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.We were lucky if we got away without being beaten up.”89Within the street theater movement we can distinguish two main tendencies: the action-oriented street theater (aktionistisches Straβentheater) strongly inspired by antiauthoritarian ideals, and agitprop theater in the tradition of workers’ theaters during the Weimar Republic.The action-oriented street theater did not use any theatrical codes that might have marked the event as theater, since it wanted to prevent the passersby from easily slipping into a passive spectator role.The goal was to eliminate the separation of spectators and actors and to turn the spectators into actors in order to channel the audience’s energy into direct political actions.The action-oriented theater was controversial within the student movement.While some groups saw the transformation of the audience from spectators to actors as the essential role of street theater and as an element of the overall cultural revolution,90 others were more critical.The latter, more attuned to the fact that no class-conscious proletariat existed in West Germany, cautioned against premature attempts at agitation.91 Since action-oriented theater groups were met with lack of understanding and therefore with much hostility on the part of the audience, it proved to be short-lived.Agitprop theater groups were much more positively received on the streets.Their success had to do with their reliance on the same theatrical means as those of their predecessors in the 1920s and 1930s; that is, they drew on already established, recognizable, and accepted aesthetic codes.92 Descriptions of the agitprop theaters emphasize the stereotypical presentation of the dramatis personae by the use of props and masks —the workers in hard hats and overalls, the capitalist with a potbelly, cigar, and top hat —exaggerated acting, and visual aids such as photographs and posters articulating the political message of the performance.93 These plays or revues were always based on a topical issue and used the technique of montage, interrupting the flow of the plot with songs and spoken texts, thereby feeding quotations and other informational material into the play, often by means of a chorus.This kind of theatrical presentation aimed at preventing an individualized and psychological identification with the characters of the performance, in which the political content could be lost.One of the most difficult problems for most street theaters was the dialectic of form and content.They were either carried away by the artistic component, resulting in the reception of the performance as an entertaining spectacle, or by the political content, in which case the performance became a mere oral recitation (Sprechstück) with no aesthetic appeal and thus often unable to attract the attention of passersby.Though most street theater groups came to understand the significance of the dialectical relationship of aesthetic form and political content by way of trial and error, they insisted on the primacy of the political.The aesthetic means had no value in themselves but were first and foremost a vehicle for the political end; as one group phrased it, “to promote changing our society absolutely must be the focal point of each and every performance.”94 For this and other groups, street theater should remain on the level of agitation and propaganda.Not every street theater group was so ambitious.Some were critical of such a sweeping endorsement of agitation and saw themselves more in an Enlightenment tradition.They rejected pure agitatior and propaganda as tantamount to the manipulative strategies of the culture industry.For them, the educational impetus of their theater had to prevail by providing the audience with an opportunity to take an informed position.They took to the street because they saw the streets as the last censorship-free environment and street theater at the only possible space for developing an alternative public sphere.95 The biggest problem, which led to much frustration, was the inability of most groups to reach beyond the community of the already converted
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