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Approaching the Sixties: Between Nostalgia and Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2002

Janelle Reinelt
Affiliation:
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine

Extract

This essay addresses theatre scholars who self-identify as baby boomers or, more precisely, those who link the years of their youth to the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, those who, in the vernacular of that time, were participants in or influenced by “the Movement.” Of course, the singular “Movement” was really a number of different movements or forms of activism, public performance, and revolutionary effort. The unselfconscious use of singular terms like “Movement” was one of the defining conundrums of the period itself, but I do not want to begin with a never-ending series of qualifications indicating I have passed beyond the thinking of those years. I prefer, rather, to start with a basic affirmation of participation in the rhetoric as well as the struggles of that time. Although my discussion addresses a limited age cohort within the field of theatre and performance studies, I am ultimately suggesting that scholarly, pedagogical, or even performative projects based upon a period that one has lived through need, at some level, to incorporate openly and consciously a critical self-reflection based on that experience.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc.

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