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

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actuals
Hevehe over the years – there is a close-knitting of the eravo, the masks
being built in it, the political and economic life of the people, the lifecycle
of individual and social life meaning and continuity. Some cycles
which Williams observed were started in 1914 but not finished by
1937 when he gathered his data. Others, begun at about the same time,
were completed in 1920, 1932, and 1934.
It may be thought that this dragging out of the cycle is the result of
modern influences, as if the Hevehe were drawing a series of long,
dying gasps. [But] there is ample evidence to show that formerly, as
well as now, the Hevehe cycles occupied very long periods.
(Williams 1940: 118) 10
A man with a full life might participate in three, possibly four, Hevehe.
In a cycle that takes as long to complete as the Hevehe, things are not
so strict moment to moment as they are in the Bora. The cycle develops
in bursts, with intensive activities surrounding particular ceremonies,
and long periods of inactivity between. The ceremonies all take place in
and around the village, and many involve the women and children. In
one, people from neighbouring villages wearing small dancing masks,
eharo, invade the host village. Bunched around the eharo are enthusiastic
women and children, and resisting the invaders are hundreds of people
who shower the invaders with coconut flakes. A mock battle is fought
on the beach and then the invaders sweep into the village. Erotic
pantomimes vie with more staid dancing and children run about the
village armed with toy bows and arrows which they shoot at bunches
of bananas, or sago. Throughout all this some of the village elders
lounge on the veranda of the eravo, seemingly disinterested and certainly
unperturbed. This carnival mock-war dance seems altogether
different from the Bora. There the ceremony was formal, far from the
village, in total seclusion, and no women or children were permitted to
watch or even know of the rituals. The elders were the most important
participants. Here, everything is the opposite; but the differences are
not of an essential kind.
The climax of the cycle is the month-long dancing of the hevehe
masks. Months of hard preparation have laid away stores of food, and
inside the eravo the last touches have been completed on the masks.