Blog
Histories, guides and background from the Antenna Theater archive
Antenna Theater Journal
Four decades of audio-driven, walk-through and site-specific theater, told through the productions, the places and the ideas behind them. New pieces are added here as they are published.
-
What Is a Tableau Vivant? Living Pictures from Goethe to the Pageant of the Masters
What is a tableau vivant? The living picture from Paris in 1761 to Emma Hamilton, Goethe, Victorian parlours and Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters.
-
What Is Psychogeography? Debord, the Dérive and the Art of Getting Lost
What is psychogeography? A plain guide to Guy Debord’s dérive, its rules, The Naked City map, the Situationists and the walkers and writers who came after.
-
Rimini Protokoll’s Remote X: The Headphone Walk That Turns a City Into a Film
Rimini Protokoll’s Remote X: how the headphone walk began in Berlin in 2013, why it starts in a cemetery, what the synthetic voice asks and what critics said.
-
Mummenschanz, the Mask Theatre That Never Spoke a Word
Mummenschanz mask theatre: the Swiss trio’s 1972 founding, toilet-paper and clay masks, the Broadway years, Bossard’s death, Schurch’s last bow and today.
-
The History of Liquid Light Shows, From a Glass Dish to the Fillmore
The history of liquid light shows, from Seymour Locks’s glass dish to Bill Ham at the Avalon, Tony Martin at the Fillmore and the Joshua Light Show in New York.
-
The History of Automata: From Hero’s Theatre to Maillardet’s Writing Boy
The history of automata: Hero’s automatic theatre, al-Jazari, Vaucanson’s digesting duck, the Turk, the Jaquet-Droz automata and Maillardet’s writing boy.
-
The History of Audio-Animatronics, from a Singing Bird to Mr. Lincoln
The history of Audio-Animatronics: Disney’s mechanical bird, Project Little Man, the 1963 Enchanted Tiki Room, Mr. Lincoln at the 1964 World’s Fair and after.
-
George Coates Performance Works: San Francisco’s Theater of Phenomena
George Coates Performance Works, from 2019 Blake and The Way of How to Rare Area, Actual Sho and the 3-D glasses of Invisible Site, with the sources compared.
-
Coney Island Sideshow History: Ten-in-Ones, Talkers and Painted Banners
Coney Island sideshow history: the ten-in-one, Dreamland’s 1911 sideshow, talkers, banner painters, the Moses crackdown and Sideshows by the Seashore.
-
Ant Farm: The Art Collective Behind Cadillac Ranch and Media Burn
The Ant Farm art collective, 1968 to 1978: inflatables on Gate 5 Road in Sausalito, Cadillac Ranch, Media Burn at the Cow Palace and the fire that ended it.
-
Squat Theatre in New York: A Storefront Where the Street Was the Backdrop
Squat Theatre in New York: the Hungarian exiles’ storefront at 256 West 23rd Street, Pig, Child, Fire!, Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free, and the street as backdrop.
-
Robert Wilson, Theatre Director: From the School of Byrds to the CIVIL warS
Robert Wilson, theatre director: the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, Deafman Glance, a seven-day play in Iran, Einstein on the Beach and the CIVIL warS.