Early happenings were cheap, casual, jerrybuilt productions thriving on physical proximity.

Evidence

A continuation of The Walking Man, shown in September at the Sun Gallery, Grooms’s new piece had a correspondingly casual feel. Part slapstick, part shadow play, named for its single jerrybuilt set, The Burning Building involved lit candles, verbal non sequiturs, a pair of comic firefighters, a human clock, various offstage crashes, and escalating pandemonium as the young Pasty Man (Grooms), aflame with passion, follows the Girl in the White Box (Joan Herbst) into the Firemen’s Den. After ten minutes, the Firemen chase him into the audience, after which he surprisingly doubles back to somersault down from the top of the rickety Burning Building. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 61

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the material-conditions thesis: the piece ran on an abandoned boxing gym, cardboard sets, lit candles — near-zero production capital.