The Decline and Fall of the (American) Avant-Garde: Part III—The Responses

The Decline and Fall of the (American) Avant-Garde Part Ill-The Responses When we first published Richard Schechner's two-part essay "The Decline and Fall of the (American) Avant-Garde" in PAJ 14 and PAJ 15, we never anticipated the reaction and controversy his article would generate throughout the experimental theatre community. It came at a time when the experimental theatre found itself entering a period of increased selfinvolvement . Yet Schechner's essay provoked precisely the kind of opinion and passion that he thought the theatre world lacked. It also gave the Editors of PAJ the chance to invite and print some of those rsponses to Schechner, inaugurating this new section "Backtalk." "Backtalk" will be a special section set aside in each issue of PAJ to publicly address and even oppose issues and points of view raised by critics and artists in these pages, and in the culture at large. It's a forceful polemical way, we think, to continue and expand debate, especially at a time when such options are becoming increasingly limited in the performing arts. It's also a section for artists to speak out more directly on issues that concern them, and for critics to analyze in more detail the form and function of contemporary theatre rather than just to celebrate its existence. "Backtalk" is our way of framing single issues that derhand thoughtful and heated response and give them a wider focus. Schechner's provocative essay ranged over a wide variety of issues that will find their way into repeated discussions about past and current avant-garde work: historical continuity, political activism, a shrinking economy, bad journalism, interculturalism, the decline of group work, the overt personalism of the solo performer, and the failure to pass on what was learned to a new generation of artists. Those who talk back to Schechner here not only repudiate, in large measure, his views on these issues but passionately reject his "decline and fall" position. We expect the next issue of PAJ will carry the debate even further. The Editors 38 ...