Posted by eugene williams on March 08, 192003 at 12:45:48:
Los Pastores
Initially it seemed strange to me and indeed quite ‘immense an undertaking’, as the commentary on the script suggests, that semi-literate rural folk could perform such a dense poetic text. However, a closer look reveals that the play is built on elements, which are intrinsic to many, a folk drama. I want to refer to two of these elements which are not only indicative of the genre but which also provide a performatic/theatrical dimension that allow the social/community actors who would have been performing these texts, to demonstrate in the immediacy of the performance, their own comedic, verbal and physical prowess, thereby utilizing a meeting place for the performance of self within the frame of the adopted/colonizing intention of the text.
A central element of the play is the rhythmic structure of song and speech. Song is a major vehicle of the drama and like most Christian hymns and folk chants the rhythmic structure appears fairly repetitive and formalized. A key feature of this formalism is heightened sonic rhythm. One can well imagine that after the sonic liturgical patterns are absorbed in church or over a period of witnessing these pageants, it is just left up to the performers ability to provide basic rhyme and maintain relevant verbal imagery. Both of these skills are of course intrinsic to all folk traditions as is evident in proverbs folk songs etc. It is also instructive that there are many versions of the Los Pastores, which suggests that improvisation and reauthoring is a feature of the performance. The performance power of the pageant may therefore not rest with the authenticity of the textual language but rather with the tension between the sonic interplay of rhythm and verbal imagery as well as other performance features such as the spectacle of costumes.
The other feature I find to be interesting in the sense that it also seems to empower the performers is the almost realistic earthy exchanges between the Shepherds. The Shepherds are the focus of the drama’s central theme. They are collectively the object of the lesson of redemption of man, from the sin of ambition. Their journey to the manger to meet the redeemer, their interaction with good and evil as well as the purgatorial soul (Hermit), are the core actions of the plot. However, the interactions among the shepherds are not strictly defined by this lesson or the heightened rhythmic structure, perhaps because it seeks to ground the religious intention in the earth bound reality of its converts and believers. But for the performers this relaxing of the liturgical and formal pattern invites in this text social, familial and marital concerns, which in the ever shifting nature of the text, is probably also indicative of who the performers are – their age, gender, social class and comedic skills etc. In my own experience (which may not necessarily apply in the case of this text) of playing in the community Christmas Nativity play, the only mandatory casting was that of Mary as a young girl. The rest of the casting was left to whom, regardless of gender or age, was available and willing.
I am suggesting therefore that the tension between performer and role might well have been a feature in the historical performances and evolution of this text, thus making the text a vehicle for the performance of self and the immediacy of community, within the frame of the sonic and liturgical intention.