DRAFT
Chapter Abstracts
Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers
Dan Friedman
Chapter 1 - By Way of Introduction
Places the book within the global movement that approaches performance as a means of social, political and cultural change. The movement is emerging primarily outside of the academy in the arenas of community education and development, civic engagement, and political activism. While the academic discipline of Performance Studies recognizes the universality of human performance in daily life, what is specifically under investigation here is performance as an activity self-consciously entered into as a means of engaging social issues and conflicts, that is, as an ensemble activity by which we re-construct/transform social reality.
Part 1
Performance Leaves the Theatre and Joins the Revolution
Is a historical study, in eight chapters, of the processes by which, over the course of the 20th Century, performance was loosened from the institutional framework of the theatre. In particular, it looks at the history and impact of: Agit-Prop; Improvisation; Psychodrama; Happenings, Be-Ins and Flash Mobs; Performance Art; Avant-Garde Theatre (specifically, Dadaism, Futurism and the Epic Theatre); and ends with a look at the counter culture of the 1960s in which daily life became more explicitly performatory.
Chapter 2 – Ritual, Theatre, Activism
Discusses distinctions between the three social uses of performance: ritual, theatre and activism. Ritual is performance by an entire social unit, without a distinction between actors and audience, and is often a part of defining and re-enforcing group beliefs and behavior. Performance in the theatre is done by trained specialists for a passive audience, and is usually used to resolve on stage conflicts that are unresolved in society. Performance activism involves non-actors in performance with the assumption that performance can be growthful and developmental to those involved and potentially a means of engaging and changing social reality. In the course of this discussion, there is speculation on the origins of theatre and working definitions are established that are returned to throughout the book.
Chapter 3 – Agit-Prop
Looks at the amateur workers movement that emerged with the Russian Revolution and spread throughout the industrialized world over the next fifteen years. Agit-Prop (short for Agitation and Propaganda) involved millions of people as performers and was the largest amateur theatre movement in history. The various forms of Agit-Prop theatre, including Animated Posters, Living Newspapers and Mass Spectacles, are explored as is the evolution of its characteristic structure, montage. Agit-Prop demonstrated that creating and performing in plays did not require years of training, and was approached by its participants as a form of political activism—both working assumptions of performance activism that emerged almost a century later.
Chapter 4 - Improvisation
The Improv movement initiated by Viola Spolin in the 1930s is looked at in the context of the history of improvisation in the theatre as well as in relation to the wider arena of play. It focuses on Spolin’s process: the building of ensemble by acceptance and cooperation; the evolution of the yes/and technique; and the direct involvement of the audience in generating the performance. The contemporary Applied Improv movement which brings Improv’s principals and techniques to aspects of organizational, corporate and personal life is touched upon. Improv is unpacked as a seminal force in the democratization of performance beyond the confines of traditional theatre and as foundational to much of the performance activism that was to follow.
Chapter 5 – Psychodrama and Sociodrama
Psychodrama, developed by psychiatrist Jacob Moreno in the 1920 and ’30s, is a form of group psychoanalysis in which the patients, directed by the therapist, act out past traumas and emotional issues and then analyze their performances together. Moreno was the first to apply performance as a developmental activity outside of the theatre. The history and techniques of psychodrama are examined, as is Moreno’s other major amalgam of performance, therapy and social engagement, Sociodrama. Psychodrama’s influence on Drama Therapy and Playback Theatre is explored. Subsequent intersections of therapy and performance—August Boal’s Rainbow of Desire and Fred Newman’s Social Therapy—are also touched upon.
Chapter 6 – Happenings, Be-Ins and Flash Mobs
The next impactful challenge to the established assumption of performance as acting came in the late 1950s and early ’60s when visual artists Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, and others began to extend their work from gallery walls, turning the entire space into a constructed environment in which people could perform not characters, but themselves. Michael Kirby’s influential writing on matrixed performance, which grew out of observing Happenings, are discussed. The influence of Happenings on avant-garde theatre, the Be-Ins of the 1960s and the Flash Mobs of the 2000s are also considered.
Chapter 7 – Performance Art
Performance Art also emerged from the visual arts. It focuses on the individual body as art. Performance artists consciously perform themselves outside the frame of a play. Their practice challenges the assumption that performance is an activity distinct from daily life—thus they played a significant role in unmooring performance from the theatre. Looks at work of Performance Art pioneers Carolee Schneenmann, Yoko Ono, Bonny Sherk and others and examines the difference between North American Performance Art and the more politicalized Performance Art of Latin America. Also discusses the inter-related emergence of Performance Art and Performance Studies as an academic discipline.
Chapter 8 - Avant-Garde Theatre
While much of the activity in the first half of the 20th Century that loosened performance from its confines in the theatre came from outside the theatre, this chapter looks at the ongoing insurgency within the theatre generally referred as the “avant-garde.” In particular, it looks at the impact of Dadaism, Futurism and the Epic Theatre in challenging the theatre’s institutional assumptions, challenges that have prepared the ground for performance activism. Examines how the Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed grew out of Epic Theatre’s learning plays.
Chapter 9 - Performativity and the Sixties
The interpenetration of the experimental theatre of the Sixties with the counter culture and radical mass movements of the period helped prepare the ground for performance activism decades later. This chapter examines the work and influence of: Richard Schechner’s Environment Theatre; the ritualistic work of the Living Theatre, Jerzy Grotowski and others; Street and Guerilla Theaters such as the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the New York Street Theatre Caravan, and the Radical Arts Troupes of the Students for a Democratic Society. It concludes with those who mixed performance into daily life, such as the Merry Pranksters, the Hog Farm, the San Francisco Diggers and the Yippies.
Part 2
(Some of) What Performance Activism Does
While Part 1 explores the cultural and political precursors who contributed to loosening the ties that bind performance to the institution of the theatre, Part 2 takes a look at the diverse work of performance activists around the world. It consists of vignettes and portraits of varying lengths and depths, intended to provide a mosaic-like overview of performance activism today. These portraits are ordered according to the ways in which the activities they describe are interacting with and impacting upon the individuals, communities and societies in which they are functioning. It is organized into seven chapters: Educating; Politicalizing; Building Bridges; Creating Community Conversation; Reigniting Creativity; Healing Trauma, and; Building Community.
Chapter 10 – Educating
The use of performance to help activate curiosity and learning in children and adults is the topic of this chapter. Starting with the U.K.’s Theatre in Education movement, it goes on to Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert approach, which turns the classroom into a long performance workshop (usually six weeks) in which students and teachers perform various roles within an imaginary situation. India’s Kerala Forum for Science and Literature, a multi-generational project that uses performance to popularize science education among the poor is included. Examined in some detail is Theatre for Development, which in Sub-Saharan African works to educate the rural population in modern health and social mores.
Chapter 11 – Politicizing
Provides a diverse sampling of performance activities intended to motivate political support and passion. It ranges from the Pungwe, during Zimbabwe’s war of liberation, a form of participatory political theatre consisting of illicit gatherings of the villagers and guerrillas at night to exchange stories and songs, to Michael Rohd’s decades on the road creating participatory political performance workshops and plays in towns and cities across the U.S. Also touches on, among other examples, a trial of striking Zulu steelworkers which was turned into a play and a street performance in Kerala, India that led to a trial.
Chapter 12 - Building Bridges
This chapter explores at the power of performance to create connection and respect between groups of people separated by histories of hate and violence. It looks at the work of Peter Harris who brings Arab and Jewish Israelis together through performance at Western Galilee College and the work of Lenora Fulani who has been doing performance workshops for over a decade with New York City police officers and young people of color from the city’s poorest communities.
Chapter 13 – Creating Community Conversations
Closely related to building bridges between antagonistic communities is finding ways for communities to speak internally. This chapter looks at performance activists from different parts of the world who have found ways to use performance to promote conversation within communities. Daniel Maposa and the Savana Trust in Zimbabwe, Mohammed Waseem and the Interactive Resource Center in Pakistan, and David Diamond’s Theatre for Living, based in Canada, have found ways to build on the techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed to engender civic engagement.
Chapter 14 – Healing Trauma
In the case of atrocities and intense violence, the transformative power of performance is explicit, allowing the victims of trauma to re-experience their pain in ways that allow them to re-enter life in new ways. This chapter takes a look at the performance healing being done by two performance activist pioneers—Sanjay Kumar in India and Hector Aristizabal in Columbia.
Chapter 15 – Reinitiating Creativity
Even when directed towards specific ends, performance stimulates in many directions simultaneously. No matter its practical “application,” performance can reignite imagination and creativity even in those who have had it beaten, bombed or starved out of them. In this chapter, we’ll look at two performance activists—Alexandra Sutherland and Luvuyo Yanta in South Africa—whose work on the streets, in prison and a mental hospital, rather than being directed toward particular ends, has helped spark creativity among people formerly denied the environment in which to grow it.
Chapter 16 – Building Community
A constant in performance activism is the generation of community. When people perform together they bond, and within certain environments are able to find new ways of being together and moving forward. This chapter looks at performance activism in which the creation and/or strengthening of community is the main point. One example, led by Jon Oram in the U.K., functions primarily within the context of existing geographically defined communities to deepen and refine their connection to their histories, and hence, toward each other. The other two, one led by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Kenya, the other by Dan Baron Cohen in Brazil, explore performance as a way of creating an activist community where it did not before exist.
Part 3
Re-performing the World
Part 3 is an in-depth dive into one stream of the performance activist movement—social therapeutics—which has worked to bring performance into daily life as a means of developmental and transformative living. It explores the intellectual and political roots of social therapeutics, unpacks the interplay of its community organizing with the evolutoin of its understanding of performance, and explores its attempts to maintain community and sustain performance as a way of life and a method of social transformation.
Chapter 17 – Performance as a Way of Life
Introduces social therapeutic performance activism as an improvisational approach to living one’s life and embodying one’s values by consciously performing who-one-is-becoming in the context of who-one-is. Looks at the conceptual roots of this approach in Karl Marx’s early methodological writings, the discoveries of Lev Vygotsky, the early Soviet developmental psychologist, who saw in play the means of human development, in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of language as a meaning-making activity, and in the conceptual leadership of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, who initiated and developed this stream of performance activism for over four decades.
Chapter 18 – Community Organizing and Performance
Sketches out the organizing activities that were, over the course of decades, interfacing with the concepts generated by Holzman, Newman and their East Side Institute discussed in the previous chapter. It looks at the key activities that generated and shaped this stream of performance activism: The All Stars Talent Show Network and other youth programs of the All Stars Project; the Castillo Theatre; The Barbara Taylor School; Performance of a Lifetime; and this community’s fundraising work on the streets of New York.
Chapter 19 – Ontology, Community, Sustainability
Drawing on the forty year-history of social therapeutics, this chapter looks at the question of power and performance activism. It asks whether performance activism can be sustained and if it can stimulate mass systemic performances and, if so, how? It considers performance activism in relation to Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the struggle for cultural hegemony, challenges the value of ideology as guide for social change and explores the relationship between performance, community building, independent funding and sustainability.