Performance and Permanence in Sixties Literature
What is art? Any generation of artists defines itself by the way it answers this question. The artists of the 1960s found their answer in the idea of art as experience. Art was not something that happened; it was something that happened around you, with you, to you. In the moment of creation, and in that moment alone, there was art. For artists of the Sixties, art was vibrant and alive, and thus to say a product was finished was simply to say it was dead. For literary artists this obsession with the fleeting now translated to a fascination with performance itself-a fascination that in turn cuts at the very heart of art itself. For if work must be performed to be truly experienced, then art is transient and irreproducible, and therefore barren. Art becomes local and mortal, tied to the life and influence of a single artist-unable to speak to those who were not there at the time. One cannot have it both ways; if we accept the preeminence of "the happening" and reject the notion of reproducibility, then art seemingly becomes smaller, diminished. This struggle between performance and permanence, between moment and monument, can be see as one of the central questions of the literature of the 1960s.
Experimental theater provides a useful example of the extreme form of this perception about performance art. Drama has sometimes been praised, sometimes been maligned, but it has undeniably been a type of literature for as long as literary study has existed, as important in its own way as poetry, and prose. Experimental theater challenged this notion in its sheer irreproducibility; it begs the question, "Can something be literary which only happens once, which fails to...
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...who would never and could never be touched by a single performance in a single place. For all its raw emotional power, perfomance art is unreachable to many in the present and totally inaccessible to audiences in the future. To truly matter-to exert any real change over the present, to reach past its moment of creation into the future-art must be more than its performance alone.
Works Cited
Biner, Pierre. The Living Theater. Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 288-293. ed.
Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. New York: Pengiun Books, 1958.
Rader, Dotson. "Notes of Andy Warhol: His Life and Work as Death in America." Takin' It To
The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 305-309. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Comparing the Books, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties and The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Bloom, Alexander and Wini Breines, eds. Takin' it to the Streets. Oxford University Press, New York, 1995.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
Bloom, Alexander and Breines, Wini. Takin' it to the Streets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (from A to B and Back Again). Orlando: Harcourt, 2006. Print.
The Odyssey is a tale that has changed literature and storytelling. In this tale Odysseus is a Soldier from the battle of Troy trying to get home to his island of Ithaca, where he is king. His wife and son must wait ten years while he is trying to make his way home. In Odysseus’s absence wooer’s, or better known as suitors, learn of his absence and travel to Ithaca to win his wife’s hand in marriage. These men come every day feasting on Odysseus’s food and wine, and give his servant’s orders. His son Telemachus, does his best to keep the suitors from ruining his fathers house but he is only a boy, and doesn’t receive the respect of an adult. Telemachus then has a visit from the god Athena, whom Odysseus is friends with, who advises him to travel to find out about his father. In his travels he hears that Odysseus may still be alive. Meanwhile Odysseus goes through a series of adventures and hardships that prove his wisdom. It is interesting in contrast of the Iliad, even though Achilles was much stronger and a better warrior, Odysseus was portrayed as a greater hero due to his wisdom. He uses this wisdom to escape from the Cyclops.
Chalmers, David. And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil rights struggle, and the liberation movements. From the lunch counter sit-in of Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Power movement at the decade's end, Anderson illustrates the brutality involved in the reaction against civil rights, the radicalization of some of the movement's youth, and the eventual triumphs that would change America forever. He also discusses women's liberation and the feminist movement, as well as the students' rights, gay rights, and environmental movements.
Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines. "Takin' it to the streets": A Sixties Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.
Biner, Pierre. The Living Theater. Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 288-293. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines.
theartstroy.org. 2013. The web. 22 November 2013. Warhol, Andy.
The main character is Dunstable Ramsey, Dunny for short. He is a very real character to me. The whole book is a letter that the old Dunny is writing to someone about his life. The way the author writes as Dunny is great. I can picture an old man sitting at a desk writing the letter. For parts of the story that have lots of detail, I imagine that the old Dunny remembers these parts of his life because they were important to him. For the parts he is vague about, Dunny writes that he would write more if he remembered more clearly. I think those are the times in his life that were not very important to him.
In this paper, I will be focusing briefly on my knowledge and understanding of the concept of Applied theatre and one of its theatre form, which is Theatre in Education. The term Applied Theatre is a broad range of dramatic activity carried out by a crowd of diverse bodies and groups.
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