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

ehavior (what I call “restored behavior,” see Schechner 1985) with
everyday-spontaneous behavior. Theater people are moving into areas
once occupied mostly by practitioners of religion and politics. Priests
and politicians will doubtlessly continue to pick up techniques from
the theater. But whether they will be able to restore public confidence
in their professions is questionable. If not, will theater in the west
become again a big avenue rather than the side road it’s been for the
past 300 years?
NOTES
from ritual to theater and back 163
1 Whether to use the present or past tense in discussing the kaikos of the
Tsembaga is a problem. The data is from 1962–3. Swift and irrevocable
changes have occurred in Papua New Guinea from that time to this, including
independence, pacification of warring tribal groups, and various kinds of
“modernization.” I don’t know if the kaikos continue roughly as they were,
have been transformed, or have been extinguished. Basically, I use the past
tense to describe events from 1962–3 and the present tense when theorizing
from these events. However, inconsistencies remain and these reflect an
uncertainty concerning the status of such ritual entertainments in Papua New
Guinea, and elsewhere.
2 In describing the kaiko I follow the account of Rappaport (1968) whose study is
a paradigm of how to examine ritual performances within an ecological context.
3 A fight package is a small bundle containing “the thorny leaves of the males of a
rare, unidentified tree growing in the kamnunga, called the ‘fight tree,’ and
personal material belonging to the enemy, such as hair, fragments of leaves
worn over the buttocks, and dirt scraped from the skin” (Rappaport 1968: 120).
It is said that pressing the package to the heart and head will give a man
courage and improve his chances of killing an enemy. Materials used in fight
packages are acquired from neutrals who have relatives among the enemy.
Fight packages are items of trade. Their use in peaceful dancing shows the
relationship between the dancing and combat. In many parts of Asia performance
forms have arisen from martial arts, still use martial arts as training, and
display routines of the martial arts in the repertory. The reverse is also true:
some of the style and feel of the martial arts are derived from, or at least closely
linked to, dance.
4 Spencer and Gillen’s The Native Tribes of Central Australia has the advantage
over later works that the tribes described were relatively intact, having just been
contacted by the invading Europeans. In Australia, even more than in North
America, contact meant extermination, or nearly so, both culturally and demographically.
In recent years there has been an attempt at redress, both in
material terms and in constructing historical and scholarly accounts that give