The Ark, Day Seven: Reinvention

First off, note that I didn’t write anything for Day Six.  That’s because we spent the entire day working on learning the score for “Threepenny Opera“, and aside from the fact that singing is fun and I love it, I don’t have much to say.

Today was a very information-heavy day, though; we began with a presentation from Eo Sharp on the designs for Brecht’s productions, with a focus on Casper Neher.  Brecht worked with quite a few designers during his career, but his relationship with Neher is an interesting one because the two men met in secondary school and ended up collaborating extensively throughout Brecht’s life.  There are stories of Brecht and Neher corresponding while Neher was serving in World War I: Brecht would send him copies of scripts, and Neher would respond with sketches of characters and scene representations.  Neher’s presence through the development of Brecht’s early plays (“Baal“, “Man Equals Man“, and “In The Jungle of Cities“) implies that the designer in particular was present right from the beginning of the writing process — something that doesn’t happen much today, either with new work or with new adaptations.

The knowledge of the working relationship with Neher, coupled with the knowledge that Brecht collaborated with so many others later in his career, led me and others today to wonder if Brecht ever wrote a play on his own.  It suggests that “Brecht” is more of a movement than an individual; it also attests to the power of sharing and collaboration.  It’s not unlike how we work today: since the Canadian theatre is currently obsessed with the idea of workshopping plays ad nauseum before ever producing them, it can be argued that most new work is actually the product of a playwright’s imagination plus the input of numerous actors, directors, dramaturges and (only occasionally) designers who get to see and read early drafts… even though it’s the playwright’s name that stands alone when the work is finished.

We also touched upon the Brecht design aesthetic, which really emphasized natural colors, natural fabrics, bright lighting, massive projections, projected text, exposed curtain wires and lighting fixtures, and the use of ‘selective realism’ (meaning that certain props and sparse objects would be realistic for symbolic effect, but much of the overall design would not be).  At that time — when most theatre was wrapped up in the idea of creating a realistic illusion of life on stage — the approach used was awfully radical.  It would have rattled people into being aware that they were watching a play, which was exactly what Brecht wanted, so that the audience could react to a performance instead of getting swept away by it.  Of course, these days the use of these kinds of elements makes an educated audience automatically use the word “Brechtian”: the tactics have become ingrained and, to an extent, a cliché.  If Brecht were alive today, he would surely have evolved or abandoned this style because it doesn’t have the same effect now.  It can be argued that it is therefore our job, in re-interpreting his work, to find new ways to achieve the same result.  This jives really well with Peter Brook’s thoughts in “The Open Door“, where he suggests that any theatre that begins to code and regurgitate a specific form without a meaningful connection to that form is a dead theatre.

This is a big idea.  And it’s easy for me to go from wondering how to re-interpret Brecht to wondering about the form of theatre in general, to whether or not we as theatre artists are failing audiences by failing to adapt theatrical techniques to the realities and technologies of today (I’m talkin ’bout YOU, Internet!), to whether or not my frustration with some of my recent projects lies in their dedication to status quo and not in my sense of boredom and exhaustion… but I digress.

This afternoon, we had a brief overview of the Marxist movement, and then dove into “The Mother“, which is one of Brecht’s didactic plays.  The story concerns a mother who becomes a champion of the communist movement as a result of her son’s involvement in it; it takes place in Russia between about 1905 and 1915 and outlines in an excruciatingly preachy manner how communism will save the world if we all work to educate and unite the working class, and keep striving for revolution.  Look, I’m 100% in favor of theatre that aims to teach, and I’m occasionally in favor of theatre that just comes right out and offers an idea (instead of a metaphor or allegory), but to my ears today, “The Mother” rings a little bit like one of the modern-day pseudo-documentary films like “Maxxed Out” or “Crude Awakening” — except, of course, that it’s pro-communist instead of environmentalist or anti-capitalist.  I’m not criticizing either of those films (they are also transparently didactic) but pointing out that perhaps other media can do a better job of what Brecht was doing with theatrical tools and “teaching plays” in circa-1930 Berlin.

I haven’t even touched on some insights I had today into Brecht’s influence on Peter Hinton’s directorial approaches, or on our reiteration of the true meaning of ‘alienation effect‘, and I know I’ve already written a long one … but those ideas will hopefully come up again and I can write more about them later.  Right now I need to get some sleep, because tomorrow is a day of Fear and Misery.

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