Overview

Explores the link between cultural expression and political protest; During the 1960s, the SNCC Freedom Singers, The Living Theatre, the Diggers, the Art Workers Coalition, and the Guerrilla Art Action Group fused art and politics by staging unexpected and uninvited performances in public spaces. Through their activism and the response it provoked, art, theater, and politics began to converge and assume a new visibility in everyday life. While their specific political visions varied, these groups shared the impulse to stage performances and actions publicly - in the streets - eschewing museums, theaters, and other conventional halls of culture. Bradford D. Martin offers detailed portraits of each of these groups and examines why they embraced public performance as a vehicle to express and advance their politics. At a time when the New Left and the counterculture were on the rise, these artists reflected the decade's political and cultural radicalism and helped to define a new aesthetic. Civil rights activists mobilized singing in the struggle for desegregation, introducing a vibrant musical form into the public space. The Living Theatre culminated an arduous quest to mesh artisti

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9781558494497

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A sophisticated, well-researched, and very well-written account of four important groups of politically inspired public performers. Martin successfully argues that the line between the counter-culture and political radicals was far from distinct. - David Farber, author of The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s; Interdisciplinary scholars and teachers of courses on the 1960s will find Martin's research to be thorough and his insights thoughtful. English and theater departments will also find it useful. The writing is clear and accessible to specialists and the intelligent general reader alike. - Barbara Tischier, editor of Sights on the Sixties

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