Poo-wa-bah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poo-wa-bah is a ritual or warm-up exercise some actors use before they go onstage or shoot a scene. The entire cast stands in a circle and chants the word Poo-wa-bah two to three hundred times; after that, the actors don't speak at all until their first line.
In January 2007, an alumnus of the Levels program discovered that Poo-wa-bah may have its roots in an older Western Shoshone tradition. According to the Poo-Ha-Bah Native Healing Center in California, "Poo-Ha-Bah" is a Western Shoshone word meaning "doctor-water." (It may also be spelled "Poha-baa": "poha" is a word meaning power or magic, and "baa" is a word for water.)
The tradition has been practiced at Hofstra University's Department of Drama and Dance for over 50 years. It was introduced there by Bernard Beckerman, the department's former chair. He apparently learned it at a Catskill resort around 1950, but no one seems to know which resort.
The tradition has spread far beyond Hofstra: the film director Francis Ford Coppola, a Hofstra alum, uses the Poo-wa-bah ritual on the first day of shooting for each of his films. He talked about it in Hearts of Darkness, a documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now.
His daughter, Sofia Coppola, also uses Poo-wa-bah. You can actually see her doing the ritual, along with her cast, in "Lost on Location" (a making-of documentary included as a special feature on the Lost in Translation DVD).
For many years, the Poo-wa-bah tradition was followed at the Levels youth center in Great Neck.
Hofstra University has a newsletter for alumni called "The Poo-wa-bah", named after the tradition.
You may also see the word spelled as poowabah, puaba, or pooaba.
