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

efforts to bring performances to the people. Davis offers specific advice to guerrillatheatre companies, such as “go where the people are” to find an audience, and attracttheir attention with warm-ups, parades, or the singing of familiar songs (134). He alsowarns about the content being “too immediate,” like a contemporary news story that willsoon be forgotten when the media attaches its attention to the next thing (131). Instead,he advises the use of comic stereotypes and stock characters, vaudeville forms, and rockn’ roll, all appealing to and easily accessible for a broad audience (131-134). In anothermanifesto, published February, 1968, by the Liberation News Service, Davis citesMcLuhan as he argues that “Media is part of the message . . . location is the platform orthe sponge for your program” (“Guerrilla Theatre: The Life Style” 30). Location is keyfor guerrilla theatre: the performers must go to the people they want to reach, not staycooped up and distant in theatre buildings. Davis paints a picture of performerscommitted to change, using traditional and folk performance techniques in public spacesto entertain and enlighten the public about social and economic issues.The issue of location was important for the Yippies, and Rubin in particular. InDo It! he remembers a Berkeley performance by the Living Theatre, whom he calls “afar-out guerrilla theater group [sic]” (133). 65 Describing a production that sounds like theLiving Theatre’s Paradise Now, in which the performers encourage the audience tosmoke marijuana, get naked, and demand social revolution, Rubin remembers withsadness that “the cast stopped at the front door” (133). In 1968’s Paradise Now, the65 The Living Theatre toured the United States from September, 1968, to March, 1969, performing arepertoire of Paradise Now, Antigone, Frankenstein and Mysteries (Biner 219). Although he uses theexample of the Living Theatre to help explain his philosophy of revolutionary theatre in a pre-Chicagocontext in Do It!, Rubin would not have seen their one of their performances until after the Chicagodemonstrations.167