‘Total art’ hits Washington Square Park

Shakespeare in the Park it wasn’t… .

A group called Guerrilla Theater was in Washington Square on the afternoon Sat., April 8, performing in Garibaldi Plaza.

There was raw emotion, disarray, smoke, nudity, masks, fishnet stockings and generally stuff scattered all over the place. Some of the players were transgender.

Photographer Milo Hess did not catch the performance’s plot, but he did get a lot of great photos.

A social media post for the event — which is the same as what’s posted on the group’s Web site, guerrilla365.com — had a brief message, actually more of a manifesto: “Like any birth, we arrive in a gruesome but hopeful state. A roiling alchemy of total art combining both new media and ancient modes of expression. The public square is our natural home, without which the tension between creator and unsuspecting pedestrian is lost — hence the term ‘guerrilla.’ True victory is won in the agora, not the white cube.”