Description
Book SynopsisFrom burning draft cards to staging nude protests, much left-wing political activism in 1960s America was distinguished by deliberate outrageousness. This book argues that these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse.
Trade Review"Craig J. Peariso’s work challenges traditional narratives regarding some of North America’s most significant political iconoclasts of the 1960s."
-- Max Shulman * TDR: The Drama Review *
"Radical Theatrics is a thought-provoking book that should educate and trouble anyone desperate to change the world and confused about what to do when those efforts stall."
-- Jeremy Varon * Journal of American History *
"This intriguing book presents a revisionist revaluation of the more problematic radical edges of political performance art in the United States of the mid-to-late 1960s. . . . Peariso has successfully shown that awkward decade was up for it in many compelling ways. . . . [Radical Theatrics] launches a sophisticatedly argued call for newly creating politico-aesthetic styles of ‘anti-representational’ performance."
-- Baz Kershaw * Studies in Theatre and Performance *
"Peariso’s study of ‘failed’ sixties radicalism is an important contribution to our growing understanding of the complexities of radicalism in the postmodern, where performance is everywhere and manifold."
-- Alan Filewod * Labour / Le Travail *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction | Stereotypes, Opposition, and “the Sixties”
1. Monkey Theater
2. “Watch Out for Pigs in Queen’s Clothing”: Camp and the Image of Radical Sexuality
3. “Erect . . . Strong . . . Resilient and Firm”: Eldridge Cleaver and the Performance of “Black” Liberation
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
