Happenings

Written by Michael Black

Revolution was in the air for New York theatre-goers in the autumn of 1959. Many artists, critics, and audience members had begun to think that theatre was becoming stale and that its growth was being stifled by convention. One of these people was a young painter named Allan Kaprow. While Kaprow was an accomplished abstract painter, it was his first theatrical work that brought him to the forefront of the artistic community and helped etch his name into history. Kaprow's production of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts was the namesake of a new genre that critics would refer to as "happenings". He described his purpose as to "increase the responsibility of the observer" (Goldberg, 128). Happenings tested long-standing conventions and begged the question, "what can really be called theatre?" By testing convention, happenings pushed for change and helped revolutionize the way we look at theatre.

Despite its obvious significance, a happening is actually a hard term to properly define. In fact, happening is a term that was conceived by critics to group a wide array of different, obscure acts into a single genre; thus the definition of a happening is a generalization at best.

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