Rockabye Brecht Essay Example For Students

Rockabye Brecht Essay Shortly before his death in 1956, Bertolt Brecht, in a characteristic moment of reflective irony, told a colleague that the man who makes himself indispensable is up to no good. A lifetime behind him of skipping town whenever indispensable leaders such as Hitler and the House on Un-American Activities Committee were hot on his trail, Brecht could have been musing about his transience as a permanent condition. It would be like him to recognize that even his own leadership of the Berliner Ensemble could be construed as a threat to the survival of his plays, their reputation hanging on the slender thread of his own impeccable, highly impermanent productions. For all the critical literature surrounding both plays and productions, and even considering the mile-high paper trail he constructed to explain himself, its not easy to know if he saw himself as a profound classical contender. He was too street-smart to float pretensions of greatness, even though he couldnt resist the marketplace f or high-falutin ideas. As early as 1934, he was telling Walter Benjamin that hed have to admit to a tribunal asking him if he meant to be serious that he was finally, after all, thinking too much about artistic matters, about what would go well on stage, to be quite serious. That paper trail notwithstanding, Brecht the playwright was always ready to defer to Brecht the director. He had to know, too, that both Brechts would eventually defer to history. What a charming fatalist he turned out to be, living next door in East Berlin to the bucolic little graveyard where he and Helena Weigel would eventually be buried their bodies and souls dedicated to theatrical experiment, their bank notes stashed in Zurich just in case another quick getaway would have to be made. In Galileo, he had already pronounced his own death sentence on sentimental heroics Unhappy the country that needs a hero and he was quick to see that if the East German scoundrels persisted in medieval despotism, the people might have to be abolished. BUT EVEN BRECHT, with all his mightily wry skepticism, could not have written 1989s scenario of the Berlin Walls collapse, nor the subsequent madcap dash into free-market freefall, tribal warfare, factional terrorism and designer bombings meant to boost the popularity of Americas home-grown Arturo Uis. Mother Courages 30-year war looks positively innocent now compared to ethnic cleansings on all continents. And what could be funnier and more dialectically mysterious than the recent serious proposal from retailer Luciano Benetton to set up a revolutionary kind of school without teacher or books for young artists from around the world, to be headed by Fidel Castro? Epic theatre, whatever it may have meant to Brecht, has long since been upstaged by apocalyptic tragi-comedy. According to John Rockwells New York Times account last February about small-scale epic efforts by Brechts theatrical heirs to rescue the Berliner Ensemble now that all the indispensables are gone, it was Heiner Muller who told him that theyre looking for a constructive idea, thus inadvertently putting the final seal on Brechts theories as a means to any useful end. Muller, of course, is currently besieged by charges that he, like so many accommodating intellectuals, did a deal with Erich Honekers Stasi devils, so its no wonder that hes not exactly concentrating for the moment on running a theatre. Even so, he might have done better service to his own intelligence and Brechts than the hapless admission that hes nostalgic for those great days when they didnt have the great burden that we can do anything and say anything. A terrible burden, also, to be handling a $16-million annual subsidy from the Berlin city government; its not likely, however, that Berliners on either side of the former wall are shedding tears for an unfocused playwright as they scramble to survive more pressing emergencies, such as currency panic and reminiscent violence. Rockwell defines epic theatre as sweeping pageants built of socially concerned vignettes, placing Brecht in the most trivializing ghetto he can find, but monstrous injustice as this may be, its not more injurious to Brecht than Mullers sweeping unconcern. Brecht, I suspect, would have abolished his heirs before abolishing the people. American theatre of the Seven Years War by 1763? EssayPuntila and Matti at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles last spring seemed to be about a rich geezer and the hands-on-hips broads he needed when drunk or sober, thus blurring all the contrasts. In fact, Brecht brazenly lifted his elemental tale from Chaplins City Lights, the rip-off and the balletic elegance very much his own style. Instead, this looked like Brecht seen through the lens and awshucks orneriness of John Ford Webster. Much better, but still weighed by dutiful homage to Brechts sweeping white curtain and performing revolve, was Michael Kahns production at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. of Mother Courage, with Pat Carroll light years away, mercifully, from Bancrofts veil of tears and even Judi Denchs tough little dumpling soldier at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-80s. Caroll is round, but more show-biz than dumpling, which makes her picture-book mimicry of Weigels silent scream look all the mor e mechanized and second-hand. These labored productions share a barely hidden freeze-out hostility to the deliberately disjarring stops and starts of the text. Theyre struck noisily dumb, if thats possible, by the musical episodes, the ghosts of jaunty-Weill and swaggering Lenya rendering them sunless, arch and weirdly melancholic. GIVEN TIME, THEN, our directors might be able to break away from the dead hand of received ideas. But why bother, even if the luxury were suddenly dumped on us as reward for so many years spent like street-buskers waiting for a handout? My guess is that Brechts plays, punch-drunk with wicked reversals, besotted linguistic effusions and rage with a stupid universe, are not so much beyond translation as they are beside themselves with grief about the disappearing urgency of theatre itself. Alive today, Brecht the poet could easily make peace with the gods that failed. He might even be able to cope with the headlines and all the infuriating cruelties surrounding them. And in George Soros, described this summer by a Reuters dispatch as the Hungarian-born modern-day Robin Hood who broke the pound, hed surely find still another irresistibly slippery character settling for a spectacular role on the world stage of finance and war. But surely thats the point: How do we tell this new Azdak that Brecht has already written him? Hell go on anyway, maneuvering behind the scenes, making a mockery of the experts, generally demonstrating that the world doesnt need parliaments, prime ministers, presidents, pundits or playwrights. As a certifiable Brecht character, hes always momentarily right and monumentally wrong. The playwright needs to regroup forces now, if only to catch up with that quick-change art known as history. Until we can look at him again as a new-born prodigy, always a fleet-foot ahead of the undertakers running the world, lets give Brecht a well-earned rest from slow-wit and lumpish production. Long after Soros and Company are gone, Brecht, like Beckett, will go on.