ABSTRACT

Performing Brecht is an unprecedented history of the productions of Brecht's plays in Britain over forty years. Margaret Eddershaw surveys all aspects of Brecht in performance, from his methodologies to his place in postmodernist theatre and beyond.
She focuses on key productions by directors including George Devine, Sam Wanamaker, William Gaskill, Howard Davies, John Dexter and Richard Eyre. Eddershaw also provides three in-depth case studies of productions in the 1990s, incorporating her own exclusive access to the rehearsals and in-depth interviews with directors and performers. The case studies are:
* The Good Person of Sechuan, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Fiona Shaw;
* Mother Courage, directed by Philip Prowse and starring Glenda Jackson;
* The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Di Trevis and starring Antony Sher

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INTRODUCTION

The aim of this book is to examine how Brecht’s ideas on the function of theatre and dramatic performance, his own practice and productions and a changing view of the meaning of the plays themselves, have influenced and shaped productions of his work in Britain over the last forty years. An attempt is made to analyse how, why and with what results practitioners in this country have sought to understand the varying pulls of aesthetics, politics and dramatic theory

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was seen (as he often still is) as characteristically ‘heavy’, boring and lacking in a sense of humour, or at least irony – in fact the kind of playwright he himself deplored in his own, rational theatre. Furthermore, he was a Marxist and thus his ideas were (and are) unlikely to be suited to the mainly bourgeois institution of British theatre and theatregoers. Since Brecht’s ideology has so often been a barrier to a full appreciation of his work in Britain, and consequently appears regularly in this book, it is worth briefly spelling out here the basis and implications of his political beliefs. Brecht’s commitment to the classic Marxist tradition of ‘dialectical materialism’ (the idea that the individual is created by socio-political and economic factors and is, therefore, able to change his circumstances and environment) provided a ‘legitimacy’ (in his view at least) for an interventionist form of theatre. Brecht’s ‘discovery’ of Marxism (in 1928/9) confirmed his already well-developed idea that theatre should have a social function. As he said, he ‘had written a whole pile of Marxist plays without knowing it’ (Völker, 1979, p. 110). His ‘epic theatre’ was based on the concept of the primary importance of production in social life and it was intended to demonstrate socialism as the constant revolutionising of the forces and relations within the processes of production. Brecht often spoke of his form of theatre as one designed to make a contribution to ‘the full unfettering of everybody’s productivity’ (Suvin, 1984, p.20). He would admit, however, that in order for epic theatre to work fully, the actors involved in the production needed to share a Marxist view of the world. Certainly many theatre critics and historians would agree that without a knowledge of Marxist philosophy and aesthetics, it is virtually impossible to grasp the full meaning of Brecht’s plays. For example, Marxist philosophy is fundamental to Brecht’s dramaturgical exploration of the relationship between the individual and society. As a playwright, he builds up a complex framework of social, political, economic, historical and personal factors, which determine the character as an individual; his phrase for this is ‘statistical causality’. This approach to characterisation enables Brecht to demonstrate through his plays a wider range of possibilities for human behaviour than is the case with more ‘naturalistic’, psychologically-based drama. Brecht’s politics have, of course, been used frequently against him – as a reason for rejecting his artistic achievements, and as a ‘stick’ with which to beat him and expose the apparent hypocrisy in his personal behaviour. His detractors often draw attention to the fact that he never actually joined the Communist Party and that, after returning to East Berlin in 1949, he obtained an Austrian passport (1950), gave exclusive publishing rights to his writing to a West German publisher, and maintained a Swiss bank account. Equally notably, Brecht even refused to sign a binding contract with his own company, the Berliner Ensemble, until 1953, when he signed a form of ‘open’ agreement. In extenuation, it might be claimed that after his years in exile, when his artistic ambitions and activities had been inevitably limited,

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he was determined to ensure that he and his work would be available to both East and West, and thus his commitment to Communism was made on his own terms. Brecht also drew criticism from some of his supporters for appearing to condone Stalin’s barbaric form of Communism in Russia, and again for failing to criticise the East German government’s use of Russian tanks to restore order after the Berlin uprising of June 1953. As Peter Thomson says in his account of Brecht’s life: There is much about him, what he did and what he failed to do, that makes him vulnerable. He was a man who lived untidily, but who combined timorousness and combativeness as few people have. (Thomson and Sachs, 1994, p.38) Crucially, the corollary of Brecht’s Marxism was his creation of play-texts that were based on a social, economic and historical understanding of the development of human life and behaviour and its institutions, and which expressed Brecht’s passionate concern for the poor, the disempowered and the disenfranchised in society. His aim was not just to reflect the real world in his drama but to contribute to its change and improvement. While his deeply felt pacifism was readily acceptable to many at the time of and immediately after the war of 1939– 45, his anti-capitalist stance was more of a problem in the capitalist West. The ideals and heartfelt beliefs expressed in his plays were put into theatrical practice by Brecht operating through a working method and process that was open, experimental and collaborative, and which placed emphasis on the ensemble rather than on the individual performer. And this method and process were (and are) as much a stumbling block to his full acceptance in Britain’s theatre environment as was and is his Marxism per se. To compound the problem, much of his creative work appeared to arrive here already wrapped in the brown paper of Brechtian dramatic theory. There has always been an unwilling-ness in Britain to contemplate or work via a theoretical basis for art. British theatre, it might be argued, has never paid open respect to the intellectual approach; instead, it has thrived on traditional approaches and instinct, not on revolution and theoretical debate. Those ap-proaches include an eclectic manner in the creating of the professional actor (‘training’ is not a prerequisite for membership of the profession), though the predominance of a ‘naturalistic’ performance style in mainstream theatre (supported by television and film) results in the fact that a ‘psychological’ approach to character has been (and is) the dominant approach to a part for most actors. However, the paucity of rehearsal time in the British professional theatre, and the frequent concern on the part of directors to create ‘scenes’ rather than motivation, has encouraged the actors’ reliance on their own instinctual understanding of what a part requires rather than on the development of a systematic process based on training. This, plus a basic

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distrust of the intellectual, typical of British art circles, and other factors of British theatrical life, has led to the assumption by many that to ‘think’ about performing will inhibit the ‘feeling’ necessary to the creative act. To cap it all, of course, Brecht actually set himself against naturalism as a style or intent, and thus (or so many practitioners assumed for some time) also set himself against the development of a clear emotional line in performance – another black mark for him from a theatre that prided itself on its ability to ‘move’ an audience by a truthful display of deep sentiment. The great British actor Alec Guinness wrote in 1949 in answer to an article by Brecht on acting: I find his theories cut right across the very nature of the actor, substituting some cerebral process for the instinctive and traditional accumulation of centuries . . . I believe in the mystery and illusion of the theatre which Brecht seems to despise. And yet the part of the British theatrical tradition that is built on the performing of Shakespeare so often brings the performer very close to Brechtian notions of theatre. Brecht’s own generous accolade to the bard – that his was a truly epic form – is a strong testimony here; and as many practitioners acknowledge (and are quoted in subsequent chapters of this book), the natural inclination of British actors towards ironic story-telling, so familiar to us from Shakespeare, makes them easy converts to Brechtian practice. Until the mid-1950s, only among a small band of left-wing enthusiasts was Brecht’s work actively supported in Britain. The great boost to the development of a public for the play-wright came from the first visit to London by his company, the Berliner Ensemble, in 1956 – shortly, that is, after his death. Since the Berliner performed in German, it is not surprising that the major impact they had was on ‘theatrical style’, on the visual and physical aspects of production, rather than on thematic content. A number of British directors and designers were immediately struck by the bareness and simplicity of the company’s staging, the careful detail lavished on and produced in costumes and props, and the robust clarity and exuberance of the acting. These responses led to a small crop of British productions of Brecht plays in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but these received somewhat mixed reviews. The feeling persisted that there was something wrong with the plays themselves, acceptability of which was certainly not helped by the difficulties of translating Brecht’s specialised verbal language. The archaic words and phrases, unusual rhythms, poetic word order, and so on, proved, and continue to prove, a challenge to any translator. And the early British productions of Brecht appeared to suffer from either an over-fidelity to ‘Brechtianism’ as understood by the performers, or from a lack of understanding of the essential combination in Brecht of socio-political meaning and theatrical fun. Even critics who admired these early productions sometimes felt (and declared) that they had to overlook or ignore Brecht’s politics in order to enjoy the performance.

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Reviews were often either antagonistic to this new form of theatre or baffled by it. In both cases it frequently resulted in dismissive reviews and a rejection of the playwright. Gradually, however, the tide of anti-Brecht feeling was beginning to turn and it was given a following wind when the Berliner Ensemble made their second visit to London in 1965. Ideas in the British theatre were on the move; the arts in general in the 1960s were in a time of change and expansion. Then the ‘politicisation’ of theatre in the post-1968 period, which led to the development of the ‘fringe’ theatre scene, provided a perfect context for the rehabilitation of Brecht. His plays – including their politics this time – were ideal material for that rather un-British event, the construction of an ‘alternative’ theatre discourse. As with so much that starts artistic life as ‘alternative’, Brecht’s plays were soon absorbed into the mainstream of British theatre, and less than a decade later his work featured in the programmes of even the most conservative of repertory theatres and was hailed as ‘classic’ by the British national companies. Brecht had been appropriated. But the problem with appro-priation, of course, is that its very purpose is to pull sharp teeth and nullify political bite. And Brecht’s political message would be sanitised for a British establishment’s flirtation with socialism. As British political theatre was itself eroded by the Thatcherite 1980s, Brecht’s status within British culture – never completely convincing – became unsure. In the 1990s, Britain blinks, uncertainly and with nostalgia, in a post-cold war, post-industrial and postmodern light. Not only are the political enemies no longer identifiable, authors, too, have gone largely the way of cultural relativism. Whether there will be a meaningful place and function again for Brecht in British theatre remains to be seen. The first chapter of this book considers the context and development of Brecht’s ideas and theories on theatre performance, focusing in particular on the differences and similarities between Brecht and the ‘naturalistic’ actor/director Constantin Stanislavski – ‘measuring the distance’ between them. It then considers Brecht’s choice of actors and his methods of working with them, and how these illuminate his theoretical ideas on performance. Material is drawn from published interviews with and performance reviews of key performers such as Helene Weigel, Ekkehard Schall, Angelika Hurwicz and Charles Laughton. In Chapter 2, the subject is the penetration of British theatre by Brecht material in the 1950s. The chapter explains how both early British productions of Brecht and new playwrights in Britain were influenced by the work of the Berliner Ensemble. Two tendencies are high-lighted: that of some practitioners to imitate the outward appearances of Berliner produc-tions, thus placing the emphasis on theatrical ‘style’ rather than process, and that of others to attempt to follow Brecht’s precepts for the rehearsal process in a context ill-suited to them.

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Examples of British Brecht discussed here include George Devine’s production of The Good Woman of Setzuan, Sam Wanamaker’s The Threepenny Opera and William Gaskill’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. (Throughout this book all the play titles given reproduce exactly the translations used for the particular productions discussed.) The chapter also includes a brief assessment of the relationship between the work of Brecht and that of key British playwrights: John Arden, Arnold Wesker, John Osborne, Robert Bolt and Edward Bond. Chapter 3 describes the ways in which the political upheavals of 1968 and the social and artistic developments in Britain made Brecht eminently suitable and accessible to radical theatre groups. It analyses the impact of politically committed theatre practitioners’ attempts to take on all aspects of Brecht’s dramatic theory, political philosophy and, as far as possible, theatre practice. Detailed analyses of Brecht productions by some key radical companies (e.g. Foco Novo, Belt and Braces Roadshow, Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, Manchester’s Contact Theatre and Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre) demonstrate how their commitment to the integra-tion of political meaning and aesthetic expression contributed to the growing understanding and acceptance of Brecht’s theatre in Britain. This achievement is contrasted in Chapter 4 with the ways in which Brecht’s plays were incorporated into the classical repertoire by the national companies – the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre – in the 1970s and 1980s. Here there is an assessment of the damaging impact on these Brecht productions of the companies’ hierarchical structure and organisation, the all-too-frequently non-collaborative approaches to production, and the undue emphasis placed on performance style and set design, often in isolation from a genuine commitment to the intrinsic, socio-political meaning of the texts. The chapter centres on the productions of Brecht in the 1970s and 1980s for the Royal Shakespeare Company directed by Howard Davies, and on those at the National Theatre directed by John Dexter and Richard Eyre. Chapter 5 presents three case studies, that is, detailed accounts based on access to rehears-als and on interviews with the relevant directors and performers, of three major British productions of Brecht plays in the early 1990s. The first case study is of the award-winning production of The Good Person of Sichuan at the National Theatre in 1989/90, directed by Deborah Warner, with Fiona Shaw as Shen Te/Shui Ta. The second is of the Citizens Theatre’s 1990 production of Mother Courage, directed by Philip Prowse, with Glenda Jackson in the title role. And the third is of the National Theatre’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed in 1991 by Di Trevis, with Antony Sher as Ui. The main focus of this chapter and its case-studies is the relationship in practice between Brechtian theory, and the aesthetics and the politics of the texts, in both the rehearsal process and the finished performances.

chapter 1|32 pages

BRECHT AND THE PERFORMER

Measuring the distance

chapter 2|26 pages

PERFORMING EARLY BRITISH BRECHT

Following the Berliner

chapter 3|26 pages

PERFORMING BRECHT POST-1968

The radical responses

chapter 4|27 pages

PERFORMING ‘CLASSICAL’ BRECHT

Making the strange familiar

chapter 5|32 pages

PERFORMING BRECHT IN THE 1990s

Three approaches to post-wall Brecht

chapter 6|23 pages

PERFORMING BRECHT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Dinosaurs came later