I was studying some articles for a Hebrew Prophets course and I stumbled across this little piece of an article by Victor Mathewr in Social World of the Hebrew Prophets.
Prophets were masters of both the silent and the sounded arts. Not only did they speak; they also performed symbolic actions. Symbolic actions are pantomimes. Prophets used three kinds of pantomimes. There are single dramatic gestures; for instance, Jeremiah buries his clothes in the riverbank (Jer 13:1-11). Austere practices or asceticism can be employed, as when Jeremiah refused to marry and attend funeral or celebrations (Jer 16:1-13). Or a prophet may identify with the silent actions of a craft of another, as when Jeremiah, like a teacher, draws the attention of his audience to the potter at his wheel (Jer 1*:2-4).
Pantomime is the ancient and univeral art of gesture, an expression of social interaction. Anthropologists, sociologists, and dramatists continue to identify a wide variety of pantomimes first celebrated in the cave paintings of the Stone Age and found also in the magic, ritual, and dances of traditional societies. Technically, pantomime is theatre without script. Performers in masks may even use words and music to accompany their gestures. But mime is primarily a spectacle, an art whose medium is movement and that appeals to the sense of sight. Pantomime grew from a conviction in traditional cultures that only gesture, acrobatics, and dance can appropriately address human realities.
For the prophets, pantomime was not solely respresentational art. It was also, like the Ghost Dance of 1890, an act or set of acts that was believed to be able to set events in motion. Prophetic symbolic acts could act as catalysts for social change. The message of change sometimes required overt action to throw off physical or cultural oppression or to restore a lost commitment to the covenant and its obligations.
I find this little tidbit deeply moving on how the use of creative arts and expression can bring about social change. Drama is storytelling, whether that story is the historical story, or the desired outcome, it can be used in many different creative ways to communicate meaning within communities.
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