Grove Press imported West Coast avant-garde theater into the East Village

Evidence

Imported from San Francisco by Grove Press, The Beard, poet Michael McClure’s supposedly pornographic confrontation between Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid, a pair of archetypes in a “blue velvet” Eternity, opened at the Evergreen Theatre on East Eleventh Street. McClure’s play was directed by Rip Torn and newly tricked out with a thirty-five-minute multimedia slide-movie-light-show prologue orchestrated by USCO that reminded Michael Smith of “the sleekest of discotheques.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1096

Categorization

• XREF: USCO’s multimedia light-show prologue connects to the reader’s broader interest in the material/technical conditions enabling avant-garde scene density — cheap projectors, film loops, light shows were part of the ignorable/low-cost art infrastructure.