Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1967 - 41

ing themselves to the art. They were not merely there to be entertained.
This idea of a different type of audience that can be catered to, where
one does not go just to be there and to watch in the sense of being
entertained, but to be part of the thing in the sense of bringing oneself
to it, is a really subtle difference of today. But it is an important difference to the theatre, and there is a place for it inside the theatre as
well as outside.

KLUVER: All of it. No critic as yet has tried to understand what was going on. When you get contributions from people, like engineers who
can provide tools of some power or range, to a situation where an artist
also operates on a creative level, there is the possibility of an exciting
outcome. When we did Nine Evenings, we really tried to think of it as
theatre: nice work, people come together, take money for the ticket,
stay a few hours, then leave.

CARMINES: But inside the theatre it has something to do with expertness and specialization. Outside the theatre this is defined a little more
broadly and allows more freedom; however, where this expert is in the
location of the theatre and this other expert is over there, the result is
a very rigid and unhappy situation: such expertise requires an ability
to pay $8.50 for a theatre ticket and includes a demand to be entertained rather than involved. That is the reason things are more exciting
outside the theatre. Perhaps that is why a new technology, such as the
new projection, is more mystical in the dance hall than it is in the
theatre.

Why can't that situation be just as flexible and as interesting as outside
the theatre? It is the rigid structure, the concept of the structure that
forces theatre into the bad spot.

REIBACK: The dance hall is more sensual than the theatre; the theatre
is more intellectual and less sensual. The dance hall certainly appeals to
a more emotional audience and in a more basic sense.
ARMSTRONG: The reason the be-in is more potent for young people today is because it is strictly an emotional experience; but my point is,
is it an art? It serves a kind of social significance which the theatre does
not serve at this moment in time! There were people who came to see
Sophocles, women, who were reputed to have whelped children because
they were frightened by the Eumenides. This was in broad daylight. This
was a potent theatre.
PARKER: What is the difference between a be-in and a pep rally for a
football game? Who are the performers and can it be repeated? Most
art forms can be repeated.
SNYDER: Why do you think that is a Qualification of an art form? Many
worthwhile things cannot be repeated. There are many things in all performances on the stage that cannot be repeated. I do not think that is a
Qualification, not even for a director.
SMITH: Any definition is possible for anything, but we do have to have
some kind of definition. What is theatre? We should define what we
mean.

Why shouldn't you be able to have all the experimental theatre on stages
all around the city instead of only in the churches and armories and
dance halls and so on? You can't because of red tape, of bureaucracy,
of money. of unions, of misconception. You would run into too many
problems.
LEE: We drive a truck and we put on some bad plays, but nevertheless,
this is doing theatre in the street. Essentially, I provide a movable platform where people can perform. That works with the mobile unit.
KLUVER: That is flexible, but the theatre building is not.
BOWMAN: We have about fifteen minutes left. I think that we ought
to provide the opportunity for direct Questions from the audience, hopefully directed to a specific person.
BOB BENSON: Mr. Reiback, from the audience's standpoint, can you define the difference between a theatrical experience in a theatre and an experience in a created or controlled environment? Is there a difference?
REI BACK: The theatrical experience is more concerned with pace, with
tempo, with rise and fall, with various changes in mood. If you are relating this to an art form like Lumia, a kind of created environment, you
do bring in changes of tempo, changes of pace and mood. You also
have program variations where you have modulation from one type of
effect to another, where you are playing on your technical instruments,
the way a conductor elicits what he would like from a symphony, and
how your ethos and "inbeing" helps you to design this. This, in a
sense, makes the art form more like theatre because you are programming it in the sense of its changes, in the sense of using time and
space as a changing medium to be worked on.

PARKER: What is theatre? Let us define an art form first. Before you
have art, you have thought and feeling, or feeling and thought.

The alternative does not imply these changes.

SNYDER: There are different kinds of thought, different levels of communication; once you become aware of that, there are things that can
happen that are spontaneous and, at the same time, organized for the
moment, and alterwards dispensed with. In art or theatre there is therefore a kind of happening, a continual occurrence that is exciting through
a period of time.

IRWIN STEWARD: I would like to rock the boat a little bit. There has
been an awful lot of discussion about the Nine Nights in the Theatre. I
attended one of them. That was enough. I sat there for two and a half
hours through monotony, and nothing happened. I finally lelt. I wonder
how many other people in this room also attended those Nine Nights and
were also bored. We are giving the Nine Nights an awful lot of credit
for being something that it wasn't, number one. And, number two, what
would happen if we took Nine Nights and extended it to ninety the way
the literary theatre does? What would happen to our audience? You had
a tremendous number of people who came, surely, out of curiosity-not
young people. You looked around and saw people who were middleaged, around thirty or thirty-five, well dressed. They came out because
this was something different, something new. They wanted to find out
what was new. They wanted to keep abreast of things. But, if you extended it, at the end of the twellth night, you would not have an audience at all. You cannot do this in a legitimate theatre. There has to be
something there, or people will not come back.

ARMSTRONG: How long can a be-in be exciting?
SNYDER: I was there for twelve hours.
ARMSTRONG: And you were constantly excited?
SNYDER: I wasn't constantly excited. I was exhausted.

CARMINES: We have hit on the crucial definition. The be-in in its more
economic form performs exactly the same function as a more expensive
sophisticated form. These performances that I refer to are those that
people call the opera. There are people who go to the opera to see
other people and to be seen in the clothes they wear. It is a social
I don't think that the Nine Nights was interesting, and I don't think it
form. In the be-in there were people who went early and sat in trees.
is theatre. I think we are over-emphasizing the whole aspect of this
These are the box seats. The difference is that, instead of the "richies,"
audio-visual thing.
it is the "hippies" in the be-in. The be·in is absolutely no art form.
There are no basic relations of man to man, human to human, in a beKLUVER: I don't know how to answer it. I think Mr. Carmines has made
in. There are no facts, no principles, no system in a be-in. If artists - a very good point: that the artist works with extensions (supplied by the
were to take part in a be-in, it could become a work of art.
engineer) of what he had been doing before.
Only when there are two entities, the audience and the process or the
action, only when there is some distinct difference between the audience and the process or action can there be art. The process may involve the audience-a happening--<>r it can begin with an audience and
the audience by the end of the work may become a part of the theatre.
This has to be at least a part of it. If everyone who goes there is an
audience, it is utter destruction of art and the beginning of a political
movement.

There was not any great difference in the Rauschenberg performance of
the Nine Evenings, than in the piece he made before that technology
does not make new art. Technology adds to it greatly. It extends it. Certainly, the Nine Evenings were rough. We certainly know that. Our blood
was on the floor when we left.

KIRBY: I agree that the be-in is not an art form. But I don't agree with
the reasons. For example, Allen Kaprow does performances with no audience. This is outside the theatre. They are very thoroughly structured.
Everyone knows what he is going to do before he does it. It is not thea·
tre and perhaps we should not be concerned with it, but it is an art form.

There were two main issues--<>ne was to bring the artist's work out to
a large audience. Evidently, that was successful. From then on, it is up
to everybody to say that, "I like it," or "I don't like it." The second
issue was to make the artist and engineer work together and operate in
the same environment. We were successful. The day the thing opened,
we knew that it was a great success; before that, nobody knew. But the
minute the engineers saw the artists on stage in creative action, they
knew and they were turned on and they have been turned on ever since.

BOWMAN: How much of the Nine Evenings was then art, because it
was structured and was arranged?

KIRBY: Mr. Steward's statement is based on two things: One, is the
common, basic error of theatre, I think, to evaluate it in terms of the
number of people who like it. We have made, all altemoon, this dis-

OCTOBER, 1007

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