schechner_the street is the stage.pdf - University of Georgia Libraries

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THE FUTURE OF RITUAL
taneous" interviews are setups. The material is then laundered by various
interpretations and editings - "spin controls" (on all sides): rebel and
government spokespersons, TV commentators, academic experts.
Participants and viewers alike are told what's going on, how to relate to it,
and what the future holds. The ultimate layers are hidden from public view,
taking place in editing rooms and government or corporate headquarters.
This editing process ensures that what's broadcast conforms to the policies
of whoever owns/controls the TV apparatus. TV news gives the impression
of- a performance of- "multivocality." But, just as aesthetic dramas project
many voices (deployed as characters) originating from a single voice, the
playwright's, so TV works in the opposite direction toward an identical end,
knitting together many voices into a unitary broadcast fabric. The finished
TV broadcast differs according to which culture's channels a person tunes
into. Of course, some direct theatre doesn't need all this interpreting. Those
with low impact on global politics, such as Gasparilla, Mardi Gras, Spring
Break, and Ramlila remain more or less localized within their own parochial
traditions.
Notes
I. Vice-President Agnew uttered these words in a speech before the Young
Presidents Organization in Honolulu. In 1973 he was forced to resign as vicepresident
because of corruption and bribe-taking while holding office in
Maryland where in the 1960s he was Baltimore County executive and governor.
His Honolulu speech is quoted in Baxandall 1969:52.
2. Bristol is echoing ideas first enunciated early in the twentieth century by Arnold
Van Gennep 1908 and Emile Durkheim 1915. See also Victor Turner 1967, 1969,
1974, 1977, 1982, and 1983 for his emendations to Van Gennep and Durkheim as
well as his own theories regarding liminality, the ritual process, and
antistructure.
3. See Chapter 7 of this book for a discussion of the relation between Girard's ideas
and theatre.
4. See Turner 1977, 1982, and 1990 for distinctions between the liminal and the
liminoid.
5. See Schechner 1989a and 1991.
6. The Free Speech Movement (FSM) emerged in 1964 on the Berkeley campus of
the University of California. It was a radical political movement, a carnivalesque
display, an alternative lifestyle, and an attack on white middle-class values. The
actions of the FSM served as a model for any number of student rebellions
during the 1960s and early 1970s. An insider's account is given in Jerry Rubin's
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THESTREETISTHESTAGE
Do It! (1970). Rubin begins one of his short essays, "Revolution is theatre-inthe-streets"
(132--43), this way: "You are the stage. You are the actor. Everything
is for real. There is no audience." Abbie Hoffman understood very well the
potential of the media linked to mass demonstrations as operators of radical
action.
7. For a more detailed exposition of Hoffman's views see his: Revolution for the
Hell of It (1968), Woodstock Nation (1969a), and Steal This Book (1971), as well
as his testimony as one of the "Chicago 7" in The Tales of Hoffman (1970),
edited by Levine et a/.
8. The term "guerrilla theatre," adapted from "guerrilla warfare" (especially the
styles practiced by Che Guevara and the Vietcong), was first enunciated in print
by R. G. Davis (1966), who said he got the term from San Francisco Mime
Troupe member and playwright, Peter Berg. Davis, elaborating on Brecht's
ideas, said the theatre must "teach, direct toward change, be an example of
change" (1966: 131 ). He suggested that universities would be good home bases
for guerrilla theatre; and that techniques drawn from commedia dell'arte were
well suited to the hit-and-run style of guerrilla theatre. Over time, guerrilla
theatre came to mean short, political theatre pieces happening suddenly in public
spaces that often were felt to be "enemy territory." For more on guerrilla theatre,
including scenarios and scripts, see Schechner 1969, Baxandall 1969, Lesnick
1973, and Weisman 1973.
9. "Yippie" is from the acronym for Youth International Party (YIP) founded by
Rubin, Hoffman, and others. YIP never was intended as a "serious" political
party but as a gadfly. Yippie is taken from "Hippie," what the "flower children"
of the 1960s, inhabitants of the Haight- Ashbury section of San Francisco, were
called or called themselves. Hippie was soon applied to many of the "turn on,
tune in, and drop out" generation of American youth. Hippie is a diminutive of
"hip," or "hep," a word from the world of jazz (or crime) first used in the 1910s
by African Americans but adopted/adapted by the Bear Generation writers of
the 1950s and meaning someone "in the know." All these terms connote alternative
lifestyles. The 1980s adaptation, "yuppie" - a "young upwardly mobile
person"- is a parody of the earlier terms, signaling the very opposite in social
status.
10. The trial began with the government charging eight persons with "crossing state
lines with intent to incite riot" and once in Chicago with rioting. The eight were
David T. Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin,
Lee Wiener, John Froines, and Bobby Seale. Seale, bound and gagged during part
of the trial, was se,•ered from the others and tried later. The jury acquitted two
defendants on all charges and all defendants on the conspiracy charge. All,
including the defense lawyers, were given heavy sentences for contempt of court.
I believe that all the penalties were set aside on appeal. The behavior of Judge
Julius J. Hoffman was severely criticized as strongly biased against the defen-
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