Society

The Performance Group came about in a rocky time politically for the United States, and its works existed in dialogue with current events and political movements. As argued by Christina Larocco in “‘Participatory Drama’: The New Left, the Vietnam War, and the Emergence of Performance Studies,” Schechner was inspired in his work by the actions of protest groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, and in turn influenced the actions of protestors. As a drama professor at Tulane University, Schechner “spent the 1960s trying to figure out how to make performance more closely resemble life,” and found the protests around civil rights and the Vietnam War “instructive first because they did not follow a conventional narrative structure but also because they comprised a series of confrontations that produced no definite resolutions” (Larocco 78). Beginning his work in performance studies, Schechner was interested in this real-life theatrical performance of conflict between people, and later looked to recreate it in work that similarly called an audience to action. As Larocco argues, TPG’s adaptation of The Bacchae, Dionysus in 69, was intended “to be a political parable of late 1960s strife, a waring against the twin temptations of authoritarianism and self-indulgent liberation,” arguing that “blindly following charismatic leaders, no matter what they promised, would lead to destruction.” As described by Larocco, the production blurred the lines between the story and present day through “clear allusions to modern-day figures, events, and issues,” and also called for radical audience participation that mirrored the goals of Students for a Democratic Society (81). The show’s immersive environment without any formal seating, and repeated inclusion of audiences in the action onstage, along with nudity and explicit content and clear critiques of currnet politics, lead to a lot of critiques from conservatives in both the theater world and the political one. However, it had a lot of fans on the left, including NYU student and radical activist Robert Kirkman, who wrote a glowing review of Dionysus in 69 in a leftist New York City newspaper, writing “this is participatory drama; those who come are just as important as the actors” (Kirkman in Larocco 78). Kirkman later took part in a radical, performative demonstration against South Vietnam’s permanent observer to the United Nations who was giving a speech at NYU, and was expelled (74). As Larocco argues, The Performance Group’s works exist in a dialogue with the actions of activists in their moment, all these groups exploring how to make an audience engage with a mission, not just sit idly in assigned seats and watch things play out from a place of safety.