The kaiko celebration is described by Schechner as a year-long festival of the Tsembaga, put on for both entertainment and strategic purposes. Key elements of the kaiko include dancing and trade. Local groups from neighboring areas meet to participate in this event, which is strategically planned, to solidify alliances through a debtor-creditor relationship. This relationship is created through an exchange of goods that never ends in a balance; the roles are simply reversed. For example, “when the kaiko is over, the guests owe the hosts meat, and the hosts owe the guests trade items” (313). The purpose behind this switch is to ensure future kaikos occur, along with a continued trade between groups.

The dancing that is involved in this event serves as an entertaining performance, along with a way to create connections with other local groups. The performance itself includes combat techniques that have been adapted to fit into a dance. Symbolically, this represents an alliance for the Tsembaga: “To join a group in dancing is the symbolic expression of willingness to join them in fighting” (313)

The kaiko celebration is a cyclical event that is entirely dependent on periods of alignment between clan relations and the pig population. As Schechner writes, “The whole cycle is tied to war/peace rhythm which, in turn, is tied to the fortunes of the pig population” (313-14). Because of this, the event itself only occurs every twelve to fifteen years. As seen in the figure below, as the pig population grows in accordance with peace relations, it culminates into the kaiko event before beginning again. According to Schechner, the event is followed by a short period of peace, but just as the kaiko event is temporary so too are these peace relations. The event from an ecological standpoint acts to provide a balance in both nature and reality as it reduces the overpopulation of pigs and improves/repairs the relationship between group participants. Therefore, the stronger the alliance is, the more rewarding the event is. But the kaiko event is more than simply an exchange of meat during a time of peace. In Schechner’s study, he views the kaiko event as transformative performance. By this, Schechner sees the ritualistic elements of the event (such as dancing, debt exchange, costumes) as symbols for actualities. He is particularly interested in how the “gift” exchange of pig meat operates as a transference of debt, which he explains in the following passage:

This orchestrated indebtedness is at the heart of the kaiko. At the start of the celebration the hosts owe meat to the guests and the guests owe items of trade to the hosts. In the first part of the kaiko the hosts pay meat to the guests; in the second part of the kaiko the guests pay the host trade items. But neither payment ends in a balance. When the kaiko is over the guests owe the hosts meat, and the hosts owe the guests trade items. This symmetrical imbalance guarantees further kaikos—continued exchanges between groups. Often trade items are not given back directly, but traded back through third or fourth parties. After the public trading and the gift-giving, some dancing resumes which ends by midmorning. Then everyone goes home.(313)

By the upsetting of the balance through this transferred debt, the kaiko resumes its cyclical cycle. A few rare pictures of the event can be found below.

In his observation of the ecological performances of the kaiko celebration by the Tsembaga people of New Guinea, Schechner draws a link between symbolic events and actual events. In the figure below, Schechner describes that “the performance [of the kaiko] both symbolizes and actualizes the change in status,” meaning that the ritual/performative exchange of meat and dances between Group A and Group B, “symbolizes the changed relationship” between reality and symbol (320). This change can be observed in the next figure as Schechner shows how actualities are converted into aesthetics, which are both symbolic and temporary of the kaiko event and its subsequent alliances. As Schechner describes, the “mode of achieving ‘real results’—paying debts, incurring new obligations—was performing; the dancing does not celebrate achieving results, it does not precede or follow the exchange, it is the means of making transformations; the performance is effective” (321). Thus, these performative rituals are done in a way that metaphorically replaces real events/actions with symbols/actions. So as Schechner provides in the model below, war parties become dancing groups, combat become dancing, and so on. This therefore situates entertainment in relation to efficacy. According to Schechner, this relationship between efficacy and entertainment forms a continuum, even though they technically exist as opposites. In the following figures, Schechner displays this opposition by placing ritualistic practices against theatre, acknowledging the binary differences between the two in relation to their functions rather than how they are strictly presented/performed in reality. In Schechner’s model, rituals are therefore about results whereas theatre emphasizes fun. In a performance centralized around efficacy, audience members are the participants, they live in the ritual, and creativity becomes collective. Opposing this, theatre, and entertainment at large, become about the individual and likewise their detachment from their audience. Schechner presents this model specifically to show efficacy and entertainment in their true and binary states. But as he previously claims, Schechner sees these two functions existing on a continuum, exposing how perspective can quickly alter how a ritual/performance is perceived. So, in the case of theatre, seeing what occurs backstage, or being a stagehand yourself, can greatly affect how one interacts and perceives the performance, shifting it towards something resembling efficacy. As Schechner claims, “The attention paid to the procedures of making theatre are, I think, attempts at ritualizing performance, or finding in the theatre itself authenticating acts” (322).

Thus, Schechner presents a new model to counteract strictly binary associations between theatre and rituals. This new model, as presented in the figure below, attempts to weave these two forms of performance together into a “braid.” Schechner views the history of theatre, much like the kaiko celebration, as rooted in efficacy to a certain extent, particularly in consideration of the late medieval period which he describes as being “dominated by efficacious performances: church services, court ceremonies, moralities, pageants” (323). But as Western society, and subsequently theatre, shifted, so too did performance rise and fall between modes of efficacy and entertainment. Schechner sees theatre as moving between periods of privatization and commercialism—which lowers efficacy in favor of entertainment—into periods of social change and power delegations—which cast entertainment aside for efficacy. In economical terms, when the upper-class runs the theatres, they are exploited for their superficial values, whereas when the lower-class/social outcasts move into theatre (such as what can be seen with Bohemianism), the performances become social “laboratories,” promoting results (change) rather than simple appreciative evaluation. As part of this braid, which rises and falls with theatre’s social state, Schechner concludes that corporate theatres, such as what can be found on Broadway, are near extinction due to their lack of any true social relationship with their audiences. He ultimately perceives commercial theatres in their desire to strictly entertain will eventually be subsumed by regional theatres that promote and encourage “results” through “political action, psychotherapy and other manifestly efficacious kinds of performances” (324).

Schechner, Robert. “Kaiko Celebration: A Symbolic Connection Between Ritualistic Dancing and Alliances.” Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Towards an Enthopoetics, edited by Jerome and Diane Rothenberg, University of California Press, 1983.