When Lindsay Kemp began performing in the late 60s he filled the alternative theatres where he appeared with blood, glitter, pansexual orgies and naked young men. In ‘Flowers’, his flamboyant Genet-inspired celebration of spirituality, tenderness, excess and violence, he performed with his long-time friend Jack Birkett, "The Incredible Orlando" ─ a muscular blind man with a completely shaven head.

In a characteristically comic and challenging scene from the ‘Turquoise Pantomime’ Birkett would be led quietly on stage, dressed in black fishnet stockings and a pink waspie. Suddenly he would belt out ‘I Want A Man' while a restrained Kemp would occupy himself pulling invisible wires from his ears and wiping non-existent dogshit from his satin shoes.

Kemp passed on the mime skills of his mentor Marcel Marceau inspiring, amongst others, David Bowie. His highly charged performances, pioneering physical theatre, were in constant international demand.

Happenings

Taking place anywhere, happenings were life-events meant to be seen as art. In one of the first, Theater Piece No.1, John Cage and Charles Olson stood reading from ladders, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and played scratched records, David Tudor performed on a prepared piano while Merce  Cunningham danced. All these things took place in 1952 at Black Mountain College, simultaneously, among the audience rather than on stage. The most important happening in London was the Albert Hall “International Poetry Incarnation” in 1965, where 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde poets of the day. One of these, Jeff Nuttall, organised several more happenings, often working with sound poet Bob Cobbing who would chant, sing, whisper and shout out partially-scripted, dada-like ‘quasi-words’ while dancing round. 

Psychedelic Art

From Aphrodite’s Children

Matthew looked again. The poster was white at centre broadening into hot-red, yellow then black. In the middle a ball, exploding with rays out and clouds, was emerging, lamp-like, from a stupa. Beyond that the sun was orange-red in circles, throwing out cupids, halos, dancing genii, Bo-peep angels and witches on horses. A thick black border acted as a frame.

...  There were words mixed in with the wash of colour, repeated in capitals across the upper border. Pronouncing slowly, he read them out: “Hapshash and the Coloured Coat featuring the human host and the heavy metal kids.”