Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

I also argue that blurring of life and art boundaries at the Yip-In illustrates theNew York Yippie community’s everyday life performance. Drawing inspiration fromAbbie Hoffman and Rubin’s own claims in Soon to be a Motion Picture and Do It!Scenarios of the Revolution that their everyday experience was inherently theatrical,using examples from sociological explorations of the hippie phenomenon, and relying onErving Goffman’s theory of performance from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,I hope to demonstrate how the Yippie counterculture that thrived in New York’s EastVillage in the late 1960s was performative. I argue that with this lived theatricality theYippies embodied their radical philosophies.The Grand Central Station Yip-In performance demonstrates how the Yippiesused the avant-garde art techniques of Happenings and everyday life performance to bothpublicize the Yippie movement and persuade their local countercultural community intodirect action. Yet the audience freedom that came with the participatory performance notonly led to a joyous celebration in the terminal, but also to vandalism of the informationbooth clock and terminal walls. In the end, the Yip-In resulted in arrests, violent rioting,and physical injury to several Yippies. The Yip-In thus serves as a reminder of thepotential dangers inherent in the Yippies’ participatory performance form, and theunpredictable nature of an open-ended performance scenario that encourages bothaudience participation and cultural revolution.It’s a spring mating service celebrating the equinox, a back-scratching party,a roller-skating rink, a theatre . . .101