Radical Street Performance

An International Anthology

Jan Cohen-Cruz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136189999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Radical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the fascinating array of writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world.
More than thirty essays explore the myriad forms this most public of performances can take:
* agit-prop
* invisible theatre
* demonstrations and rallies
* direct action
* puppetry
* parades and pageants
* performance art
* guerrilla theatre
* circuses
These essays look at performaces in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing.
Radical Street Performance is an inspiring testimony to this international performance phenomenon, and an invaluable record of a form of theatre which continues to flourish in a televisual age.

Chapter 1

Peter Handke

TH EATER-IN-TH E-STREET AND
TH EATER-IN-TH EATERS

Translated by Nicholas Hern

WHETHER OR NOT READERS AGREE with Handke's conclusions, his manifesto-like essay vividly sets up two of the major questions of this collection: Is theatre in the street intrinsically different from theatre in theatre buildings? And, how does radical street theatre performed by non-actors inform that which is performed by professional actors? Writing in the 1960s, Handke captures the highly polarized spirit of that time in the US and Europe when street theatre burst upon the scene and many of us practitioners, though inspired by Brecht, sought a more direct form of theatrical activism.

Brecht is a writer who has given me cause for thought. The processes by which reality can operate, processes which had hitherto unfolded smoothly before one, were rearranged by Brecht into a system of thinking in terms of contradictions. He thereby made it possible for those processes by which reality operates, which previously one had often seen as operating smoothly, to be conclusively contradicted by means of the Brechtian system of contradictions. And finally the state of the world, which had hitherto been taken as intrinsic and natural, was seen to be manufactured — and precisely therefore manufacturable and alterable. Not natural, not non-historical, but artificial, capable of alteration, possible of alteration, and under certain circumstances needful of alteration. Brecht has helped to educate me.

The central contention of the forces of reaction and conservatism about those sections of the population who exist in an untenable situation, namely that these people ‘wouldn't want it any other way, ’ has been shown up by Brecht in his antithetical plays as enormous and vile stupidity. People whose will is dragooned by social conditions into leaving those social conditions as they have always been, and who are therefore actually unable to will any change — these people ‘naturally ’ don't want it any other way. It's natural that they don't want it any other way! No, it's artificial that they don't want it any other way. The conditions in which these people live are manufactured as a precaution precisely so that they remain unaware of them, and not only are they unable to will any change, they are unable to will anything at all.

Brecht made plays out of these contradictions — plays: in this respect Brecht's only successors are the Berliner Kommune led by Fritz Teufel. They are a Berliner Ensemble whose effectiveness is in marked contrast with that of the legitimate Berliner Ensemble. The legitimate Ensemble sets up its contradictions only so as to show their possible resolution at the end, and it points out contradictions which no longer exist (at least not in that specific social form) and which cannot therefore lead to any conflict. The members of the Kommune, however, have thought afresh; they have shifted their antithetical performances away from accepted antithetical arenas (theatre- buildings) to (still) unaccepted antithetical arenas, and have avoided furnishing (extending) the ends of their performances with manufactured, ready-made recipes for the new order, because the performances themselves, the form which the performance takes, has already offered a recipe for the new order. As in football when people ‘act out ’ the possible shots at goal, so Brecht ‘acted out ’ alternatives in his parables, but secure in what was sociologically the wrong arena with what were sociologically the wrong means, infinitely removed from the reality which he wished to change, and using the hierarchical system of the theatre in order hierarchically to destroy other hierarchical systems. Those at peace with the world he left in peace, granting countless thousands a pleasant hour or two.

He did, it's true, change the attitude of actors, but he did not change the attitude of audiences; and it is historically untrue to say that the actors ’ attitude even indirectly changed the audiences ’ attitude. Despite his revolutionary intent, Brecht was so very hypnotized by and biased towards the traditional idea of theatre that his revolutionary intent always kept within the bounds of taste, in that he thought it tasteful that the spectators, since they did remain spectators, should (be allowed to) enjoy themselves unlit. To the same end, his last wish for each play was that it should be ‘entertaining. ’ Other people would possibly characterize this attitude as ‘intellectual cunning': it would seem to me, however, to be the cunning of a thoroughly selfish intellect.

Add to this that Brecht is not content with the mere arrangement of contradictions: in the end a proposed solution, a proposed resolution comesinto play — a future on Marxist lines. I say, comes into play, the spectator, who has been made to feel insecure by the play, is now to be reassured because, in the course of the play, a possible solution on Marxist lines is specified or at least suggested to him. What upsets me is not that it is a Marxist solution which is specified, but that it is specified as a solution in a play. I myself would support Marxism every time as the only possible solution to our governing problems — ‘governing ’ in every sense — but not its proclamation in a play, in the theatre. That is just as false and untrue as chanting slogans for the freedom of Vietnam when this chanting takes place in the theatre; or when, as in Oberhausen recently, ‘genuine ’ coal-miners appeared in the theatre and struck up a protest song. The theatre's sphere of relevance is determined by the extent to which everything that is serious, important, unequivocal, conclusive outside the theatre becomes play; and therefore unequivocation, commitment and so on become irretrievably played out in the theatre precisely because of the fatal limitations of the scope of the performance and of its relevance. When will people finally realize this? When will people finally recognize that seriousness of purpose in places meant for play is deceitful and nauseously false? This is not a question of aesthetics but a question of truth; therefore it is a question of aesthetics. This, then, is what riles me about Brechtian methods: the unambiguousness and the lack of contradiction into which everything dissolves at the end (even though Brecht pretends that all the contradictions remain open) appears, when it happens in the theatre, purely as a matter of form, a play. Every kind of message, or shall we say more simply: every suggested solution to those contradictions which have just been demonstrated becomes formalized on the playing area of the stage. Slogan chanting which aims to be effective in the theatre and not in the streets is modish and kitsch. The theatre, as a social institution, seems to me useless as a way of changing social institutions. The theatre formalizes every movement, every insignificant detail, every word, every silence; it is no good at all when it comes to suggesting solutions, at most it is good for playing with contradictions.

Committed theatre these days doesn't happen in theatres (those falsifying domains of art where every word and movement is emptied of significance) but in lecture-halls, for instance, when a professor's microphone is taken away, and professors blink through burst-open doors, when leaflets flutter down on to the congregation from the galleries, and revolutionaries take their small children with them to the lectern, when the Kommune theatricalize real life by ‘terrorising ’ it and quite rightly make fun of it, not only making fun of it but, in the reaction provoked, making it recognizable in all its inherent dangerousness, in its lack of awareness, its false nature, its false idyllicism, and in its terror. In this way, theatre is becoming directly effective. There is now Street Theatre, Lecture-hall Theatre, Church Theatre (more effective than 1,000 Masses), Department Store Theatre, etc.: the only one that doesn't exist anymore is Theatre Theatre — at least not as a means of immediately changing prevailing conditions: it is itself a prevailing condition. What it could be good for (and has previously been good for) is an area of play for the creation of the spectator's innermost, hitherto undiscovered areas of play, as a means by which the individual's awareness becomes not broader but more precise, as a means of becoming sensitive, of becoming susceptible, of reacting, as a means of coming into the world.

The theatre is not then portraying the world: the world is found to be a copy of the theatre. I know that this is a speculative approach; but I would not accept that the alternative to speculation is action. Admittedly, I do have doubts as to whether the impetus to change conditions in the Marxist sense (which was also mine) can as yet be said to result from a more precise awareness on the part of the spectator or listener, although I hope so; that is, I doubt it the more I hope so. The theatre in the theatre can create only hypotheses, proto-theses of new modes of thought; as a play, it cannot directly and unequivocally demonstrate the thesis itself, the new mode of thought which points to the solution. Brecht of course absorbs the thesis, the solution into the play and deprives it of its force and reality. One might say that the Berliner Kommune, however, who have certainly been influenced by the theatre but certainly not by Brecht (although they may venerate him for all I know) perform their thesis, their argument right in the middle of reality. It is to be hoped they will go on performing until reality too becomes one single performance area. That would be fine.

PART ONE

AGIT-PROP

Introduction

AGIT-PROP IS A MILITANT FORM of art intended to emotionally and ideologically mobilize its audience to take particular action vis-a-vis an urgent social situation. As other commentators have also noted (Stourac and McCreery 1986; Kershaw 1992), the aesthetic elements of agit-prop performance reflect the public streets and squares for which the form was designed: portable sets, visually clear characterizations, emblematic costumes and props, choral speaking, traditional music and character types familiar to the broad range of spectators that may congregate, and ideological resonance with the public spaces/ buildings where they are presented.

The essays in this section provide both historical models and subsequent adaptations of the form. In the early twentieth century, agit-prop was a left- wing project looking to communism for answers and addressing the working class. This is exemplified in the first two essays of the section, set in post- revolutionary Russia and pre-revolutionary China respectively. Although drawing on a range of theatrical genres, the quintessential agit-prop piece was short in length and broad in concept, sharpening class differences and simplifying class warfare into a battle between an idealistic worker protagonist and a top-hatted, cigar-smoking capitalist antagonist.

Conceptualizing agit-prop in Marxist terms became increasingly problematic, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent dismantling of the eastern bloc. Baz Kershaw contrasts clearly divided societies like Russia, Germany and Britain of the 1920s and 1930s with Britain in the 1960s and 1970s:

[I]n conditions of cultural pluralism produced by political consensus, relative affluence and the ameliorating force of the mass media, the agit prop form becomes problematic .. . partly because the chief oppositional formations - the counter-cultures - are not at all programmatic in their ideologies, making any kind of didacticism difficult. And it becomes doubly problematic because in a pluralistic society the ‘enemy ’ to be attacked is not easy to identify.

(Kershaw 1992: 80)

Notwithstanding, as other essays in this section illustrate, agit-prop is possible in ‘culturally pluralistic ’ societies, but with these caveats: 1. as social contexts become more complex, agit-prop may serve an educational function around a specific issue, not necessarily advocating general revolution; 2. the actors must believe that they know a solution to a compelling social problem and be prepared to take the same steps that they are urging upon audiences. Augusto Boal, who has brought an arsenal of activist, dialogic techniques to post-World War II political theatre through his ‘theatre of the oppressed/ tells of an experience that supports this second point. Performing for peasants in rural Brazil, Boal's middle-class actors ended an agit-prop play by lifting their prop rifles over their heads and calling for revolution. The peasant leader invited them all to eat together and then take up arms against the local landowner. Boal was ashamed; he and his actors were not prepared to fight but were telling other people to do so. Hence Boal developed theatrical forms through which oppressed people may devise their own solutions to social problems. But he still advocates use of agit-prop when solutions are evident for all concerned (Cohen-Cruz 1992).

References

Cohen-Cruz, Jan (1992) Unpublished interview with Augusto Boal, New York.

Kershaw, Baz (1992) The Politics of Performance, London: Routledge.

Stourac, Richard and Kathleen McCreery (1986) Theatre as a Weapon: Workers ’ Theatre in the Soviet Union, Germany and Britain; 1917-1934, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter 2

Introduction by Vladimir Tolstoy
Documents edited by Vladimir Tolstoy,
Irina Bibikova and Catherine Cooke

from STREET ART OF THE
REVOLUTION

AGIT-PROP CRYSTALLIZED IN RUSSIA IN the years following the 1917 Revolution, with its clear sense of class differences and straightforward ideology. Add characteristics like the masses as hero, the use of architecture/urban space to reinforce political ideology, and the importance of mass participation beyond spectatorship, and one understands why the events that Tolstoy introduces have served practitioners the world over as a touchstone for agit-prop.

From the Introduction: Art Born of the
October Revolution

The October Revolution which took place in Russia in 1917 transformed the face of the contemporary world. Nationally and internationally, it also had a decisive influence on the fate of art.

Within Russia itself, the Revolution changed the ideas and content of art, its forms and methods, and above all changed the audience to which it was addressed. From that time onwards, Soviet art became actively involved in the struggle for national transformation. After the 1917 Revolution, the prophetic words uttered by Lenin at the time of the first Russian revolution in 1905 began to come true. Under socialism, Lenin had insisted, art would no longer serve the elite of society, that ‘upper ten thousand suffering from boredom and obesity; it will rather serve the m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustration
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Jan Cohen-Cruz
• 1 Peter Handke, Germany
• Part One
• Introduction
• 2 Vladimir Tolstoy, Russia
• 3 Edgar Snow, China
• 4 Safdar Hashmi, India
• 5 Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, US
• 6 Alisa Solomon, US
• 7 Dubravka Knezevic, Belgrade
• Part Two
• Introduction
• 8 Steven Durland, International
• 9 Diana Taylor, Argentina
• 10 Marguerite Waller, Mexico/US Border
• 11 Jan Cohen-Cruz, US
• 12 Dan Sullivan, US
• 13 Sudipto Chatterjee, India
• 14 Hollis Giammatteo, US
• Part Three
• Introduction
• 15 Augusto Boal, Brazil
• 16 Adrian Piper, US
• 17 Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, US
• 18 Nelly Richard, Chile
• 19 Cindy Rosenthal, US
• 20 Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk, England
• Part Four
• Introduction
• 21 David Welch, Germany
• 22 Jean-Jacques Lebel, France
• 23 Eugenio Barba, Denmark/Italy
• 24 Abbie Hoffman, US
• 25 Richard Schechner, China
• 26 Baz Kershaw, England
• Part Five
• Introduction
• 27 Dwight Conquergood, Thailand
• 28 L. Dale Byam, Africa
• 29 NgugT wa Thiong'o, Kenya
• 30 Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, Mexico/US
• 31 Joi Barrios, Philippines
• 32 Mark Sussman, US
• 33 John Bell, US
• 34 Jan Cohen-Cruz, South Africa
• Index