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

experience the performance event with truly open minds. On the other hand, the emphasison spectacle will disrupt conventional reliance on spoken or written language. Instead,audience members will be forced to use all their senses to fully experience theperformance.Spectacle is central to Artaud’s vision, because it draws upon the energy createdby crowds of people. Artaud imagines that mass spectacle will “seek in the agitation oftremendous masses, convulsed and hurled against each other, a little of that poetry offestivals and crowds when, all too rarely nowadays, the people pour out into the streets”(85). Hoffman, clearly also a fan of spectacle, uses this same quotation in Revolution forthe Hell of It (101). Yet whereas Artaud wants to capture the “poetry of festivals andcrowds” in his theatre, the Yippies wanted to create festivals and crowds as part of theirtheatrics. Artaud’s imagined Theater of Cruelty performances surrounded the audience,but are still theatrical experiences inside dedicated performance spaces. The Yippies, onthe other hand, used public space for theatrical experiences: they went to the Pentagon totry to levitate it; they flooded Grand Central Station with equinox revelers; theynominated Pigasus at the Civic Center plaza. Artaud pictured the Theater of Cruelty as ameans to dig deep underneath the veneer of civilization to expose its rottenness; theYippies more generally wanted to create disruption and debate. As Rubin proclaimed in aJanuary, 1968, speech, “I support everything which puts people in motion, which createsdisruption and controversy, which creates chaos and rebirth” (“Walrus” 4). Their visionwas broader and more public than Artaud’s, who was addressing a perceived artistic185