Guerrilla Theater

Guerrilla theater is theater in social context, a vehicle for social change taking a stand against violence and totalitarianism. This kind of theater is known as agit-prop. Arising in the 1960s, guerrilla theater was symptomatic of the unrest prevailing in the country at that time: anti-war protests, the free speech movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the fight against racism, feminism, and the rash of political murders beginning with that of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Although a Marxist philosophy was early associated with the rise of guerrilla theater, it was the work of Bertolt Brecht and the French Absurdists that fueled the performances.

Guerrilla theater began with the founding of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) by R. G. Davis in 1959. Davis was trained in mime by Étienne Decroux and he used this form of theater effectively in outdoor performance where large physical actions are required. Later, he incorporated the techniques of commedia dell'arte, which added power and immediacy via irreverent comedy. The SFMT performed for free in the parks within the city. During the fourth such performance in 1965, the term guerrilla theater was coined by fellow actor Peter Berg when Davis was arrested at the beginning of a performance the mayor had forbidden because of indecency.

Shortly after his arrest, Davis issued a manifesto on guerrilla theater, originally published in the Tulane Drama Review and later, in 1970, by the troupe itself as Guerrilla Theatre Essays I. In this manifesto Davis calls for the theater to become a catalyst for change and an agent in the destruction of an unjust order. Although the stamp of method and ideology was put on guerrilla theater by Davis, the SFMT has been underestimated in the history of modern American theater.

Lee Breuer, Ruth Malaczech, and Bill Raymond split off from the SFMT and formed the Mabou Mines; Luis Valdez formed El Teatro Campesino to fight for the United Farm Workers Union of César Chávez; the East Coast version of SFMT was Bread and Puppet Theater. Along with the Yippies and Abbie Hoffman, these organizations took guerrilla theater out of the parks and into the streets, performing wherever their effect would be most pronounced. Throughout its history, guerrilla theater was associated with the Students for a Democratic Society, which fought oppression and repression on the college campus.

By 1970, however, the weakness of the movement took its toll. Although guerrilla theater purported to be a workers theater, it was founded and perpetuated by disaffected middle-class men and women. Eventually, the middle-class value system co-opted guerrilla theater and, under the eye of Richard Schechner, became simply an alternative form of performance, politics all but forgotten.