International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Guerilla theater is a form of political protest that presents unannounced, politically or socially motivated performances in public spaces for an unsuspecting audience. Derived from the Spanish term which loosely translates as “little warrior,” guerilla theater stems from the legacies of Russian agit-prop , Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, and Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater. The phrase was first used around 1965 to describe the work of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a nomadic theater company performing socially and politically relevant plays in the parks of San Francisco. The invention of the phrase is commonly attributed to R. G. Davis or Peter Berg, founding director and member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe respectively ( Davis 1975 : 70). The term became prevalent upon the publication of Davis's essay, “Guerilla Theatre: 1965,” in the Tulane Drama Review (1966). In this essay, Davis asserts that guerilla theater is intended to present “effective protest or social confrontation” in order to “confront hypocrisy in the society” (1966: 132). Many political activist theater troupes adopted the methods of guerilla theater during the Vietnam War and social protests of the 1960s in order to explore, provoke, or raise awareness of sociopolitical issues. The most pervasive of these are The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater , El Teatro Campesino, the ... log in or subscribe to read full text