The Counterculture on StageRadical Theater and the Reclamation of the Public Space in 1960s San Francisco

The turn from the 1950s to the 1960s in the city of San Francisco— and, for that matter, in America as a whole—brought a crucial change in the spatial focus of the counterculture from an indoor to an outdoor space. Concurrently, this would also entail a major shift from a mainly individual to a collective approach to the countercultural experience. One decade earlier, most of the Beats, the most recognizable countercultural current in 1950s San Francisco, had been writers, turning literature into the backbone of their countercultural expression. There are arguably few activities more individualistic than writing. In most cases, following Bronwyn T. Williams and Amy A. Zenger, the literary authors' "writing, rather than connecting them to others, tends to set them apart. The act of writing, rather than a social act drawn from and driven by social contact, is instead an interior and unique activity, driven by an interior genius, in the tradition of Romantic individualism."¹ The social drives inherent to human beings, however, also compelled them to forge a community in San Francisco's North Beach district, which, in turn, would prompt the appearance of the beatnik subculture.² While the Beats, along with other figures of the wider San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, had popularized a somewhat communal approach to literature epitomized by frequent poetry readings, the social scene of this community remained nonetheless largely restricted to coffeehouses, restaurants, bars, and jazz clubs—that is, mostly reserved and indoors. In fact, the Beat soul, as explained by Ray Carney, would remain heavily based on "individualism, loneliness, aimlessness and an idealistic quest for purpose."³ By contrast, in the early stages of the 1960s counterculture in San Francisco, guerrilla theater would set the tone for the upcoming flower children with its irreverent reclamation of the public space. In San Francisco's quintessential countercultural locale of the 1960s, the Haight-Ashbury district, the hippie scene would emerge thanks to a new feeling of community founded on the carnivalesque, public display, theater, rock dances, and "happenings."⁴ The countercultural experience would become, then, overtly public and collective. The consequent attention garnered from society and the media was the channel used by the rebels of the 1960s to pierce the conscience of normative society—an intention that had been largely absent from Beat counterculture.

The early 1960s saw the flourishing of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater company founded in 1959 with a heavy focus on outdoor performance and sociopolitical satire.⁵ By no means was the Mime Troupe an isolated phenomenon in the country, though. In like manner, several other theatrical troupes with strong political engagements proliferated nationwide. In Mississippi, the Free Southern Theater was born in 1963, inspired by the civil rights movement. This group would focus on a genuinely black theater, dealing with the identity and problems of the African American community.⁶ Roughly in parallel, El Teatro Campesino was founded in Delano, California, as the cultural wing of the Cesar Chavez-led United Farm Workers.⁷ From early skits performed in the fields that addressed the lives of the Mexican and Chicano farm workers, El Teatro Campesino would subsequently evolve towards broader themes that related to the Chicano community beyond the fields such as the Vietnam War and racism.⁸ Radical theater, therefore, found its way through 1960s America partially as a means to raise awareness of the violation of the civil rights of nonwhite communities from an artistic perspective. In San Francisco, conversely, radical theater would target not only civil rights issues but the core values of the American normative culture at the levels of society, economy, and family. Theatrical subversion would reach its climax in the city with the rise to prominence of the Diggers in 1966, whose life-acting approach to community action would replace the Mime Troupe at the vanguard of the local radical theater scene through 1968.⁹

But what is most remarkable about the San Francisco radical theater of the 1960s is its emphasis on the takeover of the city's...