Skip to main content
NSDF Logo NSDF
Donate
What's On
NSDF 21
NSDF 21
Online. Free. Open to All. 16 New pieces of work. Debates, discussions and evening events.
Find out what happened at NSDF 21
Shows Technical Theatre Workshops Workshops and Masterclasses Other Festival Events
Register
What We Do
What We Do
What is NSDF all about?
NSDF HUB Our Yearly Festival NSDF CREATES The Bigger Room Project
Support Us
Support Us
How can you support NSDF's work?
Alumni Supporters Scheme Our Supporters Make a Donation Leave a Legacy
Our Story
Our Story
Find out more about the 65 year old Festival.
Our Mission Our History Our Principles Our People Our Alumni
The Fourth Wall
The Fourth Wall
Read articles from Noises Off, our Festival Magazine, and catch the latest from Team NSDF at Blogs & News
Blogs & News Noises Off
Noises Off Article

It happens

Published on
7th April 2020

The Noff team investigate the phenomenon of happenings, and offer you some to perform in your own home

Share this article

Happening, n.    A thing that happens, like an event or performance.

The boundary between art and life has always been fuzzy at best. Art is meant to imitate life – or maybe vice versa. But no movement has ever come closer to infringing on the messy intersection between life and art than Happenings in the fifties and sixties.

Happenings were installations or pieces of performance art meant to blur the boundaries between art and life so resolutely that the two would become indistinguishable. They were unpredictable, unrepeatable and above all, zany: Alison Knowles’ piece Make a Salad invited the audience to toss together a gigantic amount of lettuce in tarpaulin, accompanied by live music. Simone Forti’s Rollers featured three performers sitting on boxes with wheels on – they could be pushed and pulled around by the audience, while Allan Kaprow’s Fluids featured groups of participants building structures out of large blocks of ice around Los Angeles (the fact that they melted under the hot California sun as they were being built was part of the spectacle).

Anything was possible. Happenings could be huge community works of art open to all, or very private: a parallel movement, called ‘Fluxus’, posted out cards with instructions for acts of performance on them. One especially avant-garde one written by George Brecht in 1961 simply reads “Exit”.

It’s hard to know how these might have gone down with audiences in the fifties and sixties, and any records are patchy. Writing about his ‘furniture comedy’, Push and Pull, critic Allan Kaprow claimed that some “older women” were so disturbed by the mess and clutter made by other audience members that they “began to straighten things up, as if they were cleaning [a] house”.

We wanted to make some of our own happenings, minus a housework gender gap, so we’ve done just that. These are for you to perform at home with your household or whoever you’re isolating with. Most of them can be performed by one person. The more the merrier, but they don’t strictly need an audience. Peter Brook wasn’t right about everything.

Try out the ones we’ve written. Adapt them. Even better: make up some of your own. Recreate Alison Knowles’ Make a Salad if you have an abundance of lettuce and a large group of people. Or try doing it with coffee.

Wrap yourself in something as tightly as you can: a duvet, a towel, a sleeping bag. Curl up tightly, making sure you can still breathe. Ask a friend to ‘untie’ you. Resist them.

An adaptation of Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy. For as many or as few people as you like. To be played across one or two rooms.
Using the furniture and objects around you, create a new room to live in. Furnish it.

Marry your iPhone.

We want you to write your own happenings, or send us adaptations of ones you’ve read about here. Make them better. Come up with your own. Then pop them in the mail (noff@nsdf.org.uk) or send us videos (@noffmag) and we’ll include them in our zine, out later this week, which anyone will be able to print off and make by themselves (just like a happening). 

@noffmag / noff@nsdf.org.uk

Latest from Noises Off

Latest from Noises Off

See all
NSDF 2021

Lights out

3rd April 2021

Aisling Lally says goodbye to this year's NSDF

Read More
NSDF 2021

High-definition loss

3rd April 2021

Emma Robinson levels with Definitely Fine's You Will See Everything

Read More
NSDF 2021

Mother/daughter

3rd April 2021

Anna Mahtani and her mum watch You Will See Everything

Read More

Sign-up to our newsletter

Sign-up for our newsletter
Follow us
Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube
Contact Us Taking Part in the Festival Coming to the Festival Frequently Asked Questions Young Person Protection Policy Website Accessibility Privacy Policy
© NSDF Made by Grandad
Sign-up to our newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date on all our upcoming events, information and news. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we process your data.