Conventions of Political Satire in Western Theatre

Aristophanes to Fo: Conventions of Political Satire in Western Theatre Playscript and Exegesis Bette Margaret Guy. BA (Hons) Submitted to the Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology 2007 Presented for the Master of Arts Degree (Research) 2007 KEYWORDS Aristophanes, Comedic Conventions, Dario Fo, Political Satire, War propaganda. ii ABSTRACT Aristophanes to Fo is a study of the principal comedic conventions of Aristophanes’ political satire and their relationship to contemporary political satire. A template of these principal conventions is tabulated. This is then compared to, and contrasted with, conventions used in subsequent plays in the genre of political satire, including one written as the practice component of this exegesis. This process determines the influence of Aristophanic conventions on political satire from 4th century BCE Greece to the modern era. There is an analytical emphasis on three 20th century plays as case studies and on my play, Soft Murder, which is case study number four. At the core of the research is the hypothesis that Aristophanic comedic conventions are still relevant to the genre of political satire in contemporary theatre. To retain relevance the genre should be a discourse on a situation or event that has social as well as political meaning to its audience and its presentation should have entertainment value for the culture of the time. Soft Murder is a fundamental part of this process and is written concurrently with the research component. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Keywords…………………………………………………………... Ii Abstract…………………………………………………………….. iii Table of contents…………………………………………………… iv List of Tables………………………………………….………….... v Authorship………..………………………………………………... vi Acknowledgements………………………………………………… vii Introduction……………………………………………………….. 1 Methodology………………………………………………………. 3 Literature Review Part One: Defining Political Satire………………………………... 7 Part Two: Outlining Traditional Conventions of Political Satire…. 10 Part Three: The Thread from Ancient Greece to the mid twentieth century………………………………………………………………15 Three Case Studies: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui…………… 23 Oh What a Lovely War……………………... 26 Accidental Death of an Anarchist………….. 29 Summary of Three Case Studies………………………………… 32 Playscript and Practice: Soft Murder……………………………. 36 Case Study Four: Soft Murder – An analysis….…………………. 94 Conclusion………………………………………………………… 99 Bibliography………………………………………………………. 102 iv List of Tables. Table 1: Principal conventions of Aristophanes’ political satire…………..……………. 13-15 Table 2: Examples used in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui……………………………. 24 Table 3: Examples used in Oh What a Lovely War…………………………..………….. 27 Table 4: Examples used in Accidental Death of an Anarchist……………………….…….. 30-31 Table 5: Examples used in Soft Murder……………………….…………………………… 97 Table 6: Aristophanic conventions used by all four case study plays………..………….. 99 v Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree or a diploma at any other institution. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signed………………………….. Date…………………………….. vi Acknowledgements I thank the Queensland University of Technology for giving me the opportunity to undertake a Masters Degree (Research). I am particularly grateful to Errol Bray, Craig Bolland, Ellen Thompson and to my cohort members Elaine Acworth, Katherine Lyall-Watson and Paul Sherman for their invaluable comments and support. vii viii Introduction My interest in politics goes back a long way. So does my belief in the comedic possibilities of satire to expose the sophistry and moral insensibility of powerful figures that represent the establishment. As a playwright I became bored with the writing of both drama and comedy in the style of the two-act, well-made play. One of my earlier plays, Stacked (Guy, 1994), and ventures into writing comedy sketches and stand-up, had hinted at how I might use the ludicrous to satirise authority figures. The combination of my theatrical experience and interest in both politics and satire led me to the exciting challenge of writing a satiric political play for the theatre. Political satire is a significant genre because it blatantly and passionately exposes the errors and vices of a particular political state at a specific moment in time. In spite of this specificity it also emphasises the universal danger of unchallenged power. To begin this task I decided to investigate Ancient Greek theatre models. These comic plays have stood the test of time and it seemed to me that an exploration of their conventions might lead to a better understanding of techniques useful for the writing of political satire. This exercise might also confirm the relevance, or otherwise, of these ancient techniques for contemporary theatre. In recent years political propaganda has roused my curiosity. I have enjoyed observing the ways in which words are manipulated to promote a particular political point of view. A denunciation of what I perceive as a war of words in politics is the theme of the play I use as part of this practice-led research. I confirmed my own general definition of the terms satire and political by consulting dictionaries. The 1965 edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, defines satire as “The use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm to expose folly or vice, to lampoon an individual” (Thompson, (ed). 1995, p.1225). In the same edition, political is defined as “concerning the state or its 1 government or public affairs generally” (Thompson, (ed). 1995, p.1057). The literature review that follows adds scholarly interpretations of this basic definition. I began my play with the passion of an idealist, determined to expose the hypocrisy of war propagandists, yet with the pragmatism of a playwright willing to discover the best way to present that intent in a theatrically persuasive form. I wanted the play to be true to the genre in that it must be of specific contemporary significance while at the same time alluding to universal themes of the subject matter. It had to combine the serious with the very funny, a precarious balancing act for which research might divulge a formula. First, I decided on the title, which after several attempts became Soft Murder, both ironic and pertinent to the subject of the play. I then needed a set of characters; some of whom represented the establishment and some who willingly or unwillingly colluded with the establishment, plus at least one outsider who steps into this world of authority with either a naïve or ignorant perspective on that world. Because, in the real world, authority figures are frequently faceless and nameless I wanted my characters to have descriptive names only, ones that clearly projected who they were and what they represented. I chose Word, as the writer, Time as the organiser, General and Chief as representatives of authority, Preacher as the ambivalent participant in the propaganda and Tick and Tock, as Mr and Mrs Everyman who, because it is easiest, do whatever they are told to do. Until my analysis of the plays of Aristophanes and other satiric playwrights began, how the plot of Soft Murder was to unfold was decidedly unclear. I only knew it had to be hard hitting in political terms yet sufficiently funny to be accepted by an audience as satire. The problem of whether I could effectively unify the satiric and the political in a stage work might be more certain at the end of the literature review. 2 With the basic outline of the characters confirmed the play was underway, along with the research component. For examination purposes the playscript should be assessed as 70 percent of the work and the exegesis assessed as 30 percent. METHODOLOGY My admiration for Aristophanes, an exponent of political satire, raised the question of whether his techniques are applicable in a modern context. From my knowledge of theatre a hypothesis occurred suggesting there might be few differences between Aristophanes’ techniques in political satire and those of modern satirists. Practice-led research seemed an effective method to clarify the theory. This approach facilitates the creation of a play collateral with the literature review as the research strategy to establish basic research data. As well as a research stratagem the literature review provides a historical contextual review thus integrating a literary analysis within a study of my own practice component. Data is tabulated to better examine the relationship between Aristophanic comedic conventions and those of the case studies, including my own play. The case studies are built upon dramatic literary analysis within a performance paradigm. The international reputation of the three case study plays remains intact in contemporary theatre literature. All three are listed in the 2005 publication The Oxford Dictionary of Plays (Patterson, 2005) which purports to include “the 1,000 most significant plays of world theatre” (Patterson, 2005, p.ix). Eisenhardt (1999, p.1370) in Building Theories From Case Study Research, cites Miles and Huberman (1984) to advance the use of “devices such as tabular display…to manage and present qualitative data”. Stake in Qualitative Case Studies, comments that, “An observation is interpreted against one issue…then interpreted against others” (2005, p.450). I chose four plays out of the eleven extant plays from which to extrapolate 3 examples of the principal conventions used by Aristophanes. I chose two of the most famous

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