YALE-NUS SYLLABUS for AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE THEATER of the 1960’S and 1970’S

YALE-NUS SYLLABUS FOR AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE THEATER
OF THE 1960’s AND 1970’s

YHU 3304, Spring semester, 2019 Mondays and Thursdays, 9am-10:30am Room Y-CR9

Professor Joan MacIntosh [email protected]

Office hours by appointment only, Mondays, after class. Additionally, there will be a mid-semester conference with each student and an end-of-the-year conference with each student, to give and receive feedback. These will be scheduled within the semester time, and will not infringe on either the Spring Break or the end of the year Reading Period.

COURSE OVERVIEW

This seminar course will explore the American Avant-Garde Theatre of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and its enduring significance. It will include an examination of the political, social, economic, and aesthetic events that led to its beginnings, and will follow the journey of its passionate creativity and diversity of expression, as well as the political upheavals and the cultural revolution that were inextricably a part of it. Readings will include the work of Gertrude Stein, Allen Ginsberg, The Living Theatre, The Open Theater, The Performance Group, Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Company, Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Mabou Mines, and others. We will also read 1968,

Environmental Theatre, Be Here Now, Towards a Poor Theatre, and

selected historical overviews. We will explore each group’s vision, body of work, dynamics, and relation and significance to their world. In line with this, students will write about these theatre companies, and create their own live performances and work, based on the readings, possible films, and discussions. Generally speaking, lectures will be on Mondays, and practicum work will be on Thursdays. This may vary week to week, and the syllabus is subject to change.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

It is my intention that each student gain a working knowledge and appreciation for this period in America’s theatrical history, and all the groups studied. It is my hope that each student will be inspired by this work and be able to incorporate the parts of the work studied that mean the most to them into their own artistic journey. Because for a number of the groups we will study there was a direct influence from Indian and Asian theatre on their work, it is my further hope that this seeding and influence can flow back from the US to Asia. We are one world, one community, and now more than ever, the theatre can serve as a place where we talk candidly with each other and share and create our dreams for a better world for everyone.

CLASS SCHEDULE

There will be required readings for each week, approximately 50 pages, which will be assigned to you the week before. You must read the material and bring your questions and inquiry to class. Students will also be required to keep an ongoing personal journal of their experience and insights with the work studied, and bring the journal to class every time. Feel free to be creative with your journals, i.e., writing drawing, painting, creating music, collage existing music. You are also free to read ahead and read as much as you want, see as many films as you can. Be thinking ahead about which groups you are drawn to in particular so that you can be thinking about your presentations. These presentations may be written out as well, but they will be an embodied expression of your sense and knowledge of the work fo the group you are presenting, that you will perform in class. You may use multi media, costumes, and props, or be very minimal, if that suits you and/or your chosen group. Let your imagination fill in for what you may not yet understand. Think 10-20 minutes for your presentations. Be prepared to talk about your presentation afterwards, answer questions and lead the discussion of the group for that day. We will use music, sound, video, film, and slides, as they are necessary, to augment all the work. Use the reading list as a jumping off place for your research. Material abounds. Get creative. Where possible you can go directly to the group’s website for in-depth information. If there are groups mentioned in this overview that are not on the syllabus per se, and they interest you, please feel free to research those groups as well.

Hopefully this seminar will raise as many questions for you as it will answer. This was a complex and fertile time, and my hope is the our exploration of it will fire your own passion and imagination and ignite your dreams and visions for your own life in art. I lived these days when I was your age. I was a major player in the theatre the was happening in New York, and the politics that was happening around the world. I look forward to sharing as much of it with you as possible in our weeks together.

Let’s have a wonderful time together! Before the first class, each student is required to look over the reading list and to read chapter five, “On the Gears of an Odious Machine,” pp. 81-102 from Mark Kurlansky’s book, 1968.)

Week One:

January 14: Introduction (Professor’s notes, logistics, contact sheet)
Name Circle.

January 17: Background (historical, social, political, economic, aesthetic) Readings tbd. Depending on enrollment numbers, different readings may be assigned to different students to for an oral report. See reading list for various topics, ex., Feminism, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War.

Week Two:

January 21: Background, readings tbd. January 24: Background, readings tbd.

Week Three:

January 28: Gertrude Stein, Ginsberg’s HOWL, abstract impressionists. Read HOWL and come to class ready to discuss. Get to know Gertrude Stein. For starters: https://www.nytimes.com/ 2012/01/29/books/review/reconsidering-the-genius-of-gertrudestein.html

January 31: Write a poem or prose paragraph in either the style of Ginsberg or Stein. Stage a protest. (Hand out TDR, T30 pages to read for Monday, Feb 4.)

Week Four:

February 4: Free Southern Theatre, Happenings, Guerrilla Theatre. Readings: Begin reading Environmental Theatre, by Richard Schechner, and choose your chapter/topic to focus on; Read pp. 23-72 in TDR, T30, on Happenings. I will provide hand-out to you the week before.

February 7: Stage a Happening, or create a GT performance.

Week Five:

February 11: Environmental Theatre: The Performance Group. Come to class ready to give an oral presentation on a chapter/subject matter in Environmental Theatre. I will also talk about my experiences in the Group. Read Jerzy Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theatre, and come with

questions.

February 17: TPG: slides, video sections, further discussion of chapters

from Richard Schechner’s book Environmental Theatre, and Towards a

Poor Theatre. I will show warmup exercises.

Week Six:

February 18: The Living Theatre. Read Artaud’s Theatre and its Double: choose a topic to discuss. Read pp. 30-73, in TDR, T22, which I will hand out. Read up on The Living Theatre, www.thelivingtheatre.org. February 21: Theatro Campesino, San Francisco Mime Troupe. Printouts of readings will be available.

Midterm paper is due on or before February 21st: 5-10 pages on one of the companies we’ve discussed or the forces that created this period in theatre history.

Week Seven: February 23-March 3, Spring Break

Week Eight:

March 4:

The Open Theatre. Read Carol Martin’s essay on The

Open Theatre, in Restaging the Sixties, beginning on page 79; and Roger Babb’s essay, beginning on page 106. Select a chapter in either

Joseph Chaikin’s The Presence of the Actor or Peter Brook’s The Empty

Space, to read and report on. March 7: Theatre.
Create a 10-20 minute performance inspired by The Open

Week Nine:

March 11: The Bread and Puppet Theatre. Read any of the available writings on their work: books in our reading list. I will provide a handout as well.

March 14: Create a 10-20 minute performance inspired by The Bread and Puppet Theatre.

Week Ten:

Marcy 18: The Ridiculous Theatrical Theatre Company. Read any of the histories of the company, choose a play from The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam to read and be ready to present a scene from it on Thursday.

March 21: Present scenes from their work, ex., Irma Vep.

Week Eleven:

March 25: Mabou Mines. Read about any of their work and be ready to talk about it. How is this company unique? What kind of work do

they still do? Choose a topic from The Theatre of Images:…The Red

Horse Animation, by Lee Breuer, to report on. March 28: Create a performance based on their work, or a scene from a play of theirs.

Week Twelve:

April 1:

Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. Read The

Theatre of Images: Pandering to the Masses, a Misrepresentation, by

Richard Foreman, from the same book as for your previous assignment.

April 4:

Create a scene based on their work.

Week Thirteen:

April 8:

Robert Wilson’s work: lecture and video.

Create a performance based on his work.

April 11:

Week Fourteen:

April 15:

The Wooster Group and beyond. I will provide a hand-out.

Also see their website: https://www.thewoostergroup.org.

April 18:

Final project and final paper due. For the final 10-20 page

paper, you can write about any two or three groups and compare and contrast. Also include how these two or three groups’ work inspired you, or choose only one for this part of your paper. Your in-class project may be drawn from one or some or all of the work studied this semester. Have fun with it, let your own creativity flourish. You may use multimedia or be very spare. It’s your choice.

April 22-26: Reading week April 27-May 11: Exams

Course Assessment Breakdown:

Individual in-class participation: 20% Individual written assignments: 20% Group and individual projects, in-class exercises: 20% Fieldwork components: 20% Mid-semester paper: 10% Final project and paper: 10%

Late Assignment Policy

Students are expected to submit work on or before the deadlines specified in the assignment schedule above. 1. Late submissions will have a grade reduction. 2. The reduction will bring the grade down by half a letter grade. (A becomes A-, B+ becomes B, etc.) for every two days of late submission.

Canvas Page Usage Policy

The instructor will use Canvas for (a) announcements. Possibly for uploads of supplementary materials.

Attendance:

1. Students are expected to attend all classes. Students must request the permission of the instructor to be absent from classes.
2. In case of illness, a medical certificate and/or note from a VR is expected.
3. Advanced permission is needed if a student plans to miss a class for the purpose of required fieldwork for another course, or any other form of College activity.
4. Punctuality is required. Be in class on time and ready to work. If you must be absent on a day in which you have a presentation scheduled, please find someone else to present in your absence. If you cannot do that and you are unable to provide the required excuse, you will receive a mark of zero for the presentation. No exceptions.

Assignments and format:

Assignments should be submitted in soft copy format, via email.

Academic Integrity Policy

Yale-NUS College expects its students to abide by the highest standards of academic integrity as a matter of personal honesty and communal responsibility. Acting with academic integrity requires that (a) students do their own work, (b) students not interfere with the work of others, (c) students accurately and honestly represent the content of their work, and (d) students properly attribute others’ work. Violations of the College’s academic integrity standards undermine both the community and the individual growth of students. Accordingly, they will be addressed with the utmost seriousness and sanctions ranging from grade penalties to expulsion. Examples of violations of academic integrity include plagiarism, copying or sharing homework answers, submitting work completed for one course as “new” work for another course, or fabricating or falsifying research data. For more information please visit the Student Services website,

Policies and Procedures section: https://studentlife.yale-nus.edu.sg/policies/ academic-integrity/

The Yale-NUS Library provides resources on citations and plagiarism

here: http://library.yale-nus.edu.sg/plagiarism/

Nondiscriminatory Language and Conduct:

This course encourages non-discriminatory language and conduct. Students should not use racist, sexist or other discriminatory language in class discussions or written work.

Health and Wellness Contacts

If you are experiencing undo stress or feel you might benefit from private counseling, please contact the Yale-NUS Health and Wellness Centre. The wellness center also offers a wide range of enriching workshops and events. You may also wish to reach out to Vice Rector within your Residential College. For this and other kinds of support:

https://studentlife.yale-nus.edu.sg/wellness/

The American Avant-Garde Theatre of the 1960’s and 1970’s occurred as a result of, and, in turn, profoundly influenced the tremendous political, social, cultural, spiritual, and artistic upheaval and explosion that began in the United States and the Western nations after World War II and the Cold War, and continued for decades. It was a time of turbulence, confrontation with repressive authority, and the empowerment and celebration of the young and the new.

Artistically, these decades began with the rise to prominence of Abstract Expressionism in the US; and Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, Gertrude Stein, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Black Mountain College; Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets; and Allan Kaprow’s Happenings. From the necessity to reframe a world that had been shattered by wars came a new aesthetic that challenged Aristotelian logic, and a theatre the was shaped by music, dance, and art, as well as politics, in a world that was simultaneously fragmented and unified. By the 1960’s theatre companies emerged that were vibrant, collective, alternative, experimental, innovative, and visionary. “The Times, they are a Changin’,” sang Bob Dylan, and the companies of the 60’s met the times on their own terms: some were political, some social, some deeply personal, spiritual, some used satire and humor, and all broke through the boundaries of what had been, and replaced the old order with art that was groundbreaking and exciting.

John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white passenger, on December 1, 1955, launching the Civil Rights Movement, that would explode into a powerful force, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., who would be assassinated on April 4, 1968. Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, and a presidential hopeful, was assassinated shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected city supervisor of San Francisco, and George Moscone, Mayor of San Francisco, were assassinated on November 27th, 1978. John Lennon was murdered in front of his building, the Dakota, in NYC on December 8, 1980.

During the 60’s, and until 1973, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and there were massive anti-war protests by students on college campuses, as well as by millions of American people. Young men were drafted into military service, and for the first time, television brought us news and scenes of the war in vivid detail. There were sit-ins, be-ins, guerrilla street theatre as war protest, marches on Washington, to the White House, the Capital, the Pentagon: against the war, against racism, for Civil Rights, for women, for gay rights, for free love, for peace, against the May 4, 1970 Kent State massacre of innocent students by the police. Many citizens were maced, beaten, and arrested, and still the protests continued, effectively causing the US to withdraw from Vietnam. There were the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, SDS, and SNCC. May 1968 in Paris, France, was a climax of uprising by students and workers and the Spring of 19689 in Czechoslovakia saw its political liberation from the Soviet domination after World War ll.

A spirit of activism and a belief and hope in the peaceful co-existence and future of humankind, and the end to all regimes, swept the world.

There was the sexual revolution, that included liberation through birth control, widespread sexual experimentation, gay rights, a new wave of feminism, and Roe v. Wade, in 1973, protecting women with the right to legal abortion.

We saw Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon on July 21st, 1969. The Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Donovan, Elton John, and many others sang to us of protest and love, and reflected our burgeoning reality.

Eastern philosophy and religions found their way to the US and blew open the top of our heads to a “new” spiritual reality.

And the theatre artists of the day absorbed, lived, participated, and responded as leaders.