Obscenity laws criminalized avant-garde theater based on staged acts, not content

Evidence

The Eighth Ditch did in fact attract negative attention. First staged in 1961, it was published in the same issue of The Floating Bear that resulted in Jones’s arrest. The revival, with John Vaccaro as the narrator and a set by Robert Morris, included an act of sodomy performed on stage (albeit with the lights out). “The result has been a furor over its alleged obscenity,” Michael Smith reported in the Voice. “This is ridiculous … The sexual act is almost incidental to its actual content—innocence betrayed by experience.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1908

Categorization

• XREF: Part of the reader’s legal-environment data point: censorship pressure was one of the material conditions shaping the avant-garde’s provocation, comparable to drug laws for other scenes.