A happening is a performance, event, or situation art , usually as performance art . The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
61-758: Wrecks is a one-man play by Neil LaBute , that was commissioned and produced by the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork , Ireland . The play was a part of the city's Capital of Culture programme in 2005. Wrecks premiered in the United States Off-Broadway at the Public Theater on October 10, 2006 (September 2006 in previews) and closed on November 19, 2006. Ed Harris starred in the Everyman Palace Theatre production and reprised his role as "Edward Carr" Off-Broadway, with direction by LaBute. Wrecks
122-461: A one-man show , one-woman show , or one-person show , features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including autobiographical creations, comedy acts, novel adaptations, vaudeville, poetry, music and dance. In 1996, Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman became the longest-running one-person play in
183-509: A prepared piano and Merce Cunningham danced. All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Cage credited a collaborative close reading of Antonin Artaud 's The Theatre and Its Double with M.C. Richards and David Tudor as the impetus for the event. Happenings flourished in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to
244-474: A "captive" audience was entangled in string emanating from a vacuum cleaner as it made its rounds (similar to Kaprow's "A Spring Happening", where he used a power lawnmower and huge electric fan to similar effect); Zen Rock Festival in which the central icon was a huge rock with which the audience interacted in unpredictable ways; Black on Black held in the Edmonton Art Gallery; and "Pipe Dream," set in
305-717: A central theme, such as pop culture in Pat Hazel's The Wonderbread Years , relationships in Robert Dubac's The Male Intellect , the history of the New York City transit system in Mike Daisey 's Invincible Summer , or fighting the system in Patrick Combs ' Man 1, Bank 0 . these themes could also be centered around a certain topic such as a political or social issue. Tim Miller explores the topic of gay culture and society surrounding
366-463: A compartmented structure". However, Canadian theatre critic and playwright Gary Botting , who himself had "constructed" several happenings, wrote in 1972: "Happenings abandoned the matrix of story and plot for the equally complex matrix of incident and event." Kaprow was a student of John Cage , who had experimented with "musical happenings" at Black Mountain College as early as 1952. Kaprow combined
427-411: A fireman wearing a simple costume of white pants and T-shirt with a poncholike cloak and a Smokey Stoverish fireman's helmet. Bill, the 'star' in a tall hat and black overcoat, walked back and forth across the stage with great wooden gestures. Yvonne sat on the floor by a suspended fire engine. She was a blind woman with tin-foil covered glasses and cup. Sylvia played a radio and pulled on hanging junk. For
488-653: A happening by performing her Cut Piece at the Sogetsu Art Center . She walked onto the stage draped in fabric, presented the audience with a pair of scissors, and instructed the audience to cut the fabric away gradually until the performer decided they should stop. This piece was presented again in 1966 at the Destruction in Art Symposium in London, this time allowing the cutting away of her street cloths. In Belgium ,
549-528: A large silver vulva." Claes Oldenburg , best known for his innovative sculptures, used a vacant house, his own store, and the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Los Angeles for Injun , World's Fair II and AUT OBO DYS . The idea was to break down the fourth wall between performer and spectator; with the involvement of the spectator as performer, objective criticism
610-764: A men's washroom with an all-female "cast". In Australia , the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s. Behind the Iron Curtain in Poland , artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor staged the first happenings beginning in 1965. In the second half of 1970s painter and performer Krzysztof Jung ran the Repassage gallery, which promoted performance art in Poland. Also in
671-400: A moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life. It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels "dirty", and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances." Happenings have no plot or philosophy, but rather are materialized in an improvisatory fashion. There
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#1732844761275732-752: A monologue, which opened last night at the Public Theater with an expert performance by Ed Harris, is a last-minute revelation meant to induce gasps of both shock and admiration for its having been built so neatly. Whether you gasp or merely sigh wearily will depend on your familiarity with, and fondness for, the prolific Mr. LaBute’s bleak moral vision of humankind." The Off-Broadway production received nominations: 2007 Lucille Lortel Award , Outstanding Solo Show; 2007 Outer Critics Circle Award , Outstanding Solo Performance (Ed Harris); and 2007 Drama Desk Award , Outstanding Solo Performance (Ed Harris). One man show A solo performance , sometimes referred to as
793-521: A new, modern happening. Starting around 2010, a world-wide group called The Order of the Third Bird started creating flashmob style art appreciation happenings. In 2018 the Prague -based performance and poetics collective OBJECT:PARADISE was established by writers Tyko Say and Jeff Milton. The collective has since aimed to make poetry readings more similar to language happenings which involve
854-495: A single character was Sofi , a 1968 film starring Tom Troupe . The film was based on " Diary of a Madman " by Gogol . The 1964 Hindi movie Yaadein also featured only Sunil Dutt , but Nargis Dutt made a few appearances as a silhouette . However, it still made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the "fewest actors in a narrative film". Secret Honor , a 1984 film about Richard Nixon with Philip Baker Hall as
915-402: A variety of interdisciplinary acts and performances occurring at the same time. Kaprow explains that happenings are not a new style, but a moral act, a human stand of great urgency, whose professional status as art is less critical than their certainty as an ultimate existential commitment. He argues that once artists have been recognized and paid, they also surrender to the confinement, rather
976-444: Is commonly cited as the first happening, although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College by John Cage , one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and played wax cylinders of Édith Piaf on an Edison horn recorder, David Tudor performed on
1037-435: Is no direction thus the outcome is unpredictable. "It is generated in action by a headful of ideas...and it frequently has words but they may or may not make literal sense. If they do, their meaning is not representational of what the whole element conveys. Hence they carry a brief, detached quality. If they do not make sense, then they are acknowledgement of the sound of the word rather than the meaning conveyed by it." Due to
1098-467: Is transformed into subjective support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads. Later happenings had no set rules, only vague guidelines that the performers follow based on surrounding props. Unlike other forms of art, happenings that allow chance to enter are ever-changing. When chance determines
1159-577: Is unique. One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader , "The term 'happening' has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction." Another definition is "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in
1220-473: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe can involve stories of pathos and the use of technological equipment such as projectors . Examples include Howard Read , who has performed with the animated character Little Howard which was projected with the aid of computers and Dave Gorman , who has performed several shows described as "documentary comedy". The first full-length talking film which showed only
1281-954: The Emily Dickinson biography, The Belle of Amherst ; Tovah Feldshuh as Golda Meir in Golda's Balcony ; Frank Gorshin as George Burns in Say Goodnight Gracie by Rupert Holmes ; Ed Metzger in his solo show, performing since 1978, Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian ; Metzger in another solo performance, Hemingway: On the Edge ; Henry Fonda as Clarence Darrow in Darrow , Ronald Rand as Harold Clurman in Let It Be Art! since 2001 in 25 countries, and Tom Dugan as Simon Wiesenthal in Wiesenthal . A few actors adapted entire novels for
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#17328447612751342-481: The Rutgers University undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist . The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the U.S. , Germany , and Japan . Jack Kerouac referred to Kaprow as "The Happenings man", and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform brassiere". Happenings are difficult to describe, in part because each one
1403-619: The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 . On 1 May 1999, a Pillar of Shame was set up on the Zócalo in Mexico City and it stood for two days in front of the Parliament to protest the oppression of the region's indigenous people. The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun, artist group, The Institute of Infinitely Small Things, has reflected the use of "happenings" influence while incorporating
1464-461: The world . In November 1993 he held the happening my inner beast where twenty sculptures were erected within 55 hours without the knowledge of the authorities all over Europe . Pillar of Shame is a series of Galschiøt's sculptures. The first happening was erected in Hong Kong on 4 June 1997, ahead of the handover from British to Chinese rule on 1 July 1997, as a protest against China's crackdown of
1525-554: The 1950s and 1960s that performed these happenings helped put "new media technology developments into context". The happenings allowed other artists to create performances that would attract attention to the issue they wanted to portray. In 1959 the French artist Yves Klein first performed Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle . The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking
1586-1062: The 1960s, the term performance art became popular and involved any number of performance acts or happenings , as they were known. Many performers, like Laurie Anderson , developed through these happenings and are still performing today. The backgrounds of solo performers over the decades range from vaudeville , comedy, poetry, music, the visual arts, magic , cabaret , theatre and dance. Solo performers include Rob Becker, Lily Tomlin , Andy Kaufman , Rod Maxwell, Lord Buckley , Eric Bogosian , Whoopi Goldberg , Jade Esteban Estrada , Eddie Izzard , John Leguizamo , Marga Gomez , Anna Deavere Smith , Bill Hicks , Brother Blue , Lenny Bruce , and Mel Blanc . Several performers have presented solo shows in tribute to famous personalities. The blueprint for this type of show may have been drafted by Hal Holbrook , who has performed as Mark Twain in his solo show, Mark Twain Tonight , more than 2,000 times since 1954. Examples since that time include Julie Harris in
1647-644: The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead by Robert Hewett and Topless by Miles Tredinnick . A performer of shows of this type is Chris Harris , whose performances in the genre include Kemp's Jig , That's The Way To Do It! , Ally Sloper's Half Holiday , Beemaster , ' Arris Music 'All and A Night at the Pantomime . There have also been many British comedians who have moved away from performing pure stand-up comedy in recent years. The shows that appear annually at
1708-608: The French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade . Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body'–which was a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely –was ceremonially slid into the canal. Poet and painter Adrian Henri claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool in 1962, taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival. The most important event in London
1769-497: The LGBTQ community in his production of My Queer Body . Karen Finley expressed her frustration with the standards women are held to and the issues surrounding them such as rape and abortion in her solo piece titled We Keep Our Victims Ready . Sometimes, solo shows are simply traditional plays written by playwrights for a cast of one. Examples: Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell , I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright , The Blonde,
1830-657: The a statue Het Lieverdje on the Spui, a square in the centre of Amsterdam , from 1966 till 1968. Police often raided these events. In the 1960s Joseph Beuys , Wolf Vostell , Nam June Paik , Charlotte Moorman , Dick Higgins , and HA Schult staged happenings in Germany. In Canada, Gary Botting created or "constructed" happenings between 1969 (in St. John's, Newfoundland) and 1972 (in Edmonton, Alberta), including The Aeolian Stringer in which
1891-481: The artist's freedom, and artists themselves hold the ultimate power to reject fame if they do not want its responsibilities. Art and music festivals play a large role in positive and successful happenings. Some of the festivals include Burning Man and the Oregon Country Fair near Veneta, Oregon . Along with the famous work of Allan Kaprow , Burning Man frowns on the idea of having spectators and stresses
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1952-433: The command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it. For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/command. The iKatun team will then act out the slogan in a research-performance related way. This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct
2013-421: The convention's nature, there is no such term as "failure" which can be applied. "For when something goes "wrong", something far more "right", more revelatory may emerge. This sort of sudden near-miracle presently is made more likely by chance procedures." As a conclusion, a happening is fresh while it lasts and cannot be reproduced. Regarding happenings, Red Grooms has remarked, "I had the sense that I knew it
2074-402: The country had grown large. This renaissance of solo performance also created ripples in the larger sense of American theatre; after this "boom" of the one man show had passed, the presentational style seeped into popular theatre productions such as Amadeus , Equus , and Evita among others, modeling a combination of representational theatricality and presentational, direct-address style. By
2135-656: The disgraced President ruminating on his past. In the 21st century the "solo performance" had a rejuvenation period with films like Locke , All Is Lost and Buried . The characteristics were different from the previous one-character films that were made – mainly by location and style. Sofi and works like Give 'em Hell, Harry! , were still studio-filmed theater pieces. The 21st-century films were mostly shot on location and were much more stylized with their cinematic expression and camera usage. Most recently films by Marcus Tell showed ongoing characteristics of one-character films. R. Parthiban wrote, produced, directed, and
2196-411: The finale, I hid behind a false door and shouted pop code words. Then the cast did a wild run around and it ended". Dubbing his 148 Delancey Street studio The Delancey Street Museum, Grooms staged three more happenings there, A Garden , The Burning Building and The Magic Trainride (originally titled Fireman's Dream ). No wonder Kaprow called Grooms "a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire". On
2257-514: The first European happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice . For his performance there – called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process – Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from
2318-683: The first happenings were organized around 1965–1968 in Antwerp , Brussels and Ostend by artists Hugo Heyrman and Panamarenko . In the Netherlands , the first documented happening took place in 1961, with the Dutch artist and performer Wim T. Schippers emptying a bottle of soda water in the North Sea near Petten. Later on, he organized random walks in the Amsterdam city centre. Provo organized happenings around
2379-496: The form included Carolee Schneemann , Red Grooms , Robert Whitman , Jim Dine Car Crash , Claes Oldenburg , Robert Delford Brown , Lucas Samaras , and Robert Rauschenberg . Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings (1966). Kaprow claimed that "some of us will become famous, and we will have proven once again that the only success occurred when there was a lack of it". In 1963 Wolf Vostell made
2440-473: The form of a cheque, in exchange for gold ; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine . The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses. In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel supervised and participated in
2501-623: The happening TV-Burying at the Yam Festival in coproduction with the Smolin Gallery and in 1964 the happening You in Great Neck, New York which is on Long Island . During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man , which began with construction sounds, such as sawing. Grooms recalls, "The curtains were opened by me, playing
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2562-436: The history of Broadway theatre . Solo performance is used to encompass the broad term of a single person performing for an audience. Some key traits of solo performance can include the lack of the fourth wall and audience participation or involvement. Solo performance does not need to be written, performed and produced by a single person—a solo performance production may use directors, writers, designers and composers to bring
2623-476: The importance and distinction between the literary monologue and the performance monologue during the nineteenth century, however, this discussions confirms a continuous interchange between literature and performance, which may at times appear competitive but is more often productive. By the time the United States entered the 20th century, the number and variety of professional solo performances presented throughout
2684-485: The importance of everyone being involved to create something amazing and unique. Both parties embody the "audience" and instead of creating something to show people, the audience becomes involved in helping create something incredible and spontaneous for the moment. Both of these events are happenings which are recreated and special each year; they are seen as being always new and organic. The events draw crowds of close to 50,000 people each year and reach more people than just
2745-453: The intensely confessional but comedic work of Spalding Gray , the semi-autobiographical A Bronx Tale by Chaz Palminteri , or Holly Hughes ' solo piece World without End, in which she attempts to make sense of her relationship with her mother, who had died. Another example of this is In The Body of the World, written and performed by Eve Ensler in 2018. Still other shows may rally around
2806-457: The medium of internet. Their aim is one which "fosters public engagement in the politics of information". Their project entitled The International Database of Corporate Commands presents a scrutinizing look at the super-saturating advertisements slogans, and "commands" of companies. "The Institute for Infinitely Small Things" uses the commands to conduct research performances, performances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what
2867-458: The opening night of The Burning Building , Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama staged nude happenings during the late '60s in New York City. Happenings emphasize the organic connection between art and its environment. Kaprow supports that "happenings invite us to cast aside for
2928-476: The path the performance will follow, there is no room for failure. As Kaprow wrote in his essay, "'Happenings' in the New York Scene", "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong". For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged". Kaprow's piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959)
2989-555: The piece to life on a stage. An example of this collaboration is Eric Bogosian in the published version of his show Wake Up And Smell the Coffee , by Theatre Communications Group , New York City. Individuals have told stories in front of other members of their tribe or society for thousands of years, and have orally passed down many of today's myths and legends in this manner. The style of performance has developed through generations via theatrical people such as Greek Monologists ,
3050-404: The same performance will have different outcomes because each performance depends on the action of the audience. Happenings can be a form of participatory new media art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. In his Water , Robert Whitman had the performers drench each other with colored water. "One girl squirmed between wet inner tubes, ultimately struggling through
3111-553: The second half of the 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since martial law had been imposed in December 1981. Since 1993 the artist Jens Galschiøt has had political happenings all over
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#17328447612753172-426: The stage including Patrick Stewart who played all 43 parts in his version of A Christmas Carol , which played three times on Broadway and at The Old Vic in London; actor Gerald Charles Dickens played 26 characters in his performances from the same work; and Jack Aranson starred in a solo, 13-character production of Moby Dick . Solo performance may be personal, autobiographical creations. This ranges from
3233-525: The strolling Minstrels of Medieval England and the French Troubadors . Edgar Allan Poe both lectured and recited poetry as a platform performer between 1843 and 1849; his performances stand as a paradigm of the solo performance hybrid simply called "the lecture-recital". The reading tours of Charles Dickens in Britain and America between 1858 and 1870 created a sensation. His American tour of 1867–68
3294-410: The tastes of the patrons (even if that may not be the intention on both ends). "The whole situation is corrosive, neither patrons nor artists comprehend their role...and out of this hidden discomfort comes a stillborn art, tight or merely repetitive and at worst, chic." Though the we may easily blame those offering the temptation, Kaprow reminds us that it is not the publicist's moral obligation to protect
3355-407: The theater of the oppressed by becoming the actors. His goal was to allow the downtrodden to act out the forces oppressing them in order to mobilize the people into political action. Both Kaprow and Boal are reinventing theater to try to make plays more interactive and to abolish the traditional narrative form to make theater something more free-form and organic. Allan Kaprow 's and other artists of
3416-503: The theatrical and visual arts with discordant music. "His happenings incorporated the use of huge constructions or sculptures similar to those suggested by Artaud ," wrote Botting, who also compared them to the "impermanent art" of Dada. "A happening explores negative space in the same way Cage explored silence. It is a form of symbolism: actions concerned with 'now' or fantasies derived from life, or organized structures of events appealing to archetypal symbolic associations." A "Happening" of
3477-658: Was produced at the Geffen Playhouse, Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater in Westwood, Los Angeles in February and March 2010, with Ed Harris again playing the role of "Edward Carr". The plot centers around a man, Edward Carr, coming to terms with the death of his wife, and the dark secret that brought them together. Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The New York Times : "The whole raison d’être of this slender, prickly tease of
3538-492: Was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is." The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed , which also claims that "spectator is a bad word". Boal expected audience members to participate in
3599-568: Was the Albert Hall " International Poetry Incarnation " on June 11, 1965, where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde young British and American poets of the day (see British Poetry Revival and Poetry of the United States ). One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall , went on to organize a number of further happenings, often working with his friend Bob Cobbing , sound poet and performance poet . In Tokyo in 1964, Yoko Ono created
3660-504: Was the only actor in the 2019 Tamil movie Oththa Seruppu Size 7 . Happenings Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1959 at an art picnic at George Segal 's farm to describe the art pieces being performed. The first appearance in print about one was in Kaprow's famous "Legacy of Jackson Pollock " essay that was published in 1958 but primarily written in 1956. "Happening" also appeared in print in one issue of
3721-551: Was unparalleled until the arrival of the Beatles in the early 1960s. Solo performance enjoyed an unprecedented artistic and commercial vogue in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century (John S. Gentile Calls it the golden age of platform performance). Literary historians often associate the Victorian period with the highest development of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form. There were several discussions about
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