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

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actuals
burning clothes, burning food, ripping and kicking apart overstuffed
furniture, dismembering dead chickens, tearing clothes off participants,
and throwing blood at each other. The piano destruction is
carefully orchestrated and precisely performed by Ortiz. He is exact
about how the demolition should be done. “One hundred live mice in
a wire screen and two gallons of blood in plastic bags are to be placed
inside the piano behind the panel above the keys.” The axe must be
“brand new,” the piano “pushed on its back to the floor – the keyboard
and hammer sections smashed away so that the harp is completely
exposed,” and so on. The “Birth of Henny Penny” has two “men
Initiators wearing maternity full-length dresses . . . under spotlights
ten feet apart. Each has a live chicken tied between his legs under the
dress. There is also fifteen feet of tubing connected to a balloon tied
low on their waists under the dresses which extends to an upright tire
pump.” Initiates are “harangued into pumping the pumps.” The
dresses inflate, all participants “join in the sighing moaning groaning
and sexual motions” which continue until the balloons explode and
the chickens are “delivered.” Two initiators (now called Shamans) raise
the birds “victoriously . . ., then waving the chickens like flags they
race through the Ritual Room shouting irrational violent sounds”
which convert into a “Henny Penny” chant. The other Initiators pick
up the chant and then attack the Shamans, grabbing the chickens and
bringing them to the demolished piano. The chickens are spreadeagled
over the piano harp. The Initiators form a tight circle. The
Shamans, outside the circle, start chanting “The sky is falling.” They
take the axe, the circle admits them, and each Shaman decapitates the
other’s chicken. As this happens, everyone cries like children,
“Mommy!” The decapitated heads are worn in small plastic sandwich
bags “taped inside the fly” of each Shaman’s pants. The cry changes to
“Mousie” as the tight circle opens and the Initiators go to “zones”
where the Initiates have watched the sacrifice. The Initiators shout at
the Initates, “You’re just a bunch of fucking voyeurs!” Then the
Shamans give each Initiator a live mouse. The Initiators surround the
mouse trap area and throw the live mice in. Led by one of the Shamans,
the Initiators begin to leave the room, “seeking out Initiates and seductively
and lovingly telling them ‘You love me, you love me.’ ” 12 The
room after the performance was strewn with guts, living, dead, and