In ancient Greek choral melic poetry, from Sappho to the theater of the 5th century b. c., the performers did not differ from the audience. They were not professionals, but members of the ritual community. The efficiency of the spectacle was first assessed on an anthropological level. In some post-modern experiments (Castelluci’s Inferno, transmissions of works of Bagouet or Duboc, Anne Collod’s reshapings of Halprin’s Parades and Changes), amateurs still neither perform as citizens nor as professionals, but they participate in a new rituality which may affect contemporary re-definitions of performance, spectacle, and politics.