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-gertrude- stein.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. Print- outs 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: Create a 10-20 minute performance inspired by The Open Theatre. 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 hand- out 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. April 11: Create a performance based on his work. 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.