Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies

The late sixties and early seventies were a period of great tumult and anger in the United States, particularly among the liberal arts oriented college students as they were prime candicates for being drafted and sent to Vietnam. The reaction to this showed up in the literature and in avant garde theater. This book explores eight theaters that were significant in that period. Each of the theaters is described in three articles or essays.The first section on each theater is a historical overview talking about the people who started the theater, what they were trying to do, and a description of how it evolved over time, and in most cases how the theater eventually went away. The second section discusses the contributions made by that theater to the overall subject of political theater. Finally an essay goes over the legacy of those contributions over the time since the sixties (and seventies).The historical overview seems to have been written by Harding/Rosenthal with the remaining two essays written by a leading theater artist, critic or scholar. The resulting book is history of a time when radical thought was at a peak, and may have particular importance as political activism is again rising.