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

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from ritual to theater and back
enough years to allow the raising of sufficient pigs to stage a konj kaiko.
The konj kaiko of November 7–8, 1963, saw the slaughter of 96 pigs
with a total live weight of 15,000 pounds, yielding around 7,500
pounds of meat. Eventually about 3,000 people got shares of the kill.
What starts in dancing ends in eating. Or, to put it in aestheticreligious
terms, what starts as theater ends as Communion. Not since
the Athenian festivals of ancient Greece or the cycle plays of medieval
Christian Europe, have we in the west used performances this way, as
pivots of systems involving economic, social, political, and religious
transactions. With the re-advent of holism in contemporary society at
least a discussion of such performances seems practicable. It is clear
that the kaiko dances are not ornaments or pastimes or even “part of
the means” effecting the transactions among the Tsembaga. The dances
both symbolize and activate the process of exchange.
The dances are pivots in a system transforming destructive behavior
into constructive alliances. It is no accident that every move, chant, and
costume of the kaiko dances are adapted from combat. A new, or additional,
use is found for this behavior. Quite unconsciously a positive
feedback begins: the more splendid the displays of dancing, the
stronger the alliances; the stronger the alliances, the more splendid the
dancing. Between kaikos – but only between them – war is waged.
During the kaiko cycles there is peace. The transformation of combat
behavior into performance is the theatrical heart of the kaiko. This
transformation is identical to the action at the heart of Greek theater,
and from the Greeks down through western theater history. Namely,
characterization and the presentation of real or possible events – the
story, plot, or dramatic action worked out by people, gods, or demons
– is a transformation of real behavior into symbolic behavior. Theatrical
transformation appears to be of only two kinds: 1) the displacement of
antisocial, injurious, disruptive behavior by ritualized gestures and
displays, and 2) the invention of characters who act out fictional events
or real events fictionalized by virtue of their being acted out (as in
documentary theater or film or Roman-type gladiatorial games). These
two kinds of transformation may occur together, but in the mix usually
one is dominant. Western theater emphasizes characterization and the
enactment of fictions; Melanesian theater emphasizes the displacement
of hostile behavior. Theaters that balance the two tendencies –