Happenings: An Exchange

Extract

The analysis by Darko Suvin in regard to happenings (T47) has much in it of interest—but much also, I fear, which obfuscates the last few years of theatrical experiment, and which wrongly discredits the happenings tendency. Since Professor Suvin paid considerable attention to an article of mine on this topic in formulating his view, perhaps you will permit me to respond.

Foremostly, the Suvin piece smacks of remoteness from an adequate experience of happenings and related theatre pieces. To found this suspicion, one need not have picked up on the statement that his theorizing about this mode of theatre proceeded “basically from scenarios and descriptions” rather than from firsthand contact.