Avant-garde directors of the sixties trained in spectacle-driven transgressive theater circuits

Evidence

Jodorowsky, forty-one, had a rich career in avant-garde theater, shuttling between Paris and Mexico City. Together with Arrabal and cartoonist Roland Topor, he formed the neo-surrealist, Artaud-influenced Panic Movement. His four-hour Sacramental Melodrama, staged in May 1965, was the sensation of Jean-Jacques Lebel’s second Festival of Free Expression, a weeklong extravaganza that included readings by Ted Joans and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well a piece with Charlotte Moorman immersed in a barrel of water as Nam June Paik dropped his pants. Jodorowsky went a bit further. Accompanied by a six-piece rock band and a cast of bare-breasted women (each painted a different color), he cavorted atop a smashed automobile, sacrificed two geese, broke plates, then had himself stripped of his leather outfit and whipped, dancing with a honey-covered woman, two snakes taped to his chest. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1679

Categorization

• SHARE: The Charlotte Moorman in a barrel / Nam June Paik pants-dropping detail is exactly the sort of specific absurdist tidbit a performance-art-interested friend would enjoy.