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

on 5 th Avenue. 53 With some dressed up as Santa Claus, others in their standard hippieuniform, and more still waving signs and chanting slogans, the demonstrators marchedalong 5 th Avenue shouting things like “Merry Christmas,” “Peace in Vietnam,” and “Hoho ho, we won’t go.” The group then proceeded to Times Square, where they releaseddoves from their shopping bags (“Great” 10). The “Mill-In” was reported in thealternative media as a Happening. Living so close to the arts community in New York,talking with theatre practitioners like Schechner about theatrical protest, and readingabout activist Happenings in the underground media—all this would have familiarizedthe Yippies with different manifestations of the Happening. It is likely that their Yip-Inwas a response to contemporaneous activities in downtown New York.The idea of putting on a Happening in Grand Central Terminal was not even anoriginal Yippie concept. The station had been used as a Happening site several timespreviously. Kaprow himself set his 1965 Happening titled Calling there. Calling involvedparticipants lingering on street corners, waiting for a car to arrive and someone to calltheir name. Once inside the car, they were wrapped in aluminum foil and left alone in theparked car. After that, they were removed from the foil, tied into a laundry bag, dumpedat a public garage for some time, picked up again, and this time taken to the informationbooth in the station’s central concourse. There the performers worked themselves loosefrom their wrappings to end the Happening. Also, on 19 December, 1967, just threemonths before the Yip-In, peace demonstrators performed a Happening in the terminal53 Naming the action the “Mill-In” recalled other pacifist demonstrations, like the Vietnam “teach-ins” oncollege campuses that educated students and encouraged public debate about the war, and the peaceful“Human Be-In” in San Francisco in January, 1967.126