Whats Happening Richard Schechner Essay Example

Whats Happening Richard Schechner Paper Whats Happening Richard Schechner?: A Look at Schechners Ideas of the New Theatre Richard Schechner envisions a new theatre in three of his major essays, Happenings (1966), Six Axioms for Environmental Theatre (1968), and Negotiations with the Environment (1968).He does not spend time discussing his famed not not themselves ideology of the performer or ritual ecstasy; instead he discusses a new genealogical hybrid termed the new theatre by Allan Kaprow.Schechner uses the traditional theatre as a comparison andfirst comments in Happenings because it is unlike traditional theatre, the familiar locutions of these arts, e.g., dance, music, sculpture, painting cannot describe whats going on or provide criteria for which to evaluate it (145). Still, Schechner does provide many a comparison between the traditional theatre and this new form. Schechner recognizes that the theatrical event is a complex social interweave, a network of expectation and obligation.The exchange of stimuli-either s ensory or ideational or both-is the root of theatre (158).Knowing this, the author claims all theatre, both traditional and new, is a set of related transactions (changes in outlook and situation).How these transactions occur is what defines the art form.For example the traditional theatre works from an organic system of correlations concerning character, story, and locale.Likewise, Susanne K. Langer states, traditional theatre runs on a continuum of past and future as parts, (147) organic parts developing the situation.It involves a series of understandable transactions.However, the new theatre lacks this destiny of time.There the referents to everyday life are purely functions of sounds, textures, and images (147). Schechner basically break