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

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from ritual to theater and back
events; the sacralization or increasingly codified parameters of experience;
and the disappearance of solitude and one-to-one intimacy as
these have developed in the west since the Renaissance. Postmodern
tribalism is medievalism under the auspices of technology.
Such tribalism is good for the theater – if by good one means that
most social situations will be governed by conventional, external gestures
loaded with metaphoric/symbolic significance. The theater in the
theater will probably continue to decline; but the theater “in life” will
permeate more and more activities, both ordinary and special. Anomie
and identity crisis diminish, while in their place are fixed roles and
rites of passage transporting persons not only from one status to
another but from one identity to another. These transformations are
achieved by means of performance.
When the performer at Kurumugl stepped outside his hut he joined
a group of envious males whose costumes were, like his, peculiar
amalgams of traditional and imported stuff; sunglasses and bones stuck
through the spectrum; cigarette holders and home-made tobacco pipes;
khaki shorts and grass skirts. But despite the breakdown of traditional
costuming, at the level of discrete items an old pattern was being
worked out. An ecological ritual where the pig meat was a “payback”
(pidgin for fulfilling a ritual obligation) from the hosts to the guests.
As among the Tsembaga every adult male at Kurumugl was in a debtor
relationship to persons arriving in the afternoon of the second day. The
nature of the payback is such that what is given back must appear to
exceed what is owed. 14 The payback ceremony involves an exchange of
roles in which creditors become debtors and debtors become creditors.
This insures that more ceremonies will follow when the new debtors
accumulate enough pigs. The circle of reciprocating imbalanced obligations
may involve a number of groups linked in a complicated network.
Never is a balance struck, because balance would threaten an end
to the obligations, and this would lead either to war or a stale peace. As
long as the obligations are intact the social web transmits continuous
waves of paybacks throughout the system.
The visitors approaching Kurumugl came not as friends to a party
but as invaders demanding what was theirs to claim. The afternoon’s
performance was a ritual combat with the guests assaulting Kurumugl
in a modified war dance, armed with fighting spears, as the campers at