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USE OF THEATRE FOR SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.
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Discuses methods & goals of George Bernard Shaw, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht & Antonin Artaud.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Discuses methods & goals of George Bernard Shaw, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht & Antonin Artaud.
Paper Introduction:
Since the late nineteenth century playwrights, directors, and theorists of all kinds have very frequently considered theater as a primary means of working toward the betterment of the human race. Whether they proposed to convey important ideas or actually effect change in the audience these writers tended to hold that the theater was the proper vehicle for such efforts because it spoke, as it were, directly to the individual sitting in the audience. Feelings could be roused, arguments could be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms, and the makers of drama could work on the individual in a setting where every effect--verbal, visual, and aural--was under the theater's control. Despite sharing the notion that the theater was the optimum setting for such communication and general notions of improving humanity, the various theories of theatrical
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by destroy[ing]those aspects of the illusionistic theater, especially identification andsuspense, that encourage loss of intellectual awareness and lulling of thecritical sense" (Cameron & Hoffman 188). Martin's, 1987.Spurling, Hilary. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama Since 187 . New York: St. A brief discussion of the methods ofachieving social improvement favored by George Bernard Shaw, ErwinPiscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud will demonstrate the varietyof these conceptions and comment on the effectiveness. Piscator attemptedto involve his audiences empathetically in the action by placing them inthe midst of world events and allowing them to react. Piscator's earlytheater was conceived of as a proletarian theater that sought to reflectthe values of the Russian Revolution and Brecht "sought to establishsystematic links between Marxist ideology and epic theater" (Speirs 35).They differed on a number of important points but both men essentiallyadhered to the claim, articulated by Brecht, that history demanded a newform of theater because "the old form of drama does not make it possible torepresent the world as we see it today" as the world changes from acapitalist bourgeois society to a new socialist economy in which theworking class would be dominant (quoted in Speirs 4 ). The theater as double implied the creation of images based onsomething stronger than words and Artaud looked to non-Western culturessuch as Mexico and Bali for forms of ritual theater that might provideclues to how to create "a theater in which cruel events are themselvessymbolized by abstract gestures" (Cameron & Hoffman 196). He "saw the prospectfor limited progress only" but held that every individual should bededicated to the continuing improvement of the race (Brockett & Findlay112). In Brecht's view, therefore, Piscator's audience,"like that of any traditional theatre, came to substitute theatricalexperience for practical action, for catharsis was achieved within thetheater rather than outside it" (Brockett & Findlay 412). In his 1927 presentation ofAlexei Tolstoy's Rasputin, for example, Piscator erected a globe-likestructure on the stage which opened and closed revealing severalperformance areas while images from several film projectors showed historicbattle films, statistics, dates, and other information. Piscator found normal theater architecture inadequate to the scopeinherent in epic theater and he often combined live actors, film, andfairly elaborate sets in a manner that, he said, "show[ed] that the problemof the individual's position in society does not have to representedseparate from it, but that his fate is imbedded in its political and socialstructure" (quoted in Brockett & Findlay 4 9). His earliest ideas about theater related to hisperception of the inefficacy of language. Brecht. The aim of thisnarration "is not to impersonate the characters in this everyday drama butto describe their interaction with sufficient objectivity and in as muchdetail as is necessary" to provide the audience with enough information toanalyze the events set before it (Speirs 44). Even the naturalism and realism of theScandinavian theater that so impressed him did not have more than a shalloweffect on his dramaturgy. Erwin Piscator and BertoltBrecht, on the other hand, developed the notion of the 'epic theater' inwhich narrative replaced the 'embodiment' of events and the viewer was tobe moved to action by the view of the world he was given. Refusing to reject"this sensation [and] letting it penetrate into his or her consciousness sothat he or she could become aware of the estranged Other within" is thegoal for the audience that is the "utopian and perhaps impossible task"that Artaud bequeathed to the theater (Finter 37). Although this ideal maynever have been realized it has been a driving force in many theatricalpresentations since Artaud's ideas were shared with the world. . Feelings could be roused, argumentscould be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms, and the makers ofdrama could work on the individual in a setting where every effect--verbal,visual, and aural--was under the theater's control. There wereimportant differences in their approaches but both Piscator and Brechtconceived of a new form of theater as essential in a world being, as theybelieved, transformed by the transition away form capitalism and towardsocialism. Piscator was the primarydeveloper of epic theater in the 192 s and it was only later that Brechttook up these ideas and, in several ways, reinterpreted them. Byrejecting language Artaud rejected those aspects of the theater--logic andplot--that depended on it and sought in their place "the continuing arousaland involvement of each member of the theater audience" (Cameron & Hoffman196). Thus Shaw's works do not,despite his utilitarian pose, "provide practical solutions to specificproblems--they merely illuminate the problems and expose the paradoxes"(Brockett & Findlay 112). Both men were strongly influenced by Marxism. C. The second strand of his thought was the idea of the theater as a'double', by which he meant that theater was not to be a mirror of theworld, as was conventionally assumed. This type of theater necessarilylimited itself to that small portion of human experience that is related tothe conscious mind and, therefore, to the merely transitory predicaments ofindividuals and social groups. Hedisapproved of Shakespeare, for example, because he did not demand socialimprovement of his audiences, and he claimed to dislike the carefully madeworks of his own era because their pursuit of the correct commercialformulae took precedence over any interest in showing audiences the truthabout the world. The audience member would find himself in the midst of theperformance--an observer and yet a part of it--and its symbols would berecognizable to him at a much deeper psychological level than languagecould reach. The forms of drama that merely sought to replicate a portion of theworld on the stage--the approach that predominated in Western theater--was,Artaud claimed, a mistaken approach. What was needed,he said, was a theater "which does not numb us with ideas for the intellectbut stirs us to feeling by stirring up pain" (quoted in Brockett & Findlay378). Artaud had few opportunities to realize his own theatrical ideas onthe stage. Shaw did, however, believe that the only significant drama is thatwhich "lead[s] the audience to right action" (Brockett & Findlay 112). Hisbelief in Fabian socialism--which held that social change had to be gradualand was only accomplished by gifted leadership--rather than by the 'people'themselves--and his conviction regarding the existence of the life forcewhich works throughout civilization's course to evolve the superman meantthat Shaw was not a believer in immediate solutions. Artaud's difficult ideas and the innovative approaches of Brecht andPiscator continue to exert a major influence on the theater. Ed. In performancethe actor in such a theatrical experience would not merely imitate, forexample, the murderer but would display the murderer's true affect. Thiscombination of the real and the overstated lent his works a kind of"superrealism in which the essence of life is captured by sharpening andexaggerating carefully chosen elements" but, while it was entertaining, itaccomplished little more than a brief shaking up of audiences'preconceptions--and failed to be the kind of call to action Shaw claimedwas the true purpose of theater. Inthis way Piscator transformed what was essentially a melodrama aboutRasputin's career at the Russian imperial court into "a drama showing theclash of world powers in which the Russian royal family seemed rather pettyparticipants" (Brockett & Findlay 41 ). London: Macmillan, 1962.Finter, Helga. "Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre: The Legacy of the Theatre of Cruelty." TDR, 41.4 (1997): 15-4 .Needle, Jan, & Peter Thomson. As Brecht putit, the spectator in the ordinary dramatic theater says "yes, I have feltlike that too," that is what life is like--but in the epic theater theaudience says "I'd never have thought of that," it has to stop" (quoted inNeedle & Thomson 123). His own mostsuccessful plays conformed to the conventions of the 'well-made' play, butShaw favored a kind of superrealism that conveyed ideas while relying ontraditional dramatics to involve the audience. Despite sharing thenotion that the theater was the optimum setting for such communication andgeneral notions of improving humanity, the various theories of theatricalpresentation were quite different. In writing over fifty plays Shaw made "no advance, in point ofinnovation, on his original scheme of taking nineteenth century stereotypesand turning them on their heads" (Spurling 139). His principal contribution consisted of theessays, written between 1931 and 1936, which were published in The Theatreand Its Double (1938). Where Brecht was willing to use as wide a variety oftheatrical means as Piscator he designed his plays with the idea ofrestricting such technical elements "to those usable by any group"(Brockett & Findlay 412). Works CitedBrockett, Oscar G., & Robert Findlay. In this way Western theater became littlemore than a repository for the ideas of the culture that repressed theinstincts as well as being "the property of an elite group [and] cut offfrom the masses" (Brockett & Findlay 378). . The culture preserved andperpetuated by such theater was of no use to the great majority of peopleand could do nothing to improve the world. At times therewould be as many as four different activities going on simultaneously. Of the theorists considered here it was the director Piscator and theplaywright Brecht who had the greatest opportunities to realize theirideas. Brecht viewed this,however, as a matter of deciding in advance what one wanted the audience tofeel and designing the theatrical experience in such a way as to elicitthis precise response. The Theatrical response. At this deep levelall the impulses "that lead to hatred, violence, and disaster" are buriedand they would be released by a theatrical experience that was "somethinglike a religious experience in which a true communion--the elimination ofall divisions--is reached" (Brockett & Findlay 378). Another traitthat distinguished Piscator's work from Brecht's was his use of complextechnical means. Whetherpresenting large-scale historical events or the more intimate dramas ofBrecht the epic theater offers the spectator an experience that, ideally,will, move him/her to action once s/he has left the theater. The mirror merely reflects the flawsof humanity that rest on the civilized surface, but the double "createsimages of cruelty" that reach below that surface (Cameron & Hoffman 197). AsArtaud described this process, Once launched upon the fury of his task, an actor requires infinitely more power to keep from committing a crime than a murderer needs courage to complete his act, and it is here, in its very gratuitousness, that the action and effect of a feeling in the theatre appears infinitely more valid than that of a feeling fulfilled in life (quoted in Finter 37).The actor's awareness of his desire to commit murder leads to the displayof affect that leads, in turn, to the audience member's own physicalawareness of his/her potential for the same action. There was little more to hiseffort to improve humanity through his plays than this shaking up ofreceived ideas because he never conceived of the manner of presentation asvital to conveying a message. Hoffman. But it islikely that it is Shaw's less satisfactory attempts to change humanity'slot that is still the prevalent approach to social change through drama.The simple insertion of a few good ideas into the format of the traditionalplay is undoubtedly more common than drama that stretches the limits of thetheater or of the audience. This was the source of the first of the two important strands ofArtaud's thought. Words, he held, were inadequateas symbols of the things they were meant to represent and theater needed tofind "some other means of symbolic discourse" (Cameron & Hoffman 196). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.Cameron, Kenneth M., & Theodore J. In Artaud's words, thisculture" never saved a man from the worry of living or of being hungry" andthe important thing, therefore, was not to preserve it but "to extract fromwhat we call culture some ideas whose living force is identical to hunger"(quoted in Brockett & Findlay 378). As this example shows, epic theater presented events to the spectatorand rather than attempting to impersonate fictional, or even real, eventsthe dramatists offered a form of theatrical narrative. Indeed it was a favoriteploy, when audience found themselves outraged by his subject matter, "topoint with an air of injured innocence to the irreproachableconventionality of his construction and technique" (Spurling 139). As Speirs says, Brecht'stheater was, in some respects, like the attempt of an eyewitness todescribe an accident. Indeed they would be understood only at a level whichlanguage and the veneer of civilization had repressed. Both men were practitioners of what is generally known as "epictheater," which "seeks to focus rational audience attention on the socialand historical questions embodied in the performance . He did not commit to the kind of stage realismthat consisted of a direct transfer of a portion of the world onto thestage. "The Critic's Critic." The Genius of Shaw: A Symposium. 129- 41. Antonin Artaud was also moved by human suffering but he was notinterested in political ideas and wished to create a theater that reachedinto the darkest, most repressed parts of human beings--where the impulsesthat led to human cruelty had been repressed by civilization and language.Artaud's notion of a theater of cruelty was based on surpassing languageand mere replication of the real world in favor of ritual theater thatwould exorcise cruel impulses and change audiences in fundamental ways.The creators of these notions of theater had varying opportunities toembody their work in actual productions, but each of them has been veryinfluential and has had a wide influence on theater ever since. But they have proven to be among the most influential oftwentieth century theories. Michael Holroyd. Once the witness has narrated what has happened thecourt, or audience, can judge from this presentation of a sequence of causeand effect exactly what responsibility each party bears. As Spurling notes, as times change little isleft but "characters whose ideas no longer impose the smallest mentalstrain" and "the effect of synthetic significance grafted onto stockdramatic situations" becomes apparent (141). Bernard Shaw, for example,favored the presentation of philosophical ideas in a theater that, althoughhe claimed his plays were utilitarian in nature, did not limit itself torealistic presentation (in terms of language or setting). He saw the world as essentially cruel and humanity asincapable of transcending the essential cruelty within it without somemeans of reaching down to the inner sources of cruelty. Through such theaterthe audience member would be able to reach "the excluded Other" repressedby civilization--the Other that was the root of the cruelty of the world(Finter 36). Despite the similarity of their ultimate goals there was littleagreement on methods in these men's approaches. Since the late nineteenth century playwrights, directors, andtheorists of all kinds have very frequently considered theater as a primarymeans of working toward the betterment of the human race. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.Speirs, Ronald. Bertolt Brecht. Improved living conditions, better education, and the rejection ofold prejudices would contribute to the progress of humanity and this iswhat Shaw sought to accomplish in his plays. Brecht, of course, was a playwright who hopedfor widespread productions of his work while Piscator was a director andwhile creating each production only needed to regard whatever limitationsexisted at the moment. Whether theyproposed to convey important ideas or actually effect change in theaudience these writers tended to hold that the theater was the propervehicle for such efforts because it spoke, as it were, directly to theindividual sitting in the audience. Shaw was fully aware of the fact that he never reallytranscended contemporary conventions himself. Neither, however, did he allow for any breaking of the 'fourthwall', while his dialogue was far from naturalistic (with the heightened,ferociously articulate speech of most of his characters), and hissituations were always variations of classic, familiar plots. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. Shaw preferred topresent himself as a thinker rather than a mere playwright and thedistinction he made between the two roles is obvious from the manner inwhich his ideas--socialism, the life force, the superman--seem to beimposed on his dramatic situations rather than inherent in them. In terms of dramatic or theatrical innovation Shaw did not progressvery far beyond the standard of the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou--which he had deplored during his years as a critic--or the naturalism ofIbsen--which he admired for its supposed utilitarian approach to socialproblems. The paradox of Shaw's efforts was, therefore, that he was impressedby the efforts of Ibsen, and others, to create a naturalistic picture oflife that spoke to the need for the audience to take some stand or actionin regard to social problems yet never achieved the same kind of impact inhis own work because of his inherent conventionality.
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