In a study that spans the fields of theater history, performance studies, and cultural studies, Giulia Palladini analyzes artistic performances, social performances, archival remains, and memoirs of the underground theater scene in 1960s New York. She employs foreplay as a theoretical term that refers to a form of labor that both anticipates and postpones theater production proper. Informed by queer theory and materialist theories of production, Palladini's theory of foreplay subverts any teleological conception of work, devaluing mastery and progression in favor of desire and pleasure. Her engagement with artistic performances such as Tom Eyen's play Why Hanna's Skirt Won't Stay Down, Paul Foster's Hurrah for the Bridge, Andy Warhol's Screen Tests and Jack Smith's 1970s midnight performances, as well as social performances such as Jackie Curtis's wedding performances and Ellen Stewart's founding of La Mama, illuminates an era of radical experimentation and seismic change in ideas of what constitutes theater and performance.
[from AQ] The Scene of Foreplay: Theatre, Labor and Leisure in 1960s New York elaborates the notion of foreplay as a theoretical proposal for reading a particular mode of performance production, existing outside of pre-determined structures of recognition, in terms of professionalism, artistic achievement and a logic of eventfulness. Foreplay
names a peculiar mode of being together and working in performance, recognized as distinctive of a group of artists operating in the 1960s New York scene, among which Ellen Stewart, John Vaccaro, Ruby Lynn Reyner, Jackie Curtis, Andy Warhol, Tom Eyen, Jack Smith, Penny Arcade. Matching an original approach to historical materials and theoretical reflection, the book addresses the peculiar forms of production, reproduction and consumption elaborated in the 1960s scene, through artistic experiments and social performances, as labors of love, creating for artists a condition of ‘preliminarity' toward professional work, and at the same time functioning as a counterforce within productive economy, as a prelude where value is not yet conferred upon labor. The book proposes that such labors of love can be considered both as paradigmatic for contemporary forms of precarious labor, and also as marginal forms of resistance to ideas of capitalist productivity and professionalism.
