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

comprised, the small cycle of performances. And the big cycle, a completed
series of small cycles, coincided with Arunta ecology, in
Rappaport’s sense (figure 4.2).
Each Arunta male, during his life, could expect to play roles in the
performance cycles coexistent with his status in society: initiate, participant,
leader, or onlooker. On each day the performers enacted condensed
and concentrated versions of their lives as they played and
displayed their emergent relationships with their fellow Aruntans: the
dances, stories, songs, and actions that constituted the core of their
“Aruntaness.” And the 3–4-month series of performances comprising
the small cycle also replicated the rhythms of the Arunta life-cycle.
Each phase of the cycle, from individual events lasting only minutes, to
the big cycle lasting years, was a replication (an extension, concentration,
and repetition) of every other phase. The whole performance
Figure 4.2
from ritual to theater and back 119