Tuma Theatre Workshop + Rehearsal
The Eagle's Gift
THE GIFT OF THE EAGLE MOTHER
All performances were grounded in the drumming of either the gut head, tamborine-style, or the box drum. The two-beat, iambic rhythm of the drum was and is still standard to Eskimo dance. The tamborine-styled drum is prominently used to this day and is found in sizes of 1 to 4 feet in diameter, covered with the stomach lining of a walrus or seal (rip-stop or mylar also is widely used today) and is hit with a stick on either the drum head or on the rim from the bottom.
The origins of the drum, dancing, singing and festivities are explained in various group-specific myths. According to one origin of performance myth, told by Sagdluaq to Knut Rasmussen in 1923, Alaska Eskimo performance was a gift from the Eagle mother.
The eagle carried the hunter on its back to the mountain; higher and higher they went until they had a view over the plains where men hunted caribou.
But as they got near to the peak of the mountain they could hear a strange knocking sound, which grew louder and louder the nearer they came to the top. It was like the beating of enormous hammers, and it was so loud that the ears of the caribou hunter tingled.
"Do you hear anything?" asked the eagle.
"Yes, a deafening sound like the strokes of a hammer."
"This is my mother's heart you hear beating" said the eagle.
They reached the eagle's house, which was built right up on the peak.
"I must prepare mother, wait till I come back" the eagle said and entered the house.
A moment later he returned and led the caribou hunter inside.
They came into a house that was built in the same way as the houses of men, and there on the platform, quite alone, sat the eagle's mother, decrepit and sorrowful.
Then her son spoke and said: "This young man has promised to hold a songfest when he gets home. But he knows nothing about putting words together into songs, he knows nothing of how to sing a song, nor does he understand beating a drum and dancing for joy. Mother, men don't know how to feast and now this young man has come up to learn it."
These words put life into the old eagle-mother; she became very pleased, expressed thanks and said: "But you must first build a festival house where many people can assemble."
And the old eagle-mother taught them to make drums, both the ordinary drum consisting of a large wooden ring with a skin stretched over it, and the special ceremonial drum, the one used at the great present-giving feasts, made of four pieces of wood put together to form a hollow cavity, which gives a special clang when struck with a drum-stick, which is narrow at the handle and thicker and heavier at the other end.
This festival drum had to have a deep, sonorous tone, reminiscent of the beating heart of an old eagle. Later the eagle-mother taught him to put words together for singing and to arrange tones together so that they became song, and she showed them how to beat the drum in time with the songs; and finally she taught him how to dance.
"Human beings are lonely, and they live alone, because they know nothing of the gift of festival, and I have promised the eagles to teach them how to feast." (Rasmussen, 1927:38-42)
When an Eskimo beats a drum today, he or she knows the sound helps to keep the Eagle Mother's spirit alive and young. Performances were propelled by the rhythm of the drum whose subtle variations can elude the Western listener.
When a Yup'ik elder was asked recently what accounted for such a seemingly monotonous beat, her reply was that "the beat was like the waves of the sea, there are so many and they seem to be the same, the sea is constant and always moving too, but the waves are all unique and different just like Eskimo songs, and are never the same."
The subtle and sloping coastal tundra geography could be another analogy. Music, be it the rhythm of drums or the multi-layering of sung chanting, was what the dancer moved to when a performer mimed an animal's behavior or told a story.
When drummers created the simple, deep rhythm it is as if earth performed through them. A similar style of rhythmic drum beating enabled the angatkok to enter a trance state and connect with the power or helping spirits in the lower or upper worlds. It may well be that drumming not only provided rhythm for physical action but helped to create a trance-like state which added further to the spiritual and communal event for performers and spectators alike.
THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PERFORMANCE
Central to the Alaskan Eskimo performer's task was the ability to transpose and transform oneself into another being. By mimetically performing an animal or another person they were not acting, they would possess a part of that animal or persons essence.
Accounts of such transformations recall how a performer, using the drum's rhythm, would take on essential movements and attitudes as if becoming that animal or person. This performance attribute may be rooted in the belief that every living thing has two souls and that the soul that travels is in a sense captured by the performer.
Another explanation may be the cultural belief that at one time Men and animals were interchangeable and transformational performance simply attests to this fact. It must be remembered also that prior to the advent of Western written-orientated education, the primary method of transferring knowledge was by demonstration and imitation: close proximity to their animals of imitation, reinforced by story-telling, may also have contributed to strong physical imitation and psycho-physical character transformation.
Unlike Western styles of psychological based acting, the transformational performance style of the Alaskan Eskimo is meant to represent both the individual character and the archetype simultaneously. The archetype character portrayal is based on the mythology of the animal/character (each animal has a myth), its well-observed physical attributes and its spiritual transmission with the performer as medium.
Rather than creating a world of the character, as is the case in Western style acting, the Alaskan Eskimo performer, in a sense, steps into a well-established cultural mythology, participating in what is familiar, if not instinctual.
The performer's participation is in this way, both a reaffirmation and portrayal of deeply rooted cultural beliefs and values, a performance mythology that reveals and asserts the culture's infrastructure. The performer's character portrayal is in a way, a possession, both spiritually and culturally facilitated, by the animal/character.
