The Living Theatre: Its Use of the Stage Author(s): Norman James Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Summer, 1971), pp. 475- 483 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/429192 . Accessed: 24/10/2011 12:00

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http://www.jstor.org NORMAN JAMES

The Living Theatre: Its Use of the Stage

WHEN JULIAN BECK and Judith Malina Living Theatre now seeks to awaken the brought their Living Theatre to Yale in spectators from the "passive slumber" of September, 1968, they were returning to the their everyday lives, it is through using the United States, after an absence of several active, spontaneous, and improvised partici- years, with four productions they had devel- pation of spectators in parts of Mysteries oped abroad. These were Mysteries and and in most of Paradise Now that the Smaller Pieces, Antigone, Frankenstein, and group reaches the outer limits of its attempts Paradise Now,l works that carry further the to fulfill the purposes Beck described. I will experiments of the Living Theatre's pro- therefore examine these two productions ductions in New York between December, first. 1951, and October, 1963,2 and challenge us Of the two Paradise Now depends most to expand our conception of the theatre it- on participation by spectators in its partly self. They raise questions as well about pos- improvised rituals of physical communion sible limitations of the Living Theatre, and and political protest. Like other forms of these questions also contribute to our reval- communion ritual, improvised or not, the uation of theatre. physical contact in which players and spec- The experiments of the Living Theatre tators spontaneously engage is meant to still grow out of the mission Beck described draw the individual out of the passive, un- in 1964 as being "to involve or touch or creative, and even uncommunicating isola- engage the audience, not just show them tion that the role of spectator usually im- something," "to reach the audience, to plies, whether at the theatre, in church, or awaken them from their passive slumber, to in life outside. And, like other forms of provoke them into attention, shock them if communion ritual, this physical contact is necessary," and to "aid the audience to be- meant to transform what is being acted out come once more what it was destined to be into a reality that is no longer pretended. when the first dramas formed themselves on With the new awareness of others that is the threshing floor: a congregation led by supposed to come from this physical attack a choral of and re- priests, ecstasy reading on inhibitions and prejudices that divide a sponse, dance, seeking transcendence, way people from each other, the spectators are out and the vertical thrust, a up, seeking now ready to join the players in improvis- state of awareness that surpasses mere con- various the social and scious and closer to ing protests against being brings you forces that make for such division God." 3 Of the various in which the political ways and its attendant indifference to the suffer- of others. These from NORMAN JAMES is professor of English at Washington ing protests range College, Maryland. chanted slogans to such acts as disrobing 476 NORMAN JAMES and/or going out into the streets. Again and any distinction between their roles. But there is an attempt to turn theatre into ac- if pretense and reality were fused in this tuality-actuality in terms of the world out- improvised, aimless milling punctuated by side. empty threats, one could wonder not only Depending as it does upon action and what the fusion signified but even which reaction between player and spectator, with ingredient was which. improvisation, albeit partly guided, on the There was no apparent significance in part of the spectators, and some improvisa- what wearily extended itself. As Peter tion on the part of the players, Paradise Now Brook has said, "The sadness of a bad hap- varies more than any other Living Theatre pening must be seen to be believed. Give a production from performance to perform- child a paintbox, and if he mixes all the ance. It can reach the climax of its opening colours together the result is always the night in New Haven, when players and same muddy browny grey." 9 The very ele- spectators marched out into the streets and ments that were fused had lost all signifi- some were arrested for indecent exposure.4 cance. What were pretense and reality to According to Dean Robert Brustein of the begin with? Were the players pretending to Yale School of Drama, this confrontation dare others what they were only pretending with the police occurred because the police to dare themselves? Were the spectators misinterpreted the cheerful mood of a who were piling onto the stage bringing it crowd about to dissolve.5 At any rate it pro- reality, or more reality, or more pretense? duced a farcical denouement, for eventually One might shout with Pirandello's Manager, everyone was acquitted of nudity (there "Pretense?Reality? To hell with it alll" 10 being no clear evidence that anyone had In Paradise Now the Living Theatre has been totally nude), but Judith Malina was of course gone beyond the ambiguities that fined one hundred dollars for resisting ar- are only seemingly unrehearsed in Pirandel- rest,6 a charge that she may have incurred lo's Six Characters in Search of an Author when she insisted on accompanying her ar- (1921), To Each His Own (1924), and To- rested husband in the police wagon.7 night We Improvise (1930). But it is not sim- But if there was climax and confronta- ply the audience's spontaneous and impro- tion the first night of Paradise Now, lead- vised participation that leaves Paradise Now ing later to judicial farce, there was only vulnerable to the aimless disintegration of sluggish anticlimax the second night. Play- its second performance at Yale. As Brook ers threatened to strip, but again none says: stripped entirely; they were ready with bi- kinis A Happening is always the brainchild of some- and loin cloths they had put on under one and unavoidably it reflects the level of its in- the clothes they would remove. They also ventor: if it is the work of a group, it reflects the threatened to repeat their first-night sortie inner resources of the group. This free form is from the theatre, but without the audi- all too often imprisoned in the same obsessional ence's had not to do symbols; flour, custard pies, rolls of paper, dress- knowledge they agreed ing, undressing, dressing-up, undressing again, so. This agreement was in fact the condi- changing clothes, making water, throwing water, tion on which they were being permitted blowing water, hugging, rolling, writhing-you further performances of Paradise Now at feel that if a Happening became a way of life Yale.8 Since the players were also challeng- then by contrast the most humdrum life would seem a fantastic happening.1 ing spectators to strip entirely and to go out into the street (where an expectant crowd If the Living Theatre does not resort to all was waiting), and since these challenges of these "obsessional symbols" in Paradise produced only a thorough scrambling of Now, it nevertheless can lock itself in its players and spectators in the theatre, any own patterns and merely pretend spontane- potential direction or shape to the perform- ity. Indeed an early sequence in Paradise ance had dissolved in post-Pirandellian am- Now merely pretends communion with the biguity. The Living Theatre had succeeded audience. The players go among the specta- almost entirely in obliterating any visual tors, fixing upon certain ones and repeating distinction between player and spectator various protests that soon betray inflexibil- The Living Theatre 477 ity. If an actress looks intently into one's spectators to join in a ritual or improvise eyes solemnly intoning, "I'm not allowed to contributions. take my clothes off," and one finally replies, The performance began with one player "Break the law," there is neither commun- facing the spectators while standing rigidly ion nor dialogue when she continues to re- silent. As, in the course of time, this came peat, in the same tone of voice, "I'm not to seem increasingly uneventful, it began to allowed to take my clothes off." evoke questions and comments that in turn Even when, later in Paradise Now, the produced further discussion.l4 Some wanted audience is encouraged to participate and to know what the man thought he was thus to affect at least the texture of a given doing, some offered unflattering theories on performance, the players are not actually this point, and some asked if those who giving the spectators the opportunities they were complaining actually came to the the- seem to be offering. Robert Brustein has atre seeking comfort and entertainment. complained that "the Living Theatre invar- This last line of questioning sometimes iably took refuge in its theatrical function served to introduce into the discussion var- whenever things threatened to get out of ious adverse reflections on American thea- hand. For all its emphasis on reality, the tre; American audiences, and American life company never quite managed to escape in general, as well as on the Living Theatre from its performance; for all its emphasis itself. on spontaneity and accident, it still fol- Other spectators kept silent. lowed an almost fixed pattern which ended Meanwhile members of the troupe began the same way every evening." 12 Although to infiltrate the house while one actress Paradise Now, as we have seen, ended dif- stood at the front of the balcony singing "a ferently the first and second times it was very long improvised Indian raga, accompa- performed in New Haven, the players had nied by a guitar." 15 Since the song showed actually trapped themselves into pretend- no signs of ceasing, it began to equate itself ing, on the second night, that the first with the man standing still at the begin- night's ending could be repeated. In both ning of the performance and to evoke simi- appealing to a pattern and at the same time lar comments. Again there were those who only pretending to follow it, they were fall- kept silent. ing short of both the theatrical spontaneity When the players began a chanting of and the commitment to confrontation that slogans, some furnished by players and some they were claiming for themselves. One by spectators-slogans involving war, race, sex, and could still apply Julian Beck's own objec- drugs, Yale-many spectators drifted onstage to form a continually ex- tion to three of his earlier, New York pro- panding circle, while others kept their ductions (including Pirandello's Tonight seats. Of the ones who stayed seated, some We Improvise) at which many spectators chanted and some did not. had mistaken simulated rehearsals for ac- The entire development of Mysteries tual ones: thus far, so much more flexible than the Deception was not the means we wanted to in- early stages of Paradise Now, reveals more volve the audience. It fundamentally meant that clearly and forcefully to the spectator an we did not respect the people out there. You do essential factor in his own situation. Silence not cheat when and when the you respect, itself is a role. It is a role that suggests audience found out, and it surely would find out, it would not respect us for having fooled them, no neutrality between repression and resist- matter how well we had done it.> ance, and recalls those fatefully acquiescent silences that have permitted injustice and and Smaller In Mysteries Pieces, the violence in the twentieth century. Once you other Living Theatre production at Yale go to Mysteries you are acting in it, even if that called for audience participation, there you get up and leave. was not the same deception. Here was a But if a more flexible early development candidly acknowledged framework within serves to make all this clearer at Mysteries, which there were certain opportunities for so does the circle that the players form with 478 NORMAN JAMES those spectators who spontaneously partici- them, sometimes in ways that are quite pate. Though immemorial associations of moving. An older spectator may stand qui- this symbol include all the corn of frater- etly holding the hand of a young player- nity initiations, it at least provides a form perhaps trying to calm what one cannot be that can assimilate spontaneous improvisa- sure is not actual hysteria, perhaps acting tion in a fusion of pretense and reality. out real sympathy for the sufferings of This form is coherent while it lasts, even if youth. Whatever the motives of actively not as profound as it is meant to be, and participating spectators, the demands upon can be concluded by the players in such a them have increased in stages from discus- way as to constitute a relatively sponta- sion to a cheerful physical expression of neous episode in a frankly ordered whole to communion, until now anxiety and discom- which, as we shall see, it is not irrelevant. fort are the price of such communion. If he It is the final episode of Mysteries and has in any way met this last demand, the Smaller Pieces, however, that makes the spectator can hardly feel detached from most meaningful and dramatic use of audi- what now takes place. ence participation and of some ambiguity With excruciating deliberation a few in the relationship between pretense and players gather up, one by one, the simu- reality. Like all the episodes in the second lated corpses of the others and bear each half of the program, it is wordless, but ex- one slowly to the stage. Gradually a row of cept for requiring extraordinary physical these startlingly rigid bodies becomes a pile, control it differs strikingly from the others, two deep, and then three deep, as, with the for they involve non-representational poses whole house now silent in horrified recogni- and movements, and are mostly comic. tion, there forms a familiar image of mass This final episode begins with the players murder-of a past that could be the future. walking aimlessly and unsteadily about the Representation has taken over, and has stage, gradually overcome by some force given final shape to the performance. The that is implied rather than represented. It actor who stood in rigid silence facing the may be a pestilence; it may be some prod- audience at the beginning of the evening uct of biological or chemical warfare.16The now seems in retrospect to have expressed ambiguity creates a mystery that is awesome his knowledge of what was to come, and to in its implications. Whatever afflicts these have anticipated his later rigidity and si- people may or may not be the doing of lence. And such is the slow pace of a Living man. Theatre production that this beginning Gradually the affliction becomes more seems, and indeed was, long ago. But as in and more intense and the desperate players Wagner's operas (especially with the thor- begin to spill out into the auditorium, some oughly unhurried approach of a struggling up the aisles and others clamber- Furtwangler or a Klemperer), the ultimate ing convulsively over spectators. In every climax is all the more overwhelming for part of the house they are soon acting out having built up so deliberately, and long slow and agonized deaths. stretches, which may not have justified The states into which the players work themselves at the time, now contribute to- themselves are so intense, so like some ac- ward a sense of scope in the whole. tual and possibly damaging trance, that for If Mysteries ends with a richer complex- many spectators the boundary between ity than the other Living Theatre produc- pretense and reality is at least in doubt. tions,17 one cannot attribute this quality And for many spectators there is real dis- solely to the subject. Essential to the effect comfort, caused by real bodies with real is an ambiguity in aesthetic distance. On sweat and saliva. This discomfort drives the one hand, spectators are subjected, as some spectators from the theatre and some we have seen, to actual discomfort from the into the safe curiosity of the crowds now bodies of the players and sometimes to ac- standing at various points of vantage. But tual anxiety for them. On the other hand, real or feigned anxiety for the suffering the piling up of bodies is represented; even players impels others to try to comfort if the gathering of these bodies takes place The Living Theatre 479 in the spectators' midst, this part of the epi- artist has an obligation to maintain a perspective, sode is performed entirely by the players. allowing the spectator to derive an experience But for from the artistic product rather than to clutter it impinging, many spectators, upon up with what all too often are but phony gim- the aesthetic distance thus developed is the micks which rob the spectator of his honest criti- reference to historical reality and to a possi- cal-emotional response?2 ble future that threatens the spectators The final episode of raises themselves. Mysteries questions about Biudel's position. In the for a Anxiety players during performance first place one may question the inflexibility and offers of assistance constitute, physical with which he applies the phrase "the na- in accounts of aesthetic distance, the many ture of the theater," as though we could be standard attribute of the unsophisticated sure that such a "nature" had re- of an aesthetic already theatregoer incapable expe- vealed itself completely. One may certainly rience. Herbert Stanley Langfeld furnishes wonder how such a "nature" could be "mis- an example: conceived" in a performance as awesomely A famous actor delighted to recount an incident effective as this finale. Furthermore, the var- which occurred while he was playing The Mid- ious degrees of participation and actual dis- He was a inventor who dleman. poor had used comfort and anxiety that they up his last resources and could not obtain experience sufficient fuel to keep up the furnace fire in may very well intensify for many spectators, which the pottery was being hardened. Only a and certainly for many they do not dimin- few moments more and his fortune would have ish, their grasp of the scene's "essence"-"of been made. Moved by the excitement of the what," in Budel's words, "it in a man in the threw down represents scene, gallery fifty the scale of human values." This cents, shouting, "Here, old man, buy wood with awareness it." 18 of the essence may require, as Biidel says, "perspective," but surely an alert spectator But this or the one Edward example, by can maintain simultaneously more than one of a more Bullough slightly sophisticated perspective, as indeed a performer is often the husband spectator, who, because his required to do.22 own wife is unfaithful, can identify only Still another consideration is the possibil- with Othello,19 involves reactions that are ity that affluence and mechanization have naive because are not called for the they by made such spectators of us in our own lives What Oscar Budel attacks is performance. that for us merely to augment in the thea- at least less naive, if it is naive at all-par- tre our detachment outside becomes itself a that the ticipation performance actually threat to Biidel's goal that "art should 'illu- calls for. He says: minate' life, not reflect it." Contemporary dramatic practice has striven more For the Living Theatre is attempting to and more to decrease aesthetic distance to the awaken the sense-responses of its spectators, point of almost eliminating it; and the propaga- and thus their capacity for and tors of phrases such as "activating the audience," feeling pity "restoring the unity of audience and stage," even terror-a capacity largely benumbed in the those among them who pretend to arrive at their opportunities various media afford for con- conclusions by means of historical considerations, templating dispassionately both acts and misconceive the nature of the theater.20 possibilities of slaughter that can even be He further asserts: digested as statistics. We have seen Beck's statement of this purpose, and we can now We go to the theater not to see re-enacted a see how both scene from life, not to see re-enacted an ex- his statement and the actual perience we may have had in our own lives, but finale of Mysteries follow the purpose Ar- rather to see this experience re-enacted in such a taud expressed in his now famous conclu- way that we may become aware of its essence, of sion to the essay on which that finale was what it represents on the scale of human values. based, "The Theater and the If we are participants in this experience, then and Plague": there, our emotions become such that the essences And the question we must now ask is whether, are lost on us, and we become concerned only in this slippery world which is committing suicide with saying bitter things and perhaps swinging without noticing it, there can be found a nucleus our fists. In other words, art should "illuminate" of men capable of imposing this superior notion life, not reflect it. Does this not mean that the of the theater, men who will restore to all of us 480 NORMAN JAMES the natural and magic equivalent of the dogmas from thought." This "different language," in which we no longer believe.28 according to Artaud, Such an awakening is not merely for the retraces poetically the path that has culminated sake of the individual; it is meant also to in the creation of language. But with a manifold illuminate him in such a way as to affect his awareness of the worlds set in motion by the language of speech, which it revives in all their later role in society. This aspect of Artaud's aspects. It brings again into the light all the influence on the Living Theatre is made relations fixed and enclosed in the strata of the clear in Judith Malina's essay "Directing human syllable, which has killed them by con- The Brig," where she says of Artaud: fining them.26 The Theatre has inserted in the He it was who demanded of the actor the great Living athletic feats: the meaningless gestures broken last act of Frankenstein27 a long wordless off into dances of pain and insanity; who cried sequence that rivals the finale of Mysteries out in his crazy-house call for a theatre so in meaningfully exploring the possibilities violent that no man who experienced it would adumbrated Artaud. The ever stomach violence again. He said: "I defy by astonishing any spectator to whom such violent scenes will three-level metal framework that serves as a have transferred their blood-the violence of set for this production now becomes three blood having been placed at the service of the rows of cells in a prison to which the play- violence of the thought-I defy that spectator to ers are brought one by one. In the "room" give himself up, once outside the theatre, to ideas of war, riot, and blatant murder."24 on stage right at the lowest level, each pris- oner is brought in, fingerprinted and photo- As Malina goes on to explain, this influ- graphed while the whole set is strongly lit. ence of Artaud was joined to that of Erwin Then in sudden darkness that is like Mil- Piscator, under whom she and Beck stud- ton's "darkness visible," he can be seen ied, and she quotes Brecht's statement that moving into the next cell, whose occupant "Piscator's theatre wanted to wrest from the also moves one cell, a process that continues spectator a practical resolve to take an ac- until the prison fills up and each cell has its tive hold on life." "Where," as Malina says, prisoner. During the moment of light when "Artaud cries out for Madness, Piscator ad- a new prisoner is brought in, each of the vocates Reason, Clarity, and Communica- others improvises in his cell some manifes- tion," 25 but just as the finale of Mysteries tation of desperation or madness. The mo- and Smaller Pieces combines disparate and ments of light are harsh and Goyaesque, seemingly irreconcilable aesthetic distances, contrasting with the ironically subdued hor- so it combines the inarticulate mystery and ror of the prisoners shifting cells in the frenzy demanded by Artaud with, as one ul- dark. It is a montage that exposes two as- timately confronts the silent pile of corpses, pects of what is being done to these men. In all the clarity that Piscator in his own way the light they show individually tortured sought. Sufficiently involved and even em- faces; in the dark they are faceless pawns. broiled in the action to be awakened and The visual expressiveness of this scene, moved, the spectator is then given the dis- with its implications about man's treatment tance and silence in which to think. Each of of man and about the impersonal view it is these processes enriches the other, thus fur- possible to take of actual suffering, shows ther enriching the total aesthetic experience. how much the Living Theatre can convey It is generally in wordless episodes such not only through Artaud's "different lan- as this finale that the Living Theatre has guage," but also through combining it with most to contribute, for here it is helping to theatrical ideas derived from Vsevolod Mey- work out what Artaud called the grammar erhold. The influence of Meyerhold's Con- of a new language, a grammar he spoke of structivism on the Frankenstein set and on as "still to be found." "It is a matter," he its use in the prison scene reflects what Mal- said, "of substituting for the spoken lan- ina said about him in her essay "Directing guage a different language of nature, whose The Brig": expressive possibilities will be equal to ver- He came to believe that only complex technical bal language, but whose source will be structures overpowering the actor could express tapped at a point still deeper, more remote the real scenery of his times. The Living Theatre 481 The Constructivist demands a setting which is was. In a long speech in Peter Weiss's Mar- the action. Therefore, Meyerhold began to regu- at/Sade29 the Marquis de Sade, first grue- late the actor's movements until his actors com- and then plained that they were being treated like pup- somely descriptive icily analytical, pets.28 makes real for us (in order to expose it) that same contrast between actual suffering The relationship of the set to the players is and an impersonal view of it that we saw essential to what the "different language" revealed (also to expose it) in the prison conveys about our world in this prison scene of Frankenstein. Each scene in its way scene, and the use of improvisation when- forces us to respond to the suffering. ever the lights are on only intensifies our The difficulty with the Living Theatre's sense of each player's containment within use of language involves a lack of tension in his own frame, as well as our sense of regu- what is being expressed. Verbal tension, lated movement each time the players move after all, requires a conflict between plausi- from one frame to another. ble ways of looking at a given phenomenon. There are other wordless scenes in the But the slogans that the Living Theatre so Living Theatre's new productions, how- obsessively reiterates all presuppose a view ever, that use the players' highly developed uniquely valid. There is none of the com- physical dexterity not for representation, plexity we found in scenes depending on but rather in a way one might call "ab- wordless communication. Wordless the Liv- stract." In Mysteries, for example, there is a ing Theatre can evoke tension between dif- sequence of improvised grotesque dance ferent aspects of the same phenomenon, dif- movements performed in a pattern in ferent degrees of involvement in viewing it, which each improvisation is imitated by a even different interpretations of what is si- player who then improvises a dance of his lently expressed. There is mystery. And own. At each performance the sequence there is conflict involved in the extreme dis- ends when an appropriate moment suggests cipline to which the players have subjected itself. This flexibility contrasts with the rig- their bodies. One senses, for example, a con- orous planning of the preceding sequence, flict between the live actor and the astonish- which opens the second half of the pro- ingly rigid corpse being lifted to the stage. gram. Here varying groups of players strike But when these players use language highly acrobatic poses revealed like a series there is no mystery and no conflict, only of disconnected movie stills as the lights go views easily held because they are not sub- on and off. jected to challenge from within. Here lan- Although both of these sequences tend at guage is what Artaud accuses it of being, times to pall, each forces us, insofar as we something in which the complexities of admire its ingenuity and dexterity, to react reality are killed by confinement in "the freshly-outside the confines of whatever human syllable." preconceptions we may have formed of the- This confinement occurs not only in the atrical movement. The same can be said in slogans of Mysteries and Paradise Now and Frankenstein of the sheer verve with which in the pseudo-mythological and pseudo-sci- the players use the set. At times, indeed, entific jargon of Frankenstein. The Living vitality in this production can be said to Theatre's adaptation of Antigone30 reduces represent itself. The acrobatics, for exam- that play to a simple contrast between the ple, which the players employ at the end of good of pacifism and the evil of tyranny. Acts I and III to form the monster, convey Nothing is suggested that could extenuate the miracle and continuity of life far more Creon's evil and force one to view him in effectively than the pretentious language of diverse and conflicting ways. There is no other scenes, only some of which justifies hint that duty or reason contribute to his itself as comic exaggeration. downfall. Ultimately there is nothing to Indeed, language is rarely effective in the pity. Beck said in an interview, "We de- new Living Theatre productions. This is cided to destroy the notion of the responsi- not because language is nowadays ineffec- bility either of the tyrant or of the individ- tive in the theatre, as Artaud claimed it ual who takes action against the tyrant. We 482 NORMAN JAMES dramatized the responsibility of with which these players assume that any- everyone." 31 While this interpretation does thing they do deserves patient attention ac- produce effective moments in which the au- tually counteracts their incredible physical dience must question itself (there is such a discipline and enervates much of their moment at the end: hearing the audience work. when it applauds, the players withdraw in A group seeking to revolutionize the the- terror from an aggressive army), and while atre, and to awaken society through the ex- oppression is often vividly represented, traordinary awareness and power its disci- most of the language confronts us with a pline can provide, need neither treat its au- simple view of events, a view all too evi- dience so cavalierly nor assume such clear- dently protected from really searching ques- cut distinctions between good and evil. In tions. Here as in the other productions the his book Towards a Poor Theatre Jerzy language is slack. There is none of the taut- Grotowski depicts his Theatre Laboratory ness of drama. in Poland as an elite-in terms of society as In one of his "Appendices to the Short well as in terms of other theatrical organiza- Organum" Brecht, stressing the need for di- tions. He says that a "performance engages alectical complexity if the theatre is not to a sort of psychic conflict with the spectator. represent the world in a misleading way, It is a challenge and an excess." And yet he raises the question, "What about the kind goes on to say that it "can only have any of art which gets its effects from dark, dis- effect if based on human interest and, more torted, fragmentary representations? What than that, on a feeling of sympathy, a feel- about the art of primitive peoples, madmen ing of acceptation.... A kind of warmth and children?" He answers, "If one knows a towards one's fellow men is essential-an great deal and can retain what one knows, understanding of the contradictions in it may be possible perhaps to get something man, and that he is a suffering creature but out of such representations; but we suspect not to be scorned." 33 that unduly subjective representations of It is this "understanding of the contradic- the world have anti-social effects." 32 What- tions in man" that one misses in the Living ever the effects may be of the Living Thea- Theatre. Lacking it they cannot, with the tre's verbal representations (as Brecht oversimplified distinctions between good points out in the same passage, "The thea- and evil that proceed from this lack, fully tre has to represent the world"), the subjec- engage the kind of spectator Grotowski tive elimination of complexity suggests an wishes to reach. For Grotowski says: arrogant sense of superiority. This attitude is in other We are concerned with the spectator who has betrayed ways, genuine spiritual needs and who really wishes, especially in the undue protraction of al- through confrontation with the performance, to most every effect, including repetition and analyse himself. We are concerned with the silence. To some extent there is dramatic spectator who does not stop at an elementary value in the discomfort and boredom the stage of psychic integration, content with his own petty, geometrical, spiritual stability, know- Living Theatre imposes so much of the ing exactly what is good and what is evil, and time on its audience. There is obvious social never in doubt.84 and dramatic significance in withholding Until the Theatre can itself from the audience the passive pleasure Living subject often associated in our theatre with the to further self-examination and real doubt, tired businessman at a musical. And with it can produce only works of flawed power. their accomplishments and their ordeals But those works have their overwhelming these players have good reason to feel supe- episodes, and the whole approach of the rior. But the suggestions of arrogance which Living Theatre contributes to the great are clearly anti-social when the players ap- search now going on for new means of thea- proach individual spectators reiterating slo- trical expression that can give the theatre gans instead of permitting dialogue, belie greater pertinence and power. The immedi- the projected ideals of compassion and com- ate fruits of such a search may understanda- munion. And the intellectual complacency bly have that incompleteness Cezanne saw The Living Theatre 483 in his own work when he spoke of being the 15 Gottlieb, p. 141. of the he had 18 Actually this episode is based on Artaud's essay primitive way begun. Perhaps "The Theater and the See Gottlieb, 145. the work of the Theatre will ulti- Plague." p. Living 17 It was not always the finale. See Gottlieb, p. 144, mately be reflected in productions better for an account of the episode that used to follow it. sustained than their own. For the explora- 18 The Aesthetic Attitude (New York, 1920), p. 61. tions and experiments in today's theatre in- 19" 'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and an volve a vital and creative eclecticism. To Aesthetic Principle," British Journal of Psychology, V (June, 1912), 93. this the Living Theatre itself bears witness. 20"Contemporary Theater and Aesthetic Dis- tance," PMLA, 76 (June 1961): 278. ' Budel, p. 281. 22For a discussion of variability in aesthetic dis- 1 For detailed accounts of three of these pro- tance see P. A. Michelis, "Aesthetic Distance and the ductions as performed in Europe see Saul Gottlieb, Charm of Contemporary Art," JAAC, 18 (Sept., "The Living Theatre in Exile: Mysteries, Franken- 1959): 1-45. The dual perspective of the artist is stein," TDR, 10 (Summer 1966): 137-52, and Lyon discussed on pp. 38-39. Phelps, "Brecht's Antigone at the Living Theatre," 23 The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caro- TDR, 12 (Fall 1967): 125-31. line Richards (New York, 1958), p. 32. 2 For a list of these see Kenneth H. productions 24 The Brig, p. 86. The with Brown, Brig (New York, 1965), pp. 37-38, 25The Brig, p. 87. corrections v-vi. pp. 2 Artaud, p. 110. 8 the in Julian Beck, "Storming Barricades," 27It is not mentioned in Gottlieb's account of The 21. Brig, p. Frankenstein. ' New York Times, Sept. 28, 1968, p. 27. 28 The Brig, p. 85. 6 Yale Daily News, Sept. 30, 1968, p. 1. 29Trans. Skelton York, 6 New York Times, Oct. 5, 1968, p. 41. Geoffrey (New 1966), pp. 23-26. 7 Village Voice, Oct. 3, 1968, p. 54. 30See 125-26, for "Six to This 8 New York Times, Sept. 28, 1968, p. 27. Phelps, pp. Layers 9 The Empty Space (New York, 1968), p. 55. Adaption," including Brecht and Holderlin. 31 10 Luigi Pirandello, Naked Masks, ed. Eric Bent- Phelps, p. 129. 3 ley (New York, 1952), p. 276. Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett 11 The Empty Space, p. 55. (New York, 1964), p. 279. 12New York Review of Books, Feb. 13, 1969, p. 26. 33"The Theatre's New Testament," trans. Jorgen s13The Brig, p. 23. Andersen and Judy Barba, in Towards a Poor 14For somewhat comparable experiments by Peter Theatre (Holstebro, Denmark, 1968), p. 47. Brook see The Empty Space, pp. 52 and 89. 84Grotowski, p. 40.