All the hoopla earlier this month about the the 40th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death overlooked the rock icon’s considerable theatrical interests and influences.
Musical theater geeks know that The Doors had the biggest mainstream pop impact with a Brecht/Weill song (“Whiskey Bar”) since Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin swung Mack the Knife.
Morrison was also an avid follower of some of the leading U.S. experimental theater troupes of the 1960s: The San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Living Theater and the Actor’s Workshop Theatre.
He reportedly attended every performance of the Living Theater’s Frankenstein and Antigone at Bovard Auditorium in San Francisco in February of 1969. He also apparently saw the Living’s Paradise Now half a dozen times, taking full advantage of the audience participation opportunities. There’s a story of Morrison giving Living Theater founder Julian Beck a couple of thousand bucks to get back to NYC from the tour.
Morrison studied the works and theories of Antonin Artaud with poet/activist Jack Hirschman and while best known as a UCLA film student, also studied at the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts, graduating in 1965.
He was great friends with playwright/poet Michael McClure, and they were apparently planning a film of McClure’s The Beard, with Morrison as Billy the Kid. (Hopefully they were intending to make it before he gained all that weight.)
The performance-art and theatrical aspects of Doors shows culminated in obscenity busts. Right here in New Haven, Connecticut, Morrison’s encounter with police officers when he was found cavorting with a fan backstage led to the long improvised onstage monologue from which the cherished quote “Blood on the streets in the town of New Haven” emanated. Morrison was publicly arrested during the concert rant, on Dec. 9, 1967.
The Living Theater had its own police-reviewed theater event when a 1968 Yale Rep performance of Paradise Now spilled out in the streets, causing arrests and recriminations…but no hit singles.
