Forced audience participation in avant-garde theatre could physically humiliate critics

Evidence

Once admitted, audience members ducked beneath an American flag and then, according to Richard Gilman who wrote it up the Drama Review, were “ordered” to remove their shoes and add them to a communal pile. Walter Kerr ended his non-review by recalling that “the last thing I saw as I left was my colleague Mel Gussow, limping about the floor in search of his other shoe.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1669

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of a critic hobbling shoeless through the theatre searching for his lost shoe is a perfect cocktail-party anecdote.