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

organizational strategies of the anti-war movement, and the countercultural values of thehippies. They modified this performance form, which they termed “revolutionary actiontheater,”with performance theories drawn from New York’s avant-garde art world, theconcept of guerrilla theatre outlined by R. G. Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe,and the notion of Theater of Cruelty created by Antonin Artaud. Using performancetheory and cultural history as primary methodologies, this project traces the Yippies’adoption of revolutionary action-theater with three examples: the 1967 “March on thePentagon” where future Yippie leaders performed an exorcism ritual at the Pentagon; the1968 “Grand Central Station Yip-In” event that advertised for the Yippie movement; andthe 1968 “Festival of Life” at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago where theYippies nominated a pig as presidential candidate. The final chapter on the recentphenomenon of flash mobs argues that the Yippies’ legacy lives on in this participatorystreet performance form, and suggests that revolutionary action-theater can still serve as amodel for political action.vii