Allan Kaprow gave precise instructions that when “Something [is] to take place: [it is a] happening.” (Kaprow, 1959) He believed at first that happenings were very playful activities that involved audience members participating for the sake of playing. He would create events such as ‘Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts’ which involved an audience moving together to experience different elements such as a band playing toy instruments, a woman squeezing an orange, and painters painting and experiencing the art whilst having fun. As time moved on his work evolved, and became less scripted and incorporated more everyday activities, this was around 1961-62 when he began to take friends and students to specific sites and make them perform small everyday actions. We feel like this can link to our piece as we hope to engage the audience in a playful way but just by performing small actions such as a hug or a high five. In 2014 a group called ‘This Is Not A Theatre Company’ re staged one of Kaprow’s happenings called ‘pose’ in which they carried a chair around the Fundacio Antonio Tapies in Barcelona and posed in the chair in different places.

This Is Not A Theatre Company; Pose

I feel that this would disrupt people’s everyday routines if they were to see a chair placed within a city so this links to our piece as we aim to do exactly that. The company states “The participatory and interactive nature of a ‘happening’ ensures that each one is a totally unique theatrical/performance experience that cannot be recreated.” (TINATC, 2014) I agree with this statement because even if you re stage a happening it will never be fully recreated because you will never get exactly the same responses from the same people at the same time in the same place and so on. This will be the same as our piece because it relies on social interaction from audience members no one will ever be able to recreate our performance because they wont have the same responses.
We have decided on a speech to tell audience members if they question us on what we are doing we will respond with; ‘This is a performance. The purpose of the high street now is to make you spend money, we aim to disrupt peoples everyday routines through human interaction even if it is just for a fleeting moment and in doing so liberate them from consumerism.”

Works cited;
Kaprow, A. (1959) Fluxus and Happenings [online] http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html

This Is Not A Theatre Company. (2014) [Online] http://www.thisisnotatheatrecompany.com/#!happenings/c1gt3