Alternative Theatrical Spaces CHAPT'.It
• 3 ihe elimination of the stage-auditorium dichotomy I\ not the '"""'=--"""*' Important thing. The essential concern b finding the proper spectator-actor relatiot'lship {or each type of perform2.nc:e 1nd embodying the detlsicn In physlc.a! arrangements:.' Jerzy Grctowskl. Towards cr Poor Thta!rt
'!
Modern efforts t() find new ll theatre people ~ho have performed singly or in groups wher· kinds of theatrical S{ J..C( ever an audience could be gathered around them are.-back· have created different ways . Agrountl to the nodem avant·garde creation of allernative per· o' e)(perienc.ing thutre. folmance !PJ;~$L.Tbese i'Jtemati ve fofmTm~Ccla!e""d·Urp.MtlfiU!nvith In recent decades Je~y the P~litical protests of the Vietnam War eta fiithe United States~although GrotowsJcl In Poland, Ariana they-are-iiliernatrOnii mi•tacace.---:- · Mnouchklne In Paris, Peter · · ·trucii-Ofihe-WOrk a! JufiaJi Beck and Judtth Malina (tlle Uvio.g The Sehum:mn ln Vermont, and atre). Jett:'f Grotowski (the Polish Laboratory Theatre), ~ter Brook (the Peter Breck in France have International Centre for Theatre Research), Artatie Mcoucbklne (ThUtre rearranged theatrical lpace du SoleU), Peter·Schumilllil (the Bread and Puppet Theatre), and .Jobn to brina aud!ences and O'Neal and ~ilbert Moses (Fr~ Southern Theater) within tbe last four _actors closer together, decades has bee..E.,labeled alternative and/or ~vironmental ~atre. This type of theat:ical pe:rformance rejects conventiolial seating and arranges L- ~e aUdience as part of tbe playing space.
ENVIRONMENTAL THEATRE
Writing about environmental production as a particular way of creating .and experiencing theatre, American director and theorbt JUcbard Stbech~ ner says, "The thing about environmental theatre space ls not Just a ~at· ter of bow you end up using space. It 1s ~attitude. _Start with aU tm rpaa! there t: and then decide what to use, what not to use, llJU!how to use what you use. -l Polish director Jerzy Crotowski describes the essentlal con.~--<1 as "finding ~e proper spectator-actor relatlonslrlP for each type ~f pq~~ formance and embodying the decision in physical !Ul"angi!:D;~.ents.••
"t -- -- •
As noted, environmental theatre by definition rejects conventional seating and ln· udes audiences as part of the performance space. Like the actors, the spectators be . orne part of what is seen and done. They are both seeing and seen.
fORERUNNERS OF P,LTERNATIVE APPROACHES e '
,. In modern Russia and Germany, such leaders as the inventive VSevolod Meyer-hold -··· (1874-c. l94ciJ and Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) developed..._unorthodox production [.~~theatr_i_cal sp~£::· They are the chief forerunners of today's many r~xw::rJfH..:!!_t!> in nontraditlonaJ performan~les and alternative spaces. In the 1930s i in Moscow, the Russian director Meyerhold, rejecting tJ,le proscenium arch as too con I fining for his actors, removed the front curtain, footlights, and proscenium. Stage- ' hands changed properties and scenery in full view of audiences, and actors performed i f: on trapezes, slides, and ramps to arouse exhilarating feelings in both performers and i \,: audiences. ' p-ax Reinhardt explored vast acting areas, such as circus arenas to stage Oedipus /the Ki'}8 in 1910 in Berlin's Circus Schumann, which he thought of as a people's the· / atre-his "theatre of the five thousand." He dreamed of a theatre on the scale of clas· sica! Greek and Roman theatres to be used for spectacles and mass audiences. In 1920, he created his most famous spectacle (Everyman) in the square before the Salzburg ! :. I Cathedral. During the last fifty years, especially in the United States, many theatre directors and designers looked for new theatrical spaces in warehouses, garages, lofts, and
' abandoned churches. They reshaped all of the space available to .liudience and actor, bringing the actors into direct contact with the audiences, thereby making the audi ence a more essential part of the theatrical event. rJ This chapter discussesJour alternative approach~se of theatrical space in l ~.@_ern time~ the ~olish Laboratory Theatre, the TheAtre du Solei!, the Bread and Puppet Theatre, and the Free Southern Theater. ·
I,. i' . THE POLISH LABORATORY THEATRE . ;_' 1.',, :!-. Grotowski's uPoor" Theatre JL.: __ ; When Jerzy Grotowskl founded the Polish Laboratory Theatre in F:'~:':;: r,( • ' ' • • Opole in 1959, be set out to answer this question: What is the· : -' "{Gr,oto'!"fski] was, with _S~an/slovsky, Meyerhold, atre? Grotowskl first evolved a concept that he ca11ed "poor the· and 'sr~c:h.t, o~e of the Wert's _fo~r greot 20th atre. ~ For him, theatre's essentials were the actor and the aud.i· century the;atre theorl.st-practit/anen." ence in a bare space. He found that theatre could happen without costumes, scenery, makeup, stage lighting, and sound effects; all it needed was the actor and audience in communion in a special ,''; .. _.- place. Grotowski wrote:
60 PART ONE E. THEATRE'S SEEING PLACES DIRECTOR Jerzy Grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski ( 1933 -1999) was founder and director of the Polish laboratory I ' J Theatre, an experimental company located in Opole and then in Wroclaw (Breslau). ~ t;,:·Not a theatre in the usual sense, the co~p:ny became an inst!tute for researc~ into 9 the e-are-in- general. a.r~d the actor's art in particular, In addition, the laboratory also '"------'-·------~ .. ------·------'. undertook performances for audiences as well as 'instruction of actors, producers, stu- l dents (many of them foreigners), and people frorri other fields. The plays performed I were based on Polish and international classics. In the 1960s and 1970s, Grotowski's I ' productions of Stanislaw Wyspianski's AKropogs, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Calder6n's The Constant Prince attracted worldwide attention. His des est collaborators were actor Ryszard Cieslak and literary adviser Ludwik Flaszen. He wrote about his methods in Towards a Poor Theatre ( 1968)-a theatre that eliminates everything not truly required by the actor and the audience. 1 After 1970, Grotowski reorganized his company to explore human creativity out side the theatre and called this period Holiday. He intended to .lead participants back to elemental connections between themselves and the natural world by exposing them to basic myths, and the elements of fire, earth, air, and water. In 1975, the event called Holiday took place in a forest, where participants were encouraged to rediscover the roots of theatre and their true being. In 1982, at the University of California-Irvine, Grotowski began a third phase called ·"objective drama" to combi~( ;~;;;:C"em~~~(i~"&]with precise tools of actur training that i he had developed in e~r\ler y~:l~... i986, he established. a W_orkcenter (Centro di La voro) in Pontedera, Italy, where he began the last phase of his work; called "art as ve hicle," to" explore how theatre differentiates perfol-mance "truths" in many cultures. The (999-2000. season was declared th~ ·:Y~~; of Jer'z.y"Grotowski" In Wroclaw, Poland, where his Theatre Laboratory began-in 1965. Year-long festivities, exhibits, and . . symposia took place; i'.
I propose poverty in theatre. We have resigned from the stage-and-auditorium) Plant: for each production, a new space is designed for the actors and specta tors .... The essential concern is finding the proper spectator-actor relationship. 4
Within the whole space, Grotowski cleated what he called "holy theatre": perfor· ] t s · · ~hiGh !Jl.e actor, pr~ed by years of training I · experien~. GrotowSkfset abOut to engage I in · act, thus to engage both actor and audience in a deeper un- derst an d'tng of personal and social truths.
CHAPTER THREE r; ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAl. SPACES 61 Al The theatrical space at the be ginning (top) and end of the performance of Akropolis (1962) Note that at the begin ning of the performance, the wire struts above the audience are empty. At the end, the actors have disappeared, leaving the stovepipes hanging from the wire struts as gruesome reminders of the events in the concentration camps. 62 PART ONE ~} THEATRE'S SEEING PLACES "Dialogue betweeu two monuments," The metal >Y stovepipe and·hurnan legs with boots make a state 4. ment about the way human beings can be treated as objects. This Is one of many statements In the perfor w mance about the effects of inhumanity throughout ry. history, The actor Is Zbignlew Cynkutls. "'' f· ",. rs rs • prisoners; Jacob's bride is a stovepipe with a rag for a veil. Akropolis ends with a pro n cession around the box in the center of the room led by a Singer carrying the head ,.y less COI1JSe of the Savior. As Grotowski describes it: d The procession evokes the religious , :is of the Middle Ages, the flagellants, • the haunting beggars .... The pro. .; reaches the end of its peregrination. i The Singer lets out a pious yell, open~ a hole in the box, and crawls into it, drag ,_ I ging after him the corpse of the Savior. The inmates follow him one by one, s t singing fanatically.... When the last of the condemned men has disappeared, d I the lid of the box slams shut. The silence is very sudden; then after a while a calm, matter-of-fact voice is heard. It says simply, "They are gone, and the smoke rises in.spirals." The joyful delirium has found its fulfillment in the cre ' matorium. The end.s ·~' Grotowski's poor theatre returns us to the essentials of theatre: actor, audience, . space . ' A view nf the space converted into a monastery din ing hall for Grolowskl's production of Dr. Faustus (1963}, based on the Elizabethan text by Christopher Marlowe The spectators were guests at a banquet dur ing which Faustus entertained them with episodes from his life. One hour before his death, Faustus offered a last supper to his friends (the audience) seated at the refectorf tables. CHAPTER THREE l'i ALTERNATIVE THEATRiCAL SPACES 6] THE LIVING THEATRE The oldest of the collective groups in the United States began in 1948 in a basemen on New York City's Wooster Street. The zeal and talents of Julian Beck and Judith Ma !ina were directed toward productions that encouraged a nonviolent revolution t< ov~rhaul society and created j1 performance style to confront that society, namely, tht United States of America. Attention was fully paid to their work in 1958 with the production of Jack Gelber'! - ', __ . ! The Connection, a disturbing play about heroin addicts, produced in a converted spacE on Fourteenth Street in New York City. The audience shared the addicts' naturallstit I environment as spectators to the making of a documentary film about "real" addict! I and their lifestyle. The Brig in 1963 re-created the S!?nseless routine of a day in a Ma· I , I rine Corps prison .. "i Following an encounter in 1963 with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over a fail i ure to pay taxes, the company lost their space and went abroad, where they developec I I works in Rome, Berlin, and Paris. They performed in streets, prisons, even bars, pro :j voking audience riots and confrontations with civil authorities. The living Theatre re turned to the United States in 1968 with significant works of their own creation ad I vacating freedom from all restraints: Mysteries and Smaller Pieces, Frankenstein, an( I Paradise Now. The Br' A dazzlin0 act of rebellion against the political and theatrical establishments, T1u Brig, written by Kenneth Brown, who had served in the Marine Corps, opened OI May 15, 1963. As part of the World Wide General Strike for Peace organized by tlu Becks a week earlier, The Brig addressed civil disobedience. Directed by Judith Malina, who drew on interviews with marines, material frorr the Guidebook for Marines issued to recruits, and the dtsire to mold a genuine com munity among the company, The Brig was, first, an environment of intimidation and second, a plea for nonviolence. Kenneth Brown's script covers a single day (from reveille to bedtime) in a brig fo1 U.S. military offenders on Okinawa. The eleven prisoners are drawn from a cross sec Tlu! Brig The Uving Theatre's 1963 production of Kenneth Brown's play re-created the rou tine of a day in a marine prison camp. The audience sat outside the fence as observers. Julian Bec/z and Judith Malina: The Living Theatre I• •1 Julian Beck (1925-1985) and Judith Malina (b. 1926) on West End Avenue. The first performance of the liv were the foremost gurus of the sixties' Off Off Broad ing Theatre occurred in the Becks' apartment in I 951 way groups. Julian Beck's father was from Alsace, and his with four short plays by Paul Goodman, Gertrude Stein, mother was a flrst-geperation German American; he Bertolt Brecht, and Garda Lorca. These modest begin grew up on New York City's ·upper West Side. judith nings contained the abiding concerns oftheir future Malina was born In Kiel, Germany; her father, a rabbi, work anarchism, poetry, Asian-inspired theatre, didacti brought the fami!y to America in 192 9. The two artists cism (via Bertolt Brecht), improvisation, and experimen met in 1943 and married In 1948. tation with language. The Living Theatre came of age Beck began as a painter and writer, while Malina with productions of The Connection (1958) and The Brig studied theatre under Erwin Piscator at the New School, (1963). Dramatic Workshop. Finding that the Broadway theatre Asked to give a quick assessment of the work of the ~s dosed to them, they made an unsuccessful attempt Living Theatre, Julian Beck once said that "our aim was_ in 1948 to start a theatre In a basement on Wooster to increase conscious awareness, to stress the sac..rzd~ - Street and eventually relocated to their own living r~om ness of life, to break down wa\1s." 6 "' tion of society. The atmosphere was onepf isolation, intimidation,_,and brutality, by victims and tormentors. In Beck and Malina's view, The Brig aimed at destroying vio lence by representing it. The actor became a "sacrificial" presence in the_ demonstra tion of mindless evil where no freedoms of the most basic kind ex:i~ The production replicated the caged wire, the dormitory of bunk beds, and floor sectioned off by pa~ted white lines. A blackboard listed offenses committed by the /v Prisoners. Spectators sat before the barbed-wire cage as witnesses to the dehumaniz- CHAPTER THREE "' ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL SPACES 65 ing of the soldiers and as participants in soci ety's responsibility for permitting such abuse of human beings, The Living Theatre on Tour The Living Theatre toured the United States in the late sixties, arousing bitter controversy and debate over the nature of theatre and the role of art in society. In 1970, the company returned to Europe and split into four groups, or "celis.H The Becks' contingent went to Brazil for pur poses of develoPing new methods for perfor· mance, ones that were less didactic and more responsive to the needs of specific commu· nlties. In 1984, the company returned to the ' 1_·- ·united States and presented four works of "col· lective creation" in New York City, which critics found lacking in significant content. After Julian Beck's death in 1985, the future of the 1. LiVinr: Theatre ~assed into the hands of Judith MaJ:· ·. ho continues to produce upon occa- sion : without the same impact of the earlier company. _ --.. i €) ~ -- ) The significance of the Uving Theatre rests ' The Living Theatre Actors in one of many the~lrical rltes that com- lon its naturalistic environmental productions posed Paradise Now: The Revolution of Cultures (1968). The piece J, and later techniques that included alteririg texts Was one of the first to incorporate nudity. l to argue for anarchy and social change; nudity ~------.... Jand athleticism in performance; use of human voices and cacophonous sounds to assault the audiences' sensibilities; and confronta rtions with audiences with calls for_!~YEl~Il-_-.. ~"JllliailBeck once-Sa~~ opens perception and changes our vision. I think , without art we Would all remain blind to reality. We go to the theatre to study cur tselves. The theatre excites the imagination, and it also enters into the spirit.'' 7 THEATRE ou SOLEIL Ariane Mnouchl 66 PART ONE '-' THEATRE'S SEEING PLACES participation at all levels of decision making. Productions grow out of improvisations, discussions, and group study; all members share the various responsibilities of re· search, writing, interpretation, design, and construction in an effort to abolish the the· atrical hierarchy that reaches upward from the ticket takers to the director of the pro· duction. Nevertheless, TheAtre du Soleil is identified with its artistic director, Ariane Mnouchkine. I The company has challenged traditional modes of theatrical presentation in its at· ; tempts to create a populist theatre, using improvisation as well as techniques from h mime, commedia, Chinese opera, Japanese Noh and Kabuki, and Indian kathakali 1 dance-drama. Audiences move from platform to platform to keep up with the play's Tiu!atre du Soleil Asian-Inspired production of Shakespeare's Rich action or sit around the edge or even in the center of a large pit for many productions. cud II stased in a former munt Beginning with Productions in the late sixties, the company attracted consider tlons factory in Vincennes, able international attention and was acclaimed fo:j!s~Cfl_l~_v_i!~~~gin~-·-- France, In 1981. -~·- CHAPTER THREE 11 ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL SPACES 67 DIRECTOR 1• Ariane Mnouchkine Of the French directors who have come to prominence since 1965, Arlane •J Mnouchkine (b. 1939) is one of the most important. She founded Theatre du Solei\, ; a worl .,., 1972), treatments of the early years of the French Revolution that argued that the rev olution was more concerned with property than with social injustice. The Age of Gold (L'age d'or, In 1975) dealt with various aSpects of materia !ism; The Terribre but Unfinished ! History of Norodom 5ihonouk, King of Cambodia (in 1985) and The lndiode (l'indiode, in 1987), with modern political history. The group traveled with their Asian-inspired pro~ ductions of Shakespeare's Richard II; Henry IV, Port J; and Twelfth Night to the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival of Los Angeles, and in 1992 they returned to North America with the ten-hour, four-part cycle of Greek trag~dy called les Atrides. 1n 1998-1999, Suddenly, Nights of AwaKening (Et soudain, des nuits d'eveiiJ and Drums on the 'Tam- bourl sur Ia dlgue) were staged in Paris. Theatre du Solei! Is one of France's finest theatre companies, inspired by its direc tor Ariane Mnouchkine for forty years. ''Theatre is doubtless the most fragile of arts," she has said. "The theatre public is now really a very small group, but the theatre ~eeps reminding us of the possibility to collectively seek the histories of people and to tell 1 ·.' them. , .. The contradictions, the battles of power, and the split in ourselves will al :' ~·I ' ways exist. I think the theatre best tells us of the enemy ln o~:~rselves. Yes, theatre is a grain of sand in the works." 8 ' I''' I' ,. jl•' j .··i I' I Theatre du Solen's I 793 Thi~ view of the performance shows actors on raised platforms and scaffold~ with the audience seated In a center pit. techniques and its explosive• politicizing of dramatic materials. Its commitment to left- The kathakaU-inspired costumes wing political beliefs and to Creation of vibrant "~erformance texts" out of the whole and movements of the choros in Mnouchkine's L~ Atrides. cloth of French history resulted in 1789, then 1793, and The Age of Gold. In the 1980s, OreStes seeks safety from the en the company's kathakali- and Kabuki-inspired productions of Shakespeare's plays suing violence behind the walls blended Eastern and Western traditions. In the environmental space of the former mu of the arena. nitions factory, which directly engaged audiences, these performances dealt with the atre as revolution. historical data, contemporary social and political facts; improvised stage action and audience participation; and emphasized spectacle and ritual. Les Atrides As political fervor waned worldwide in the late 1970s, along with the winding down of the Vietnam War, many groups either went out of existence or, like Theatre du rSoleil, turned to other artistic ex ressions, which overshadowed any "environmental" • ~s~- o~~_!!~_~d social messal,es c_on_taine~~t1ielt.;orks: Theatre du f ell 5 As1an-mspired Shakespearean pro uctions and Les Atrides, tll.e four-part cycle of Greek tragedy-based on Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis and Aeschylus' three plays of l Th~resteia, ~,¥e ~r~_er:rt!glienged contemp_orary_~_o-~oi!~ 2!.!?-~a~i_c,_al presentation. .l ore recemJy_,__~chkine and her company have tur_ned their attention to j ~t-~~aditions. inl998, the-Company ~c"ie.lted sUddenly. Nights of Awakening t soudain_, dfS miifs-d'eveil), which took the form of a touring Tibetan acting troupe • "----; CHAPTER THREE ti: ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL SPACES 69 putting on a play; in midperformance the actors step out of the play to seek political ·asylum from the audience. As is now a familiar practice of The.itre du Soleil, the pro ( J duction grew out of improvisations (shaped into a text by author-critic Helene Cixous) J and performed with a mix of Tibetan dance, Buddhist ritual, commedia dell 'arte lazzi J (clowning), political discourse, and actors wandering freely among audiences, speak ', ing and passing out faxes as they,argued their need for political asylum. Drums on the \Dike (Tambours sur la digue) is an ancient marionette play adapted for the company fin a Buruaku performance style. THE BREAD AND PUPPET THEATRE : .1. I•' ' ~eter Schumann's Open-Air Performances '\ ' ;'' Peter Schumann founded the Bread and Puppet Theatre in New York City in 1961. The group made its home on a farm in Glover, Vermont. Schumann's group did not attempt to create an environment but performed in almost any setting: streets, fields, gravel pits, gyws, churches, and sometimes theatres. Developed from Biblical and legendary ('{~urces and using actors, stilt walkers, and larger-than-life-size puppets, Bread and ~ppet plays advocated the virtues of love, charity, and humility. The group took its name1rom two conStalitelemerrtsOttheir work: puppets and bread, Peter Schumann believed that "the theatre shoUld be as basic as bread." At the start of a Bread and Puppet performance, loaves of bread were passed among the spec tators. Each person bioke off a piece and handed the rest to the next person, who did the same. When everyone had tasted bread, in an act of social and spiritual com munion, the performance began. Thus, the audience participated in an instantly rec ognizable ritual: sharing the staff of life, a symbol of humanity's most basic ri.eed. Domestic Resurrection Circus The Nineteenth Annual Domestic Resurrection Circus was performed each August on a Vermont fann in a grassed-over gravel pit with sloping sides that was as large as a football field. Free to the 6,000-8,000 people who attended this harvest weekend, the ten-hour extravaganza featured gods, demons, angels, peasants, dragons, and birds, ' along with a melange of morris dancers, fire jugglers, rope walkers, and strolling jazz musicians. People enjoyed the com and potato roast and the sourdough rye bread, which Schumann prepared each morning for six weeks. The Circus began around four o'clock in the afternoon with a prayer for peacE spoken in eight languages. The twenty-foot effigies and head-sized masks Of th( ' monstrous red figure of Yama, the King of Hell; the N:3.ture God that resembled a Big foot dressed in cedar boughs; and a tall, careworn Madonna Godiace with a crypti1 smile and hair woven of milkweed and goldenrod were ceritral figures in the sto~ that swept aCross centuries. Toward the end, white birds with wingspans of fifteen fee (flown by three P.uppeteers holding long poles) traveled fast, making sounds o seagulls crying and finally bringing peace to the kingdoms of animals and humaru 70 PART ONE 1':! THE~TRE'S SEEING PLACES PUPPETEER Peter Schumann Peter Schumann (b. 1934 in Silesia) moved from Germany to the United States in 1961 and two years later founded the Bread and Puppet Theatre in New York City. Until Schumann was ten, his family lived in a village near Breslau, renamed Wroclaw at the end of the Second World War when this part of Germany was incorporated into Poland. In late 1944, the family fled, barely ahead of the Soviet army, and survived on his mother's baked rye sourdough bread until they reached Schleswig-Holstein. The twin themes of family and survival in Schumann's work stem from this period. In 1956, he met American Elka Scott in Munith; they married and immigrated to the United States in 1961, where their artiStic collaboration began with the creation and per· formances of street pageants, anti-Vietnam War parades, productions based on reli gious themes, and summer workshops with giant puppets. In 1970, Schumann was Invited to take up residency at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and "practice puppetry." Living in Glover, Vermont, Schumann assembled a ' small troupe of puppeteers, designers, musicians, and volunteers. Each August at har ' vest time, the troupe performed in a grassed-over gravel pit with actors walking on five or six-foot stilts, musicians in strolling jazz bands, rope walkers, and fire jugglers. Sour dough rye bread that Schumann baked himself was passed among audiences. Schumann's pageants have been about life and death, good and evil. His work with puppets reflected a traditionalism that harked back to Indian effigies, to Japanese Bun raku and Noh theatre, and to d".e masks of African and Alaskan shamans. Mistrusting the power of words, Schumann used puppets to simplify and caricatu.re the horror of modern living in a time of potential global annihilation. His aim was to bring the spiri ! tual into the lives of ordinary spectators. In a Bread and Puppet performance the stories were simple, the giant puppets riv eting, and the tempo majestically slow. Schumann's group was best known for his anti· war and nuclear disarmament pieces dating from 1965: Fire, The Gray Lady Cantata, The Stations of the Cross, and A Man Says Goodbye to His Mother. The Brud and F\Jf>pet Theatre performed The Some Soat: The Passion of Chico Mendes In an 0 ~n town space as part ,_,> of the 1990 "Eanh Day" Celebration. The masked lctors, the band and ' .e larger-than-life-slu '.-' _Puppets are tnldltlonat fea.turei ofa Bread and P!fpet production. Domestic Resurrecllnu Clreus The UGodface" from the DorMStil: Resurrection Circus in a field In northern Vermont. as the Moon on an ox-drawn wagon appeared. On the horizon the real moon rose above a pinewoods, opposite the las trays of a real sunset. The pattern of events rein forced the "death-and-resurrection" theme that Schumann repeated in all of his Bread and Puppet events. Of his unique work with puppets, Peter Schumann has said, "Puppet theatre, the employment of and dance of dolls, effigies, and puppets . , . is an anarchic art, sub versive and untamable by nature .. , an art which does not aspire to represent gov ernments or civilizations but prefers its own secret demeaning stature in society, rep resenting, more or less, the demons of that society and definitely not its institutions. "9 THE FREE SouTHERN THEATER The Free Southern Theater grew out of the civil rights movement to address issues of freedom, justice, equality, and voting rights in the South. In 1963, John O'Neal, Gilbert Moses, and Doris Derby-all staff members of the Student Nonviolent Coordi nating Committee (SNCC)-discussed ideas for a "freedom theatre" in the rural South. That year in Mississippi, they founded the Free Southern Theater (FST). the American South's first legitimate black liberation theatre to tour poor rural areas, give free per formances ("No tickets needed," a sign said}, and train black artists in workshops. They received the energetic support of another co-producer, Richard Schechner, di· rector and editor of The Drama Review, who was teaching at Tulane University in Ne" Orleans at the time and later started the controversial environmental PerformanCE Group, located in the Performing Garage in lower Manhattan .. The Free Southern Theater started as an experiment during the height of the civi rights movement and antiwar expression in the sixties. Its aim was to promote blacJ. theatre for the African American community. Gilbert Moses said, "We wanted free 72 PART ONE &'! THEATRE'S SEEING PLACES Cjilbert Moses III, John O'Neal, and Doris Derby COFOUNDERS OF THE fREE SOUTHERN THEATER about the need for a theatre for black artists and black Director and writer Gilbert Moses, born in Cleveland audiences. The idea developed into a touring company and educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, edited the to take theatre into the rural South as part of a larger Mississippi free Press In Jackson before tofounding the black theatre movement. Derby was more committed Free Southern Theater In 1963. John O'Neal grew up to sociopolitical ideals than to theatre and dropped out in a small town in Illinois and graduated from Southern of the project in 1964. Illinois University in Carbondale. Bronx-born Doris After seventeen years of producing free theatre Derby was a teacher aOd field secretary for SNCC's largely in rural areas and cities of the South, the Free adult literacy program at Tougaloo College outside Southern Theater failed for lack of funding, the absence jackson, Mississippi. of a creative home, and the collapse of an ideal based on The theatre was organized with a home base at "integrated" theatre that Included black and white / Tougal< -l'lllege but relocated the next year to New artists. Under pressure, the Free Southern Theate~- Or1e< ·,e time, the founders' conversations were evolved into an all-black company. ~ dam: for thought, and involvement, and the celebration of our own culture.... We -" wanted the theater to deal with black artists and the black audience. But its political -1 aims reflected the political aims of the Movement at that time: integration."10 -~ In White Americ~, 1963 The Free Southern Theater toured its first production, Martin Doberman's In White America, from Tougaloo, Mississippi, to New Orleans in 1964. That summer, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were bru tally murdered in Mississippi. Against this backdrop of violence, FST toured a play to black communities about a legacy of pain and intolerance. Dubennan's play was less a play than a dramatic reading of black history based on historical documents dating back to the slave trade and forward to the Freedom Rides and bus boycotts of 1957. The material was readily adaptable to performances on porches of rural farmhouses and in cotton fields, local churches, and community centers. Audiences of mostly black youths, many seeing a live play for the first time, sat in the afternoon sun on folding chairs, benches, and cots and on the ground in the back yard behind a small frame house in rural Mississippi to see In White America. The back porch became a stage; actors made entrances through the porch's screen door and around corners of the house. John O'Neal recalled that a pickup truck with a po liceman at the wheel and a large police dog standing ominously in the back drove by several times, trolling for trouble. The play, directed by Gilbert Moses, began with a musician and six actors {four men and two women) in the company, doul:lling as producers, directors, technicians, .and wardrobe person. The first tour took in thirteen Mississippi towns during three CHAPTER THREE f~ ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL SPACES 73 weeks. Audiences applauded the speeches of black Americans (Booker T. f Washington and W. E. B. DuBois), laughed in unexpected places, and joined~ spontaneously in singing with the cast. As actor-characters made their pleas for justice or denounced the white people's cruelty, elderly women and young men shouted "That's right!" 'i\men!" "You tell it!"11 With an orientation to~rd a populist theatre and "participatory democ racy," FST's leaders looked for material in established plays written for black and white actors and worked toward incorporating the audience's open desire to participate in the play's events. Traveling by car and van in the second sea. son, FST toured with productions -of the wildly popular Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis and the befuddling Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. As an extension of the civil rights movement, the company waxed and waned over the years as political ideology came-into conflict with aesthetic standards. Finally, after seventeen years, with its leadership and monetary re sources exhausted, the Free Southern Theater disbanded in 1980. I l TRANSITION • Many theatrical groups in recent decades set about to rethink, reshape, and The FreeS· ·_'·'-Theater re-create the theatrical experience for actors and audiences. Jerzy Grotowski worked performs -', 1 i.~ Al1l£rica, by in large rooms and forests, Ariane Mnouchkine in a fo~er munitions factory, Peter Martin Du~->uJan, in the rural Brook in an abandoned theatre and rock quarries, Peter Schumann in streets and South, 1964, fields, and the Free Southern Theater in the rural American South. Environmental or alternative theatre, as this type of nontraditional performance has been called since the 1960s, rejects conventional seating and arranges the audi ence as part of the playing space. Like the actors, spectators become part of what is seen and performed; they are both seeing and seen. In contrast, traditional theatre arranges the audience before a stage, where they see and hear at a distance. Throughout the ages, the theatre's space has influenced those who work within it: playwrights, actors. directors, and designers. These artists are the theatre's "image makers," for they create the world of the production as theatrical metaphor for audi ences to experience. The playwright, who creates the text, most often provides the blueprint for the production. THEATRE: A WAY OF SEEING ONLINE Use the Theatre: A Way of Seeing website at http://communication. wadsworth.com/ barranger6 for quick access to the electronic study resources that accompany this chapter, including links to the websites listed below, InfoTrac College Edition, and a digital glossary. When you get to the Theatre: A Way of Seeing home page, click on "Student Book Companion Site" in the Resource box, pick a chapter from the pull· down menu at the top of the page, and then select an option from the Chapter Re sources menu. 74 PART ONE [i THEATRE'S SEeiNG PLACES & Websites I I' The Thew~: A Way o(Seeing website includes maintained !inks for all the W!jbsites described below. Simply select 'Web links" from the Chapter Resources for Chap. ter 3, and click on the link that interests you. You'll be taken directly to the site • described. · Blue Man Group Polish Laboratory Theotr~ Multisensory theatre group combining theatre, per Stories about Jerzy Grotowski's ':YOrk told by hif cussi>"e music, art. science, and vaudeville. contemporaries after his death. The Centre for Study ofjerzy Grotowskl~ Thedtre du Sofeil. Pan's. France: · Work ond for Cultural and Theatrical Home page for Theatre du Solei!, in French. To Research translate to English, search on· Google with the Access to information about all things Grotowski, term "theatre du solei!." On the results page, find plus links to other interesting theatre sites (click on thf link to the home page, and click on the accom· the Engiish version). panying link "Translate this page." Peter Schumann's Bread and r l:>et Theatre The Legacy of the Free Southern Theater Information about past and pres ·1d and Pup- In New Orleans pet Theatre events, as wei! as a .1dar of future Interesting history of the Free Southern Theater . events . via interviews with Karen-Kaia Livers and Chakula l Cha Jua, members of the New Orleans theatre community. lnfcTr<>.c College Edition .•. -....' L Available rwenty-four hours a day, seven days a the pass code that was included with your new copy !,,;. week, lnfoTrac College Edition is an easy-to-use of this text to access lnfoTrac College Edition free ' dnline database of reliable full-length articles (rom for four months at httpf/w-ww.infotrac·college thousands of top academic journals and popular pe· .com. Then use the following search terms to as· riodicals. You can use this valuable tool to learn sist you in exploring the topics introduced in this chapter: CHAPTER THREE ·~ ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL SPACES 75 ----·- ~--·-····-- ·~-;-r--•'r-.