Becky Performance Descriptions

Performance Descriptions

The descriptions given below are brief, and meant only to provide an idea of what occurred at a specific Happening. For more detailed information, it is suggested you read Michael Kirby's book, mentioned in the Bibliography page of this website.

18 Happenings in 6 Parts Fall, 1959 (Man with white shirt is Allan Kaprow)	In the Early Fall of 1959, a form letter was sent by "Reuben-Kaprow Associates" to many people in the New York metropolitan area. "Eighteen happenings will take place...." it began and, after listing the dates and time, invited the reader "..to collaborate with the artist, Mr. Allan Kaprow, in making these events take place... As on of the seventy-five persons present, you will become a part of the happenings; you will simultaneously experience them." After a brief message from Kaprow and a list of his exhibition credits, it stated, "The present event is created in a medium which Mr. Kaprow finds refreshing to leave untitled." Inside the loft gallery, three smaller rooms had been crated, their walls made of a framework of wood covered with semitransparent plastic. In each room, different numbers of folding chairs had been arranged, and the lighting in each room was different. When those who had made reservations arrived, they were given a program sheet and three small cards stapled together. The program sheet contained instructions explaining the performance was divided into six parts, signified by the ringing of a bell. Instructions were given to participants on the three cards instructing them to sit in certain rooms during certain parts. The performance consisted of series of 18 individual happenings - one per room for all six parts - so that no one person was able to view every happening. The happenings themselves were varied - in some parts, performers, dressed in street clothes, simply walked slowly into a room and performed a series of choreographed stiff movements. In other parts, oranges were squeezed by a solemn-faced girl into 12 individual glasses and drank one at a time. Another happening consisted of a man painting on a canvas, facing apart from the "audience" in his room. All performances were accompanied by mechanized music at odd intervals and various lighting changes.
For Mouth, Robert Whitman constructed a huge mouth in a store window on East Third Street in New York's Lower East Side with pink flesh, red lips and rows of white teeth filling it from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Participants arrived and walked into the huge mouth, and sat in white painted chairs, or teeth, arranged along two sides of the space. This performance, like many happenings, incorporated the use of live performers as well as mechanized objects. In mouth, live performers did everything from erratic, dance-like moves while dressed in tree leaves, or sopping with water, to an actual picnic, where the two performers ate what was in all actuality their dinner. Mechanized objects used in the performance included a large swinging pendulum, which housed a live performer - a girl on a chair - at one portion of the show - and two large animals with sinister faces.	Mouth, Robert Whitman April, 1961
Car Crash by Jim Dine November, 1960	Spectators entered an Environment completely covered in white - white paint, white cloth, white paper - and took seats in a U-shaped row of chairs that they found around them. Looking up, they saw what appeared to be an 8 foot tall girl clothed in white (it was actually a regular girl sitting on a ladder, hidden under her white garments). They watched as a series of happenings occurred involving a man in silver with a hat of "headlights" that were pointed to and for over the audience, and two other performers, a woman, dressed as a man in a white suit and a man, dressed as a woman in a white evening dress. The man and woman carried flashlights under their arms and whenever they lit upon the man in silver he grunted as if in pain, and moved, as if seeking to hide from them. Throughout the performance, various sounds of car motors, honking and screeching tires could be heard, accompanied at times by the girl on the white ladder reciting a series of words regarding cars, with a random yet somewhat, sexual content.
Attendees were escorted through a black curtain into a narrow black tunnel, perhaps two and half feet wide and seven feet high. They stood as the black curtain enclosed them once again and they were left in darkness, with only narrow rectangular slits on each side of the tunnel through which to observe the Happening. Throughout the Happening, light and sound were used to create a general mood of uneasiness. Above the tunnel, performers at times smashed cans and made hideous hissing sounds while performers moved nervously below them, unsure of what was going on. Lights would come on in the rooms to the left of the right of the tunnel, and peering through the small slits, the audience would watch as happenings occurred. These included the fight scene of two men with cardboard axes, as well, as a sinister seen of a nude girl with collard greens hanging from her mouth, enclosed in darkness and running around frantically, occasionally illuminated by a spotlight. Towards the end of the happening, a lawnmower was heard and spectators in the tunnel gasped as a man with a blank face appeared and began pushing the lawnmower through the tunnel. With nowhere to go but towards the back wall of the tunnel, participants backed against it, some beginning to cry out as the lawnmower kept approaching, the man staring blankly at the ground. Just as he seemed to overtake them, the side walls of the tunnel collapsed and spectators rushed out. The man "mowed" his way to the end of the tunnel, the lights came on and the performance was over. This is my personal favorite, for it makes the most sense to me - Kaprow would most likely hate that. This happening seems to be a presentation of someone's nightmares.	A Spring Happening, Allan Kaprow March, 1961
*Return to Happenings* Index**		Rebecca Walker Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved. Revised: 16 May 2001 13:19:34 -0500