from word to action

Brecht and The Good Person of Szechuan

But first. Handing back last week's assignment on 'News Flash'. Some good work. A couple of firsts. A few two-ones. A handful of two-twos. Some passes. Some fails, too. Ten to twenty percent of people who were away the week the assignment was given but didn't find out what it was. And received no mark at all.

But, as was said on this day of Brecht, anno domini 2005, nothing is over until it's over. There is still the possibility of change - if you want it. No one is damned. Yet. This is your little mid-term assessment. It won't count. Except in my mind and in my memory. Everything is redeemable. The lame may one day walk again.

The main critique would be the lack of detail. In particular the lack of work on Objectives. And Tactics. Obstacles. Stakes and Action Verbs. Having been given a shiny new tool box to do your carpentry, a surprising number of you still used a rusty old nail-file and the heel of one of your old boots to construct your dining room suite.

This led to some group work on Bertholt. In threes and fours knowledge was shared. Then shared with the whole group. Some students apologised that with regard to Brecht they were pretty ignorant. But this is not a sin. The only sin is the desire to remain ignorant.

We started with The Fourth Wall. We agreed that Brecht had wanted to abolish it. We tried to pin down this lack-of-fourth-wallness by asking whether Brecht had invented the idea.

Bit by bit we reminded ourselves that actually the Fourth Wall had only just been built when Brecht came along and knocked it down again. The Greeks didn't have it. Nor the Romans. Nor did the Mummers. Nor the Mystery Play actors. Nor Commedia Actors. Nor the Spanish Playwrights. Nor Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. Nor Moliere. Nor Restoration. Nor Marivaux and the French and Italian companies in Paris in the 18th Century. Nor English Pantomime. Nor Melodrama.

In fact, the Fourth Wall had only existed for 100 of the 2000 years of drama. Little more than a fad or a temporary fashion.

Likewise the idea of putting the audience in the dark. Who made that rule up? Where did that one come from?

We talked about our own experiences of seeing a show at the Globe in London. Standing there in your plastic mac in the rain eating a pie that you've just bought. How the audience is lit and from time to time a 737 makes its final descent into Heathrow. And both actors and audience know that this is not real life. They're in a Theatre.

And that Brecht knew he was in this tradition. That he was the traditional one. It was the theatre of the Fourth Wall and Darkness that was the upstart.

We talked about his poem 'The Lighting' which begins:

Give us some light on the stage, electrician. How can we
Playwrights and actors put forward
Our images of the World in half darkness? The dim twilight
Induces sleep... etc (P426 Poems of Brecht. ed. Methuen.)

We talked about change. We talked about the RESISTIBLE rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui). Not the irresistible rise. How there is no word in German. So he invented it.

We talk about dialectic. Dialectical events upon the stage and dialectical ideas on a page. Of a clash of two things. Two ideas. To provide a third thing. A process not a stasis. A river not a lake, we said. Movement. History. The Future. Something Dynamic. Not something endlessly repeated and unending because 'there is no other way'. etc Herr Blair kindly note.

We talked about learning and teaching. About how learning is changing. About how stopping learning is dying. About how learning and teaching are dialectical too.

We then watched the Movie. It was an Open University video on Brecht's Theatre including interviews with Helene Weigel his wife. We had a little discussion about it at the end.

I will write it all up after the Wednesday Group has seen it.

We then broke for tea and tobacco.

And came back and spent time talking about prostitutes we'd known. About whether we need to know what Shen Te 'did'. What her 'menu' was?

We certainly needed to know whether she needed to do it for money. Whether she would have done it if she'd had enough to live on.

We talked a little about the gods.

About whether there were other good people in Szechuan. Whether Shen Te herself was good.

About Sun. Whether he was 'bad'. The students were reminded that many people have ambitions that are thwarted. That many, like Sun, would jump at the chance of a girl-friend who loved them - and had a bit of money so that they could do the job they loved. His 'saviour'. Sun, in some ways, almost a 'tragic' figure. Probably not a million miles away from Brecht himself as he was entering his fifth year of struggle, his fortieth year of life, in exile and unemployment and on the run from the Nazis... But Brecht has bigger fish to fry than concerning himself with Sun's sunset.

We linked Shen Te splitting herself into two with the dialectical idea we were talking of earlier.

We thought of going into a shop to buy something and they're as nice as pie. Get a job at the same shop the next day - and they treat you like shit... Another piece of the dialectic.

We talked about Assessment work and Tony joined us.