The Taraweeh Prayer. Creation of Sacred Space in the Perspective of Performance Studies
Mirjam Steiner
Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik / Weitere Religionen
Beschreibung
Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Theology - Islamic theology, grade: 6.0, University of Fribourg (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Ritual: Theory and Practice (Seminar), language: English, abstract: One may enter a church to attend a sermon, rearrange finally the living room to feel more ‘at home’ or step onto the podium in the auditorium to lecture a class: In all these examples the influence of ‘space’ on the emotion one senses could not be stressed enough. When I observed the taraweeh prayer, an important ritual during Ramadan, the significance but even more the flexibility of ‘space’ astonished me. The prayer should normally take place in a mosque, but due to the COVID-19-restricitions in Albania, it was not allowed to attend large gatherings. Hence, the prayer happened to be in the home of a befriended person, where all participants would meet to conduct it. Originally, my research plan was to focus on the prayer and its atmosphere, but the transition of an ordinary living room to a sacred prayer space struck me. What kind of transition has happened there? Why did I feel that there was a change, and how did the others perceive these moments? This seminar paper serves perfectly as an overview of how ritual can be understood in the perspective of performance studies. On the one hand, it explains different understandings of ritual, on the other hand it focuses on a specific approach of performance studies: Performance theory of Richard Schechner. The present paper shows how performance theory offers a variety of possibilities to analyze ritual. The field research should lead to a better understanding of sacred space and allow an analysis of its diverse aspects due to the observed ritual and the individual perception of the interviewed participant.
Kundenbewertungen
Ritual Islam Performance Theory Performance Studies Taraweeh Prayer Sacred Space Fieldresearch