Dewey, Ken

Ken Dewey (1934-1972) was a performance artist, playwright, director, and an arts administrator who was active in the Happenings movement of the 1960s. He was born on August 30, 1934 in Chicago, Illinois and attended Columbia University in the City of New York where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1959. While at Columbia University, he studied sculpture with Oronzio Mandarelli and playwriting with Theodore Apstein. After college, Dewey moved to San Francisco where he studied mime with R. G. Davis and dance with Anna Halprin. He became a member of the Actor's Workshop of San Francisco where he was an assistant director.

Dewey became interested in Happenings when he saw Robert Whitman's piece American Moon performed in 1962. Performative art like Happenings appealed to Dewey as he had always desired to take theater off of the stage and into the streets. Dewey used geography, social science, architecture, and technology in his work. His projects were often designed for a particular city and focused on that city's infrastructure, history, and culture. One of his first pieces was City Scale, a series of musical and theatrical events that took participants to various locations around San Francisco.

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