy of spiritual therapy. Therefore, this chapter first looks at theproblems that the audience in the1960s might have. Then it analyses the individual issuesthat most of the human beings would face, i.e. the problems that are shared by the audienceof all the times. In the end, it looks deeper into the efficacy of this ritual performance inorder to have a better understanding of how the play achieves the effect of spiritualsalvation through audience involvement.In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the ritual elements are mostly reflected on its themeand efficacy, and the effect of ritual is mainly achieved through the clever use of language.It achieves the efficacy of ritual by dissolving the audience as participants, helping theaudience to have a new understanding of themselves as well as their life together with thecharacters in the play. It does not simply borrow the form of an ancient ritual ceremony,but it sets up a special kind of spiritual exorcism process with the help of its unique way oftelling stories, the sacred atmosphere built by words, as well as the suspense set in the plotdevelopment. This is exactly what ritual should be like in the postmodernist theatre.