It's 1920, and 7,000 men in black pants and white tank tops are gathered on a field in Prague. Surrounded by a rapt audience, the men, all sinew and muscle, organize themselves into lines spanning the field and perform carefully coordinated movements of strength and agility. In the performance's climactic feat, the men divide into equal clusters and climb atop each other to form hundreds of human pyramids.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, mass performances like this one became extremely popular in what would become the nation of Czechoslovakia - a way for those who shared an ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage, but not yet a national identity, to create a community of physical culture and egalitarianism. Known as the Sokols, these gymnasts trained in small athletic clubs, all of which joined the mass performances that served as symbols of regional unity and strength for their hundreds of thousands of spectators.
This is one example of the extraordinary historical phenomenon of systematized mass performances revealed in Kimberly Jannarone's new book, "Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens" (University of Michigan Press). Jannarone, a professor in the practice of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, explores the phenomenon across centuries and countries, delving into their formation, structure, and impact. She defines mass performance as one involving at least 1,000 performers at the same time and location.
