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

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from ritual to theater and back
While listening to the Highlanders I wondered about the Melanesian layer of
Balinese culture.
16 Konrad Lorenz (1967) discusses at some length the development of
“appeasement ceremonies” in animals. More technical descriptions are given
by Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1970). Lorenz describes a special kind of ceremony that is
analogous to what I saw in Papua New Guinea.
Of all the various appeasement ceremonies, with their many different
roots, the most important for our theme are those appeasing or greeting
rites which have arisen from redirected aggression movements. They differ
from the already described appeasement ceremonies in that they do
not put aggression under inhibition but divert it from certain members of
the species and canalize it in the direction of others. This new orientation
of aggressive behavior is one of the most ingenious inventions of
evolution, but it is even more than that: wherever redirected rituals of
appeasement are observed, ceremony is bound to the individuality of the
participating partners. The aggression of a particular individual is diverted
from a second, equally particular individual, while its discharge against all
other anonymous members of the species is not inhibited. Thus discrimination
between friend and stranger arises, and for the first time in the
world personal bonds between individuals come into being.
(Lorenz 1967: 131–2)
Or, as the Tsembaga say, “those who come to our kaiko will also come to our
fights.” It is also important to note that the ceremonies Lorenz focused on
were greeting ceremonies. The dances in the Highlands may correctly be called
greeting dances.
17 See E. T. Kirby (1975). Kirby sees shamanism as “the ‘great unitarian artwork’
that fragmented into a number of performances arts” (p. 6). Also see the
chapter “Shaman,” in my Environmental Theater (Schechner 1973).
18 Performance activities that go far beyond what is normally thought of as
“community theater” exist in both Europe and America. The wide-ranging work
of Anna Halprin, Eugenio Barba, and Augusto Boal are but three examples. See
Lawrence Halprin (1969), Halprin and Burns (1974), Barba (1979 and 1986), and
Boal (1979). Also see TDR, The Drama Review 27 (2) (1983), an issue devoted to
“grass roots theater.” Of course, what is a “movement” in Europe and America
is the most widespread kind of theater and dance in many parts of Africa
and Asia.
19 Jerzy Grotowski has been the leading pioneer, but by no means the only practitioner,
of paratheater. See Kolankiewicz (1978), Burzynski and Osinski (1979),
Kumiega (1985), and Osinski (1986).
20 See Kaprow (1966b and 1983) and Montano (1981). As Kaprow says:
A supposed conflict between art and life has been a theme in Western art
at least since ancient Rome. . . . Simplistically put, artlike art holds that art