4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

drama, script, theater, and performance 111
2 The John Marshall–Robert Gardner film The Hunters (1958) depicts the giraffe
hunt of a small group of Kalahari tribesmen.
3 From a 1986 perspective, I might differently gloss the distinctions between
“text” and “script.” Someone with a Derridean turn of mind might say that what
in 1973 I called a “script” a deconstructionist would now call a “text.” There are
many different kinds of text – performance texts, dramatic texts, musical texts,
movement texts, painterly texts, etc. A text is a way of inscribing – encoding –
information. Such inscriptions may be on stone, vellum, or paper – or they may
be charges on a silicon chip, memory traces in a dancer’s body, or what have
you. Various notation systems exist: alphabetical, digital, analogical, graphic,
etc. New languages can be constructed. Information can easily be translated
from one of these inscriptive/storage systems (languages) into another. That’s
why I can so easily write this text on my computer: the machine almost instantaneously
inscribes and translates the several languages it uses – while what
comes up on my screen is the one language I know fairly well, English. This
translatability promotes discourse across disciplines and genres that might
otherwise be mute in relation to each other: talk of dance and drama, of
prose fiction and athletic contests, of audience participation in the theater and
solitary reading.
4 Most probably this teaching was not formal, but through imitation. However, a
case could be made that the inaccessibility of the caves indicates an esoteric
cult, and that the “secrets” of the cult would be definitely and formally
transmitted.
5 Council grounds are a temporary village established by the Australian authorities
(in 1972, Papua New Guinea was not yet an independent nation) to facilitate
cooperation and exchange rather than combat which had been the principal
means of contact among many Highlands groups. After independence, these
grounds were kept in use. Several forms of Asian drama and meditation have
been derived from martial training. The dancing at Kurumugl was a direct
adaptation of fighting modes; a conscious inhibition of combat which led to a
transfer of energy from thrusting shoulders (shooting arrows or throwing
spears) to the thighs and legs: the unique rapid kicking-from-the-knee dancing.
6 See Kapferer (1983) for an in-depth study of Sri Lankan performative exorcism.
7 I know that many scholars identify sacrifice with agriculture, particularly in
ancient Egypt and the Middle East. But I think it could also be connected to
hunting and warfare. I believe warfare is mainly an adaptation and elaboration
of hunting behavior, and in this sense all human societies are hunting societies,
since all make war. For discussions of the relationship between violence and
sacrifice, see Girard (1977) and chapter 7 of this book.