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1Many of us have departed from the old canonsand obsolete conventions, to a new spacearticulation, to satisfy more adequately thespecificneed of our time for a vision in motion.-LaszloMoholy-Nagy, The New Vision (1938)

In one sense, a theatre that mixes its means is not new, for the fusing l>of the arts is as old as Art itself. Indeed, as primitive ceremoniesintegrated dance and drama, song and sculpture, the separation ofthese arts prabably followed in the development of human conscious-ness frorn the recognition of Art as dist inct from life; and once theseseveral kinds of artistic expression were recognized as distinctly dif-ferent, individuais could specialize in one or another field and, in theRenaissance, sign their names to personal work. "Civilization," writesHerbert Read, "insisted on a specialization of artistic functions.' Onlythen, historically, could specialists in one art join with veterans ofanother to produce such modern theatrical combinations of song-drama-dance as operas or, more recent1y, musical comedies.What differentiares the new Theatre of Mixed Means from bothprimitive ceremony and the musical stage are, first, the components r che new mixtures use and, second, the radically different relarionshipsehac rhese elements have to each other. That is, whereas borh operannd musical comcdy emphasize poetic language to an accompanimentf so n a, scuing, and dance, the new theatre generally eschews the

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language of words and indudes the means (or media) of music anddance, light and odor (both natural and chemical), sculpture andpaincing, as well as the new technologies of film, recorded tape, ampli-ficarion systems, radio and dosed-circuit television.In the old theatre, even in Diaghilev's ballets, the elemencs comple-

rnented each other-the music dearly accompanied the singer ordancer, each coinciding with the other's beat-s-but in the new theatre,the components generally function nonsynchronously, or independ-ently of each other, and each medium " i s used for its own possibilities.Moreover, some practitioners of mixed-means theatre, such as AllanKaprow, intentionally exdude any signs of the convencional arts,particularly such traditional contexts as art galleries and performancehalls. Instead, the new theatre defines its presence not by the environ-Iment in which it occurs but by the purposes of its participants; as KenDewey puts it, "People gather together to articulate something of\rnutual concern." These departures make the new theatre cruciaUydifferent from traditional practice, and although its ancestry can betraced, its novelty remains unquestioned.The new movemenchas generally been called "Happenings," which

is hardly appropriate, for not only do all examples of the new theatrehave some kind of script, but very few use chance procedures, eirherin composition or performance,and even fewer depend upon im-provisation, or entice an audience to participate. As this is a newtheatrical form, ir deserves a new name; and I prefer "rhe Theatre ofMixed Means," because that phrase isolates the major characteristicand yet encompasses the entire movemenc. Within this new art, Idiscern four distinct1y different genres of mixed-means events: purehappenings, kinetic environments, staged happenings, and staged per-formances. Although most pieces fit dearly into one particular cate-gory or another, sometimes a piece will shift from one styleto anotheras well as overlap stylistic boundaries.

In pure happenings, the script is vague enough to allow unexpectedevents to occur in an unpredictable succession. The movements andidentity of the official participants are only sketchily outlined, and aparticipanc may improvise .details of his activity, although its generalpurpose has usually been decreed in advance. The resuldng actionsare, asMichael Kirby notes, indetermi nat e rather than improvised. Apure happening insisrs upon an unfettered exploration of space and

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time - both are open rather than dosed. Apure happening providesneither a focus for one's attention nor a sense of duration; and theperformance envelops the audience, who generally do not incend tobe spectators, by allowing them to feel that they too are participancsin a significanc processo Although Kaprow (who originated the word"happening" and scrupulously pursues his ideal conception) firstestablished himself as a painter, the shape his pieces take actually hasless t o do wirh how we see than how we hear:Auditory space has no favored focus. It's a sphere without fixed boundaries,space made by the thing i tse lf , not space containing the thing. It is notpictorial space, boxed-in, but dynamic, always in flux, creating its owndimensions moment by moment. It has no fixed boundaries; it is indif-ferent to background. The eye focuses, pinpoints, abstracts, locating eachobject in physical space, against a background; the ear , however , favorssound from any direction. [Edmund S. Carpenter, Eskimo (1959)]The author of apure happening is, as Kaprow notes, doser to a (

basketball coach than a theatre director or choreographer; for he gives r rhis players only general instructions before the evento Thus, one ofKaprow's recent pieces, H ouseho ld (1964), opens in "a lonesomedump out in the counrry" with the following activities:

11 A.M. Men build wooden tower on a trash mound.Poles topped with tarpaper clusters are stuck around it.Women buil d nest of saplings and strings on another mound.Around the nest on a clothesline they hang old shirts.

The encire script for Dick Higgins' GlJ.ng slm g is: "One foot for-ward. Transfer weight to this foot. Repeat as often as desired." In theurnmer of 1966, Ann and Lawrence Halprin, respectively a dancerand an architecr, gathered a group of people on a driftwood beach andasked them to build shelters; the resulting process, which actuallyrcared a drifrwood village, was apure happening. So is a massivefla.chcring of people, a "Be-In"-whose author is not individual but ~ro llc c ri ve, Pure happenings are generally not performed in conven- )rionn] theatrical situarions which, by their nature, dose off the spaceII\ U imposc focus on the activity. Some have exploited natural sur-rn un d in gs, such as a forest or a swimming pool or Grand CentralSuuion or nn cnurc c ity , Some can be performed anywhere, ar any

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t ime, before either an intentional audience, a random gathering ofmiscellaneous people, or even nobody at all.Kinetic environments differ from pure happenings in that they are

more closely planned, their space is more specifically defined and con-stricted, and the behavior of the participants (or components) is moreprecisely programed. However, they are, like happenings, structurallyopen in time and, as forms, capable of encouraging participationalattention. USCO, or Us Company, an artists' collective, has createdkineticenvironments of music, taped noise (such as a constant hart-beat) , paintings, sculpture, machines, electronic instruments (forexample, a television or an oscilloscope), and projected images bothon slides and filmo A kinetic environment of fewer elements is LaMonte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, in which Young, alongwith three other musicians, creates within a closed space a preciselyconstructed chord of constant harmonic sound which is electroriicallyamplified to the pitch of aural pain and projected through severalspeakers; usually the sound can entirely envelop both the room andthe spectator' s consciousness. A recording of Young's theatre piece,however, is not a kinetic environment but a piece of sound-music, un-less, of course, the Iistener recreares the original performance situation- the environment - of a darkened room, several loudspeakers,slides of oriental calligraphy, and an odor of incense.Staged happenings differ from pure happenings primarily in

occurring within a defined space, mostly on a theatrical stage. Other-wise, the actions of the participants are variable or indeterminate fromperformance to performance; either chance operations or a flexiblescript ensure that events cannot be duplicated. Because the space isfixed, the audience is usually separated from the performers; thus, itsrole is more observational than participationaI. ]ohn Cage's concertsare generally staged happenings; so are most of Ann Halprin ' s andsome of Merce Cunningham's pieces. "A Happening with only anempathic response on the part of a seated audience," Kaprow writes,"is not a Happening but stage theatre." For instance, a football gameis a staged happening to a spectator; apure one to a participant.In the staged performance, which is as pre-planned in conception

and asprecisely executed as the kinetic environment, the major actionsare defined in advance, the audience's role is observational, and thedimensions of space and time are usually predetermincd. Indeed, in

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alI these respects, the staged performance is similar to traditionaltheatre; but where drama' emphasizes speech, new theatre thoroughlymixes the media of communication and most pieces have no words atalI. When language is employed, the words generally function asisolated, minimally syntactical fragments of "found" sound. Forexample, in Ken Dewey and Terry Riley' s Sames ( 1965), shortphrases - "1," "Thar's nor me" - are repeated over and over againand one voice multiplies into a chorus of itself, while six stationaryladies in bridal dress grace the stage and film is projected upon thetheatre's ceiling and walls. Staged performances offer a perceptualexperience akin to a lively dance act or an engrossing mime.The following chart " graphically represents the differences be-

tween one genre and another:GENRE SPACE TIME ACTIONPure Happening Open Variable VariableStaged Happening Closed Variable VariableStaged performance Closed Fixed FixedKinetic environment Closed Variable Fixed

What alIthe various forms of the Theatre of Mixed Means have incommon, then, is a distinct distance from Renaissance theatre - adistance that includes a rejection not only of the theatre of explici tstatement and objectified plot but also the visual clichs produced byunison movement, synchronous accompaniment, and complmentarysetting. lntrinsic in the rnixed-means theatre is the most liberal defini-tion possible of theatrical activity: any situation where some people

. * As "open" is the equivalent of variable, and "closed" equals tixed, thenthree aspects-space, time, action-distributed two ways produce the possi-bility of 23 or eight, and the following are, by implication, the four unborngenres of new theatre, which I shall refr ain from christening with individualnames:L) Open-Fixed-Varable would be, for example: Move anywhere, in anymanner, for rhi rty minutes..) Open-Fixed-Fixed would be, for instance: Move ten barrels from Spot X

O Spor Y by any route that you wsh in exact1y tive minures ..) Closed-Fixed-Variable would be: Do anything you wish within a circum-scribcd arca for one-half hour; an example might be a truly improvised jazzpc rfo rr na n cc wich an exact cime set for its end.f.) Opcn- V nrinblc-Pxed would bc: A cross-counrr y race over a terr ain that11I('l

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perform for others, regardless of whether or not the spectators intendto be an audience.ln rnixed-means theatre, the performers usually do nor enact roles

but carry out prescribed tasks. Since these gestures and movementsare, to varying degrees, less precisely programed than actors' activitiesin theatrical drama, mixed-rneans performers, unlike actors, do notassume other personalities, but merely display their own. As synchro-nization is abandoned, so the relations between all activities, whetherat any particular moment or over the duration of the piece, tend to bediscontinuous in structure and devoid of an obvious focus. As theways of presenting material are nearly as various as the number ofmixed-rneans practitioners, each piece demands of the spectator anactively engaged and highly personal perception. These symptoms ofapparent disorder, ofren leaving the eye unsure of where ir shouldlook and the ear unsure of what it should hear, chalIenge the audienceto perceive order in chaos.The process of understanding any unfamiliar form of cornrnunica-

tion appears to involve three separate recognitions, which Edward T.Hall in The Silent Language (1959) defines as "seis, isolares, andpatterns. Thesets (words ) are what you perceive first, the isolates(sounds) are the components that make up the sets, while the patterns(syntax) are the way in which sets are strung together in order togive them meaning." However, in drawing upon several kinds ofcommunication, a rnixed-means piece speaks in several languages atonce, insisting that its audience be as artisticalIy polylingual as itscreator. A realized event should exemplify Richard Sourhern's dictum:"AlI good theatre should be comprehensible to a deaf man." Further-more, as each piece of new theatre tends to create an amorphous defi-nition of space, an imprecise conception of time, an unconventionalstage rhythms, the audience often has difficulty discerning when aparticular piece has ended.ln the Theatre of Mixed Means, a piece usually opens by announc-ing a sound-image complex which is immediately communicated; and

rather than employ the musical rechniques of variation and develop-menr or the dramatic forms of linear development, rnixed-meanspieces generally pursue one of three patterns - an unmodulated de-velopment that sustains or fills in the opening outline; a thoroughlydiscontinuous colIage of several sections; or an n ss oc iaciona l succes-

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sion of sequences that relate to each other in several ways.* The firstform ismore often than not characteristic of environments, the secondof borh kinds of happenings, and the Iast of staged performances;but there exists no necessary correlation between genre and structure.Narrative, when ir exists, functions more as a convention than arevelatory structure or primary component, for the themes of a pieceare more likely to emerge from the reperit ion of certain actions orthe coherence of imagery. The comprehension of a mixed-rneanspiece, then, more closely resembles looking at a streer or overhearinga strange conversation than deducing the theme of a drama: Thelonger and more deeply the spectator dissects and assimilates itssound-image complex and associates the diverse elements, the morefamiliar he becomes with the work.Like many of the most important tendencies in contemporary art,

lhe Theatre of Mixed Means ernphasizes the processes of creation,rather than the final product, and this links it with primitive pre-verbal communal rituals. "Drama may be the thing done," writesRichard Southern, "but theatre is doing." More important, it employsvarious media of communication to create a field of activity that ap-pcals to the total sensorium. Historically, the new theatre representsthar radical departure from nineteenth-cenrury forms that the modernthcatrical medium, unlike the other arts, has yet to undergo. "Therhca tre is always twenty or thirty years behind poetry," Eugene lonescouncc wrote, "and even the cinema isin advance of the theatre." As thereve le in poetry was away frorn the Renaissance notions of perception,lIld connection, so the new theatre embodies a rejection of linear formuul cxplanatory truth. Like the new cinema of Jean-Luc Godard andA l n i n Resnais, it explores the representation of time; like the newtrd ii ccc cu re, the potencial shapes of space.,'I1 It Fo rrn :

I)/~(nunvous form:A NNOdllrional form:

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