Research paper on the perspective in world theatres

Political Poetics: A Social History of Drama Author(s): Augusto Boal, Charles A. McBride, Maria-Odilia Leal McBride Source: Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 6-18 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of the Performing Arts Journal, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3244961 Accessed: 27/03/2009 09:22

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POLITICAL POETICS

A Social History of Drama

Augusto Boal

The feudal abstraction

According to Aristotle, as well as Hegel and Marx, art, in any of its modes, genres, or styles, always constitutes a sensorial way of transmitting certain knowledge - subjective or objective, individual or social, particular or general, abstract or concrete, super- or infrastruc- tural. That knowledge, adds Marx, is revealed according to the perspective of the artist or of the social sector in which he is rooted, or which sponsors him, pays him, or consumes his work - especially that sector of society which holds the economic power, controlling with it all the other powers and establishing the directives of all creativity, be it artistic, scientific, philosophical, or any other. This sector is evident- ly interested in the transmission of that knowledge which helps it to maintain its power, if it already possesses it in an absolute form, or if not, helps it to conquer that power. This does not, however, prevent other sectors or classes from fostering their own art, which translates the knowledge necessary to them, and in doing so are guided by their own perspective. But the dominant art will always be that of the domi- nant class, since it is the only class that possesses the means to dis- seminate it.

In his book The Social History of Art, while analyzing the social function of Greek tragedy, Arnold Hauser writes that "the externals of its presentation to the masses were democratic, but its content, the heroic sagas with their tragi-heroic outlook on life, was aristocratic .... It unquestionably propagates the standards of the great-hearted individual, the uncommon distinguished man [i.e. the aristocrat] ..." Hauser points out, too, that Athens was an "imperialistic de-

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mocracy," whose numerous wars brought benefits only for the domi- nant sectors of society and whose only progress was that of gradually substituting an aristocracy of money for an aristocracy of blood. The State and the wealthy financed the production of tragedies and, therefore, would not permit the performance of plays whose content would run counter to State policy or to the interests of the governing classes.

In the Middle Ages the control of theatrical production, exercised by the clergy and the nobility, was even more effective, and the relations between feudalism and medieval art can easily be shown through the establishment of an ideal type of art - which, of course, need not ex- plain all the particular cases, though many times perfect examples may be found.

The aims of feudal art were the same as those of the clergy and nobility: to immobilize society by perpetuating the existing system. Its principal characteristic was depersonalization, de-individualization, abstraction. The function of art was authoritarian, coercive, inculcating in the people a solemn attitude of religious respect for the status quo. It presented a static, stereotyped world, in which the generic and homogeneous prevailed. transcendent values were of prime im- portance, while individual, concrete phenomena had no intrinsic value, serving only as symbols or signs.

The Church itself simply tolerated and later utilized art as a mere vehicle for its ideas, dogmas, precepts, commandments, and decisions. The artistic means represented a concession made by the clergy to the ignorant masses, incapable of reading and following abstract reasoning, and who could be reached only through the senses.

Striving to establish a firm bond between the feudal lords and Divini- ty, art stressed the identification of noblemen with sacred figures. For example: the presentation of figures of noblemen and saints, especially in Romanesque art, was frontal, and they could never be painted work- ing but only in idleness, characteristic of the powerful lord. Jesus was depicted as if he were a nobleman, and the nobleman as if he were Jesus. Unfortunately, Jesus was crucified and died after intense physical suffering; and here the identification no longer interested the nobility. Even in scenes of the most intense suffering, therefore, Jesus, Saint Sebastian, and other martyrs showed no sign of pain in their faces; on the contrary, they contemplated heaven with a strange bliss. The pictures in which Jesus appears crucified give the impression that he is barely leaning on a small pedestal and from there contemplates the happiness caused by the prospect of soon returning to the tender company of his Celestial Father.

Like painting, the theatre also tended toward the abstract in form and toward indoctrination in content. It is often said that the medieval theatre was non-Aristotelian. We believe that this statement is based on the least important aspect of the Poetics, that is, on the unfortunately famous law of the three unities. This law has no validity as such, and

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not even the Greek tragedians obeyed the law rigorously. It is no more than a simple suggestion, given in an almost casual and incomplete form. Aristotle's Poetics is, above all, a perfect device for the ex- emplary social functioning of the theatre. It is an efficient tool for the correction of men capable of modifying society. The Poetics must be dealt with in the light of this social aspect, for here alone lies its fun- damental importance.

In tragedy, what was important for Aristotle was its cathartic func- tion, its function as a "purifier" of the citizen. All his theories combine to form an harmonic whole which demonstrates the correct manner of purging the audience of all ideas or tendencies capable of modifying society. In this sense, the medieval theatre was Aristotelian, though it did not utilize the same formal resources suggested by the Greek theoretician.

The typically feudal characters were not human beings, but rather abstractions of moral, religious values; they did not exist in the real, concrete world. The most typical were called Lust, Sin, Virtue, Angel, Devil, etc. They were not character-subjects of the dramatic action, but simply objects acting as spokesmen for the values they symbolized. The Devil, for example, had no free initiative; he merely fulfilled his task of tempting mankind, mouthing the phrases that that abstraction would necessarily use on such occasions. Likewise, the Angel, Lust, and all the other characters who symbolized good and evil, right and wrong, the just and unjust, obviously acted according to the perspec- tive of the nobility and the clergy who patronized that art. The feudal plays were always of a moralizing and exemplary nature: the good were rewarded and the bad were punished. They could be divided roughly in- to two groups: plays of sin and plays of virtue.

Plays that are too narrowly directed toward a single purpose run the risk of contradicting a fundamental principle of theatre, which is con- flict, contradiction, or some type of clash or combat. How did the medieval theatre solve this problem? By putting the adversaries on stage, but showing them in such a way and manipulating the plot so that the denouement could be determined beforehand. In other words, by adopting a narrative style and placing the action in the past, thus avoiding the dramaticity and the direct, contemporaneous presentation of the characters in conflict. Karl Vossler observes curiously that he does not know of a single medieval drama in which the Devil is con- ceived and presented as a worthy adversary of God: he is fundamental- ly the vanquished, subordinated character. His role is often secondary and many times comic. Even nowadays it is customary to have the De- vil speak a foreign tongue, a device designed to place him in a ridiculous light, which at the same time weakens one of the parties to the conflict.

Unfortunately for the feudal nobility, nothing is eternal in this world, including the social and political systems which appear, develop, and give way to others that will have a similar fate. And with the rising

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bourgeoisie there arose a new type of art, a new poetics which began to give expression to new knowledge, acquired and transmitted according to a new perspective. Machiavelli is one of the witnesses of these social and artistic transformations. Machiavelli initiates the poetics of virtu.

The bourgeois concretion

With the development of commerce, starting as early as the eleventh century, life started moving from the country to the newly founded cities, where warehouses were built and banks were established, where commercial accounting was organized and trade was centralized. The slow pace of the Middle Ages was replaced by the fast pace of the Renaissance. This rapidity was due to the fact that each person started to build for himself rather than for the glory of the eternal God, who, eternal as He was, did not seem to be in a hurry to receive the proofs of love given by his fearful worshipers, as Alfred von Martin writes in his Sociology of the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages the construction of a church or a castle could take centuries, since it was built for the community and for God. Beginning with the Renaissance, construction came to be for mortal men themselves, and no one could wait in- definitely.

The methodic organization of life, all of human activities, became one of the principal values contributed by the rising bourgeoisie. To spend less than one makes, to economize strength and money, to economically manage the body as well as the mind, to be a hard worker in contrast to the idleness of the medieval nobility: these became the means by which each enterprising individual could rise socially and prosper. The rising bourgeoisie encouraged the development of science because it was necessary for its objective of promoting increased pro- duction, which would bring greater profits and an accumulation of capital. It was as necessary to discover new routes to the Indies as it was to discover new techniques of production and new machines that would increase the yield of the labor rented by the bourgeois.

In the new society organized on accounting principles, writes von Martin, the individual ability and value of each man became more im- portant than the social estate in which he was born, and even God Himself came to be the supreme judge of financial transactions, the in- visible organizer of this world, which was itself considered to be a great commercial enterprise. Man's relations with God were conceived in terms of debits and credits, a practice which even today corresponds to the Catholic view of good deeds. Charity is the contractual way of as- suring oneself of divine help. Goodness gave place to charity.

This new proprietor-God, the bourgeois God, demanded an urgent religious reformulation, which was not long in coming, through the formula of Protestantism. Luther said that prosperity was nothing more than the reward given by God for the good conduct of business affairs,

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for the good management of material goods. And for Calvin there was no surer way to lay claim as a chosen one of God than to become rich here on earth. If God should look with disfavor upon a certain in- dividual, He would not allow him to become rich. If he did become rich, that meant that God was on his side. Accumulated capital thus came to be a sign of divine grace. The poor, those who worked with their hands, the workers and peasants, were merely a legion of the non- elect, who could not become rich because God was against them, or at least did not help them. In Machiavelli's comedy the Mandragola, Friar Timoteo utilized the Bible in a typically Renaissance manner, showing that the Scriptures had lost their normative function in the behavior of men, to become instead a holy repository of texts, deeds, and versicles which, interpreted out of context, could justify a posteriori any attitude, thought, or act - whether of clergy or laymen, no matter how base it might be. And when the play was presented for the first time, Pope Leo X not only approved it, but was extremely pleased that Machiavelli, with extraordinary accuracy, had given artistic expression to the new religious mentality and the new principles of the Church.

In spite of all these social changes, the bourgeois suffered a great dis- advantage in comparison to the feudal lord: while the latter could assert that his power emanated from what was in effect a contract made back in immemorial times - in which God Himself had given him (the feudal lord) the right to possess the land, together with the right of being God's representative on earth - the bourgeois could allege nothing in his own defense, unless it were his enterprising spirit, his own in- dividual value and ability.

His birth did not give him special rights; if any were his, it was because he had won them with money, free initiative, work, and the cold, rational ability to give method to life. Bourgeois power, therefore, rested on the individual value of man living in the concrete circumstances of the real world. The bourgeois owed nothing to his fate or his good fortune, but only to his own virtu. With his virtu he had sur- mounted all the obstacles which were placed before him by birth, the laws of the feudal system, tradition, religion. His virtu was the first law.

But this able bourgeois who denied all traditions and disowned the past, what other guidelines for behavior could he choose if not those of reality itself? Right and wrong, good and bad - these can be known only in relation to practice. Nor could any law or tradition, but only the material and concrete world, provide him with the sure ways to attain power. Praxis was the second law of the bourgeoisie.

Virtu and praxis were and are the two touchstones of the bourgeoisie, its two principal characteristics. Obviously one cannot conclude from this that only he who was not a nobleman could possess virtu or trust in praxis, and much less that every bourgeois had necessarily to possess those qualities, under penalty of ceasing to be a

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bourgeois. Machiavelli himself criticized the bourgeoisie of his time, accusing it of placing too much value on tradition, of dreaming ex- cessively of the romantic rules of the feudal nobility, thereby weaken- ing itself and delaying the consolidation of its positions and the creation of its own values. This new society had to produce inevitably a new type of art, radically different. The new class could not, by any means, utilize the existing artistic abstractions, but on the contrary was com- pelled to turn toward concrete reality in its search for new forms of art. It could not tolerate characters with the same old values that had been inherited from feudalism. On stage and in paintings and sculptures, it needed to create live men, of flesh and blood, especially the "virtuous" man.

In painting, one need only leaf through any book on the history of art to become aware of what took place. The canvases began to show in- dividuals surrounded by true landscapes. Even in the Gothic style, the faces had already begun to be individualized. Bourgeois art was, in all respects, a popular art; it not only parted with the traditional relations with the Church, but also started to depict familiar figures.

In theatre the abstract figure of the Devil, for example, disappeared and individualized devils appeared - Lady Macbeth, Iago, Cassius, Richard III, and others of lesser power. They were not merely the "principle of evil" or "diabolic angels," or some equivalent, but live men who freely opted for the paths considered to be evil.

They were "virtuous" men, in the Machiavellian sense, who took advantage of all their potentials, trying to eliminate every trace of emo- tion, living in a purely intellectual and calculating world. The intellect absolutely lacks moral character. It is neutral, like money.

It is no surprise to find that one of the most typically Shakespearian themes is that of the seizing of power by someone who has no legal right to do so. Neither did the bourgeoisie have the "right" to seize power, but it did it nevertheless. Shakespeare told the history of the bourgeoisie in the form of fable. His situation was dichotomous: although his sympathy, as playwright and man, was decidedly with Richard III (the virtuous man dies, the symbolic representative of the rising class, the man who acts with confidence in his own virtu, defeat- ing tradition and the established and consecrated social order), Shakespeare must have been inclined, consciously or not, toward the nobility that patronized him and which after all still retained political power. Richard is unquestionably the hero even though he ends up be- ing defeated in the fifth act. It was always in the fifth act that such things occurred, and they did not always occur convincingly: the man- ner in which Macbeth is defeated by the representatives of legality, Malcolm and Macduff - one the legitimate heir, evasive and cowardly, and the other his faithful servant and vassal - is open to censure, at least from the dramatic point of view. Hauser throws light on that dichotomy when he recalls that Queen Elizabeth was one of the greatest debtors of the English banks, which shows that the nobility

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itself was dichotomous. Shakespeare expressed the new bourgeois values which were then arising, even if legality and feudalism are the apparent victors at the end of his plays.

The entire body of Shakespeare's dramatic works serves as documentary evidence of the coming of the individualized man in the theatre. His central characters are always analyzed multi- dimensionally. It would be difficult to find in the dramaturgy of any other country or period, a character comparable to Hamlet; he is analyzed extensively in all dimensions: in his love relationship with Ophelia, his friendship with Horatio, his political relationship with King Claudius and Fortinbras, in his metaphysical and psychological dimensions, etc. Shakespeare was the first dramatist to proclaim man in all his plenitude, as no other dramatist had done before, without ex- cluding even Euripides. Hamlet is not abstract doubt, but a man who, facing some very precise circumstances, doubts. Othello is not jealousy in itself, but simply a man capable of killing the woman he loves because he believes her to be unfaithful. Romeo is not love, but a boy that falls in love with a certain girl named Juliet, who has obstinate parents and a determined maid, and he suffers the fatal consequences of his love adventures in beds and graves.

What happened to the character in theatre? He simply ceased to be an object and became a subject of the dramatic action. The character was converted into a bourgeois conception.

Being the first dramatist of virtu and praxis, Shakespeare is - in this, and only this, sense - the first bourgeois dramatist. He was the first who knew how to depict to the fullest extent, the fundamental characteristics of the new class. Before him, including during the Mid- dle Ages, there were plays and authors that made attempts in the same direction: Hans Sachs in Germany, Ruzzante in Italy (not to mention Machiavelli), La Farce de Maitre Pathelin in France, etc.

It is necessary to emphasize that - other than in exceptional cases such as Antonio, the merchant of Venice - Shakespeare did not portray heroes who were avowedly bourgeois. Richard III is also the Duke of Gloucester. The bourgeois nature of the works of Shakespeare is not to be found in their externals at all, but only in the presentation and creation of characters endowed with virtu and confident in praxis. In the formal aspects, his theatre manifests what can be considered feudal residues: the common people speak in prose and the noblemen in verse, for example.

One criticism, the most serious that can be made to these statements, is that the bourgeoisie - because of its own condition as alienator of man - would not be the class most likely to give rise to human multi- dimensionality.

We believe that this would be true if a sudden, brusque leap were made between two social systems following in succession, if one ceased to exist in the exact moment in which the other appeared. That is, if the bourgeoisie created its own superstructure of values in the

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very moment in which the first bourgeois rented the labor-power of the first worker and from him obtained the first surplus value. Since this does not happen, let us take a closer look.

Actually, Shakespeare did not show the multi-dimensionality of all men, all the characters, or the human species in general, but only of some men who possessed certain exceptional qualities, that is, those endowed with virtu. The exceptionality of these men was strongly marked in two opposite directions: against the impotent and. ruined nobility, and against the people in general, the amorphous mass. In the first case it is enough to recall some fundamental conflicts revolving around the central characters. What are those who oppose Macbeth if not mediocre people? Duncan and Malcolm have no individual value that merits distinction. Richard III confronts a whole court of decadent noblemen, beginning with the sickly Edward IV; they are a group of gossips, inconstant and weak. And regarding the rottenness of Den- mark, it is unnecessary to add anything to the words of the prince himself.

On the other hand, the people either remain in the background or are easily fooled and passively accept the change of masters. (Machiavelli: "The people easily accept the change of masters because they believe, in vain, that their lot is thereby going to improve.") The people are manipulated by the will of the "virtuous" men. Remember the scene in which Brutus and later Mark Antony inflame the people, swaying them first one way and then another. The people are a shapeless and malleable mass. Where were the people when Richard and Macbeth were committing their crimes, or when Lear divided his kingdom? These are questions which do not interest Shakespeare.

The bourgeoisie asserted one type of exceptional condition as op- posed to another: the extraordinary individual in contrast to those privileged by estate. While its principal opposition was to the feudal nobility, the bourgeoisie directed its energies toward the exaltation of individual man - the same man who was later submitted to severe re- duction, by that same bourgeoisie, when its principal opponent came to be the proletariat. But it waited for the right moment to take on this new opponent and only started to perform this role when it definitively assumed political power; when, as Marx said, the words of the slogan Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! were replaced by others which translated better their true meaning: Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery! Only then did the bourgeoisie begin to reduce the man it had exalted.

Modern reductions of virtu

Perhaps the bourgeoisie in its initial impetus has taken the frontiers of theatre too far. The type of man it created threatened to expand. Shakespearian drama itself, even if severly limited, could serve as a double-edged sword, opening up new paths that could lead in unknown, and possibly dangerous, directions. The bourgeoisie soon realized this

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fact, and as it assumed political power, it began the task of taking away from theatre the same weapons that it - the bourgeoisie itself, and for its own benefit - had given to the theatre. Machiavelli proposed the liberation of man from all moral values. Shakespeare followed those in- structions to the letter, though he always repented in the fifth act and restored legality and morality. It was necessary for someone to come along who, without renouncing the freedom recently acquired by the dramatic character, could impose some limitations upon him, working out a formula that might preserve his formal freedom, though insuring that the dogmatic pre-established truth would prevail. That someone was Hegel.

Hegel asserted that the character is free, that is, that the inner move- ments of his soul must always be capable of being exteriorized, without hindrance. But to be free did not mean that the character could be capricious and do whatever he wished: freedom is the consciousness of ethical necessity. He must not, however, exercise his freedom with re- gard to the purely accidental or episodical, but only regarding situations and values common to all mankind or to nationality - eternal powers, moral truths such as love, filial love, patriotism, etc ....

In this way, Hegel succeeds in making the character embody an ethical principle, and his freedom consists only in giving that principle a concrete form in the exterior world, in real life. Abstract moral values acquire concrete spokesmen, who are the characters. No longer, as in the feudal theatre, is Goodness a character called just that, Goodness; now its name is John Doe or Bill Smith. Goodness and John Doe are one and the same, though different: one is the abstract value, the other its human concretion. These characters, therefore, immanently embody an "eternal" value, a "moral" truth or its antithesis. If there is to be drama, conflict is necessary. Thus the characters who embody those values come into conflict with the characters who incorporate their an- titheses. The dramatic action is the result of the peripety produced by those struggles.

The action, according to Hegel, must be conducted to a certain point where the balance can be restored. The drama must end in rest, in harmony. (We are still very far from Bertolt Brecht, whose view is ex- actly the opposite.) Nevertheless, how can this balance be reached, if not through the destruction of one of the antagonists who confront each other? It is necessary that the array of forces appearing as thesis- antithesis be taken to the state of synthesis, and in theatre that can only be done in one of two ways: death of one of the irreconcilable charac- ters (tragedy) or repentance (romantic or social drama, according to the Hegelian system).

However, and it is Hegel himself who says so, the drama, as any other art, is the "radiance of truth" shining through the sensory means which the artist utilizes. But how can the truth shine if the character who is carrier of the "eternal" truth is destroyed? It is necessary that error be punished. The character who embodies falsehood must die or

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repent. Hegel could accept, at the most, the death of the concrete hero, the real man, if through that catastrophe the truth he carried would shine with greater brilliance. And this often occurred in Romanticism.

Romanticism is, without a doubt, a reaction against the bourgeois world, even if only against its exterior, incidental aspects. It apparently struggled against the bourgeois values. But what did it propose in ex- change? Hegel answers: Love, Honor, Loyalty. That is, the values of the code of chivalry, a poorly disguised return to medieval abstrac- tions, now in a theatre formulated with greater theoretic precision and greater complexity.

Romanticism re-edited the feudal theme of the Last Judgment - the post-terrestrial reward. How else are we to interpret the final words of Dona Sol in Hernani when, at the moment of death, she talks of the marvelous flight which the two lovers will take, upon dying, in search of a better world. True life and true happiness are impossible. It is as if they said: "This world is too repugnant and abject. Here only the bourgeois, with their petty material interests, can be happy. Let's leave the sordid bourgeois, their sordid happiness, and their sordid money which only buys sordid pleasures. We shall be eternally blessed. Let's commit suicide!" No bourgeois would feel seriously offended by such propositions.

Romanticism could be considered merely as a swan song of the feudal nobility, if it were not also of a markedly mystifying and alienat- ing character. Arnold Hauser analyzes the true meaning of the Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre, showing that Octave Feuillet tries to in- culcate the reader with the idea that a man, though poor and miserable, can and should possess true aristocratic dignity, which is essentially spiritual. The material conditions of each person's life matter very lit- tle: values are the same for all men.

It was an attempt to solve in the field of the spirit the problems fac- ing men in society. Everyone, without distinction, could aspire to spiritual perfection, even if he were poor like Jean Valjean, deformed like Rigoletto, or a pariah like Hernani. Men, even though hungry, must preserve that marvelous thing called spiritual freedom. The writers who give the most beautiful expression to that belief are un- doubtedly Victor Hugo and Hegel. This was the first serious reduction imposed upon man in the theatre: he came to be weighed in relation to eternal, immutable values.

Realism, highly praised by Marx (but for other reasons) represented the second great reduction: man became the direct product of his en- vironment. It is true that in the hands of its first practitioners realism did not reach the dimensions of sterility which it took on later. Ob- viously Marx could not even imagine what Sidney Kingsley, Ten- nessee Williams and others of our day would do. And Marx was refer- ring mainly to realism in the novel, which produced extensive sociological studies of bourgeois life.

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The main realist limitation in the theatre consists in its presenting a reality which is supposedly already known. From the naturalistic point of view, the work of art will be as good as its success in reproducing re- ality. Antoine took this premise to its logical extreme by giving up the reproduction of reality and conveying reality itself to the stage: in one of his productions he used real meat in a scene which depicted a butcher shop.

Zola, expounding his famous theory that the theatre must show a "slice of life," even wrote that the playwright must not take sides, dis- playing life exactly as it is, without even being selective. The vulnerability of this argument is so obvious that it is unnecessary to de- monstrate that the very choice of theme, story, and characters already implies a position taken by the author. Zola's statement is important, however, insofar as it points to the dead end at which naturalistic ob- jectivity arrived: photographic reality. Beyond that point it was not possible, objectively, to continue. But there was a different way, in the opposite direction - toward increasing subjectivity. After Shakespeare, man was never shown multi-dimensionally on the stage. When the objective movement ended, a series of subjective styles ensued: impressionism, expressionism, surrealism. All of them tending to restore a freedom that was, nevertheless, merely subjective. Abstract emotions - fear, terror, anguish - appeared. All in the mind of the character who projected outwardly his phantasmagoric world.

Even realism sought out man's inner ways, delving into psychology, but even there it fell short. It reduced man to psycho-algebraic equa- tions. In order to realize what happened, it is enough to remember some of the latest productions of Williams and other authors of his school. The recipe varies very little: by bringing together a father who has abandoned the mother after the birth of the first child and a mother who is an alcoholic, we will no doubt obtain a character whose defect is bound to be some type of generalized sadomasochism. If the mother is unfaithful - the arithmetic does not fail - the son will be a delicate sexual invert.

From that point on, the evolution could logically move in only one direction, and Tennessee Williams - an author gifted with a great talent - could not fail to follow it: the literal chewing up of the pro- tagonist's sexual organs. It is not without a certain originality ... To go farther would be to enter a convent, and we believe that sooner or later Williams will take that step too.

The theatre has also tried to follow the paths of mysticism: the search for God as an escape from material problems. Eugene O'Neill stated more than once that his interest was not in the relations between men but only in the relations of man with God.

In the absence of God, O'Neill directs his interest toward the mysterious and supernatural forces that surround us and which we can- not explain. Explicable phenomena do not seem to interest him. His eyes are "beyond the horizon" in search of tragic destinies, or expec-

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tant as he lies in wait for new gods. As long as they do not come, O'Neill goes on fabricating his own for home use. Isn't that what hap- pens in Dynamo? The playwright almost projects himself into the ter- rain of science fiction. In the same way that he discovered the God Dynamo, he would - if he were still alive - already have discovered the God Sputnick, the God Magnetic Belt, and other inhabitants of the modern and scientific Olympus....

A recent and severe reduction of man, however, is the one being ef- fected by the anti-theatre of Eugene Ionesco, who tries to take away from man even his powers of communication. Man becomes incom- municable, not in the sense that he cannot express his innermost emo- tions or the nuances of his thought, but literally incommunicable - to the entent that all words can be translated into only one: "chat" (Jack, or the Submission). All concepts equal "chat." Ionesco presents this absurdity with great humor, and we - bourgeois and petty bourgeois - respond with laughter. But to the workers awaiting an an- nouncement from management in relation to an increase in wage levels, it would not seem so amusing to be given a speech such as the one which closes the play The Chairs, delivered by a mute messenger. Or to be told that "wage increase" is "chat," "poverty" is "chat," "hunger" is "chat," everything is "chat."

In making these analytical remarks and raising objections we do not mean to suggest that the authors are unimportant. On the contrary, we believe that they are extremely significant, insofar as they indeed testify to the final phase of the bourgeois society and theatre. They bring to an end the trajectory of that theatre in which the multi -dimensional man is repeatedly subjected to reductions that transform him entirely into new abstractions of a psychological, moral, or metaphysical nature. In this sense Ionesco overshadows the achieve- ments of all his fellow playwrights in the enormous task of dehumaniz- ing man. It was he who created the last bourgeois character, Berenger, around whom all the characters gradually change into rhinoceroses, that is, into abstractions. What could become of the last representative of the human species - the last and only, when all the rest have disap- peared - if he is not transformed precisely into the abstraction of the human species? Berenger is merely the negation of the rhinoceros, and therefore he himself is an alienated non-rhinoceros. He is devoid of any content other than that of simple negation.

This has been the path of development followed by the theatre since the appearance of the moder bourgeoisie. In opposition to that theatre, another must arise - one determined by a new class and which will dissent not only stylistically but in a much more radical manner. This new theatre, dialectically materialist, will necessarily be also a theatre of abstractions, at least in its initial phase. Not only superstructural abstractions, but also infrastructural. Its characters still

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reveal, in some plays by Brecht, their condition of mere objects, ob- jects of determined social functions which, by coming into contradic- tion, develop a system of forces that directs the movement of dramatic action.

It is a theatre that has just been born, and which, though breaking with all the traditional forms, still suffers from an insufficiently formulated theoretical basis. Only out of constant practice will the new theory arise.

(1962)

OCopyright, 1977, by Urizen Books, Inc.

Translated by Charles A. McBride and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride.

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on the back cover of the journal

18

.' I aI I I

- Mr .