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

nationwide “Stop the Draft Week,” which included the March on the Pentagon, frustratedstudent activists vowed to increase militant tactics in a desperate bid to end the draft.Yet despite a violent summer of race riots in urban centers across the nation, andthe increase of incidents of civil disobedience in anti-war protests, Broadway in 1967 and1968 did not take up the most current and pressing issues of the time. Instead, Broadwayturned inwards to investigate the savage inner world of family dynamics, as in Pinter'sThe Homecoming, or to examine the confusion and helplessness of individuals caught upin world-changing events they do not understand, as in Stoppard's Rosencrantz andGuildenstern are Dead. Critic Otis L. Guernsey, Jr. wrote that in a year when “the city,the state, the nation, and the world were in an acute phase of sociological and politicaldistress, dramatists were peering almost myopically at the intimate stresses of humanpsyche” in the 1967-68 Broadway season (67-68 3). Current issues were deemed toorisky subject matter by Broadway producers spending up to $250,000 for a newproduction. 47Theatrical investigations of current issues were more likely to appear on thestages of Off-Broadway theatres, where experimentation was encouraged. Nudity,profanity, and taboo subject matter flourished on the Off-Broadway stage, as did topicalpolitical discussions. In fact the smash hit musical Hair, which followed a tribe of hippiesdealing with issues of draft resistance and included a nude scene, first appeared Off-Broadway before its commercial success resulted in a Broadway debut. 48 Off-Broadway,47 In contrast, Off-Broadway productions usually cost between $12,000 and $40,000 to mount (DonaldFarber 60).48 Hair debuted as a production of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theatre, directed byJoseph Papp at the Florence Sutro Anspacher Theater, with an eight-week run beginning 17 October, 1967.114