Living Theatre performances could dissolve the boundary between actors and audience into chaos

Evidence

By Brustein’s account, around the time that Jenny Hecht nearly broke her leg swinging down from the gallery to the stage, “other actors from the company began pounding on the railings and screaming at the top of their lungs. And now the audience began to scream back.” Stella Adler cried for quiet. Richard Schechner called in vain for “five minutes of meditation to think about the beautiful thing that’s happening here.” Suddenly, Norman Mailer—no stranger to the Theatre of Ideas—strode to the stage. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1426

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Theater and real life are structurally indistinguishable rather than opposed — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 725; Community theatre transforms isolated audiences into creators of original work — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1829