ABSTRACT
Environmental Theatre refers to performances that call into question the fixed conventions of viewing the stage through a so-called “fourth wall,” and those that challenge the standard relationships between actor and audience. Often interchangeable with “site-specific theatre,” Environmental Theatre frequently turns found spaces into theatres and shifts the regular architecture of theatres into more malleable spaces. While Environmental Theatre can refer to popular entertainments, performance art, or more contemporary theatrical productions that utilize such staging techniques or training processes, the term arose and is generally associated with the American avant-garde theatre of the late 1960s and 1970s. Even this more narrow idea of Environmental Theatre can be extended to Allan Kaprow’s happenings in the 1950s, through Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends, staged in 1977 at the Relativity Media Lab, to Reza Abdoh’s Father Was a Peculiar Man, staged in NYC’s meatpacking district in 1990. With Fefu, Fornes utilized all the spaces of a SoHo loft, staging differing scenes in various rooms and dividing the audience into smaller groups that moved separately to view each scene.
