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ATHOL FUGARD'S USE OF BERTOLT BRECHT AS A SOURCE AND INFLUENCE deur BETTINA FISCHER VERHANDELING voorgel~ ter vervulling van die vereistes vir die graad MAGISTER IN LETTERKUNDE in ENGELS in die FAKULTEIT LETTERE EN WYSBEGEERTE aan die RANDSE AFRIKAANSE UNIVERSITEIT STUDIELEIER: PROF. S. R. GRAY NOVEMBER, 1991 ABSTRACT The aim of this d i s s e r t a t i on is to identify the influence of Bertolt Bretht on Fugard's life and work in South African theatre. As Fugard himself is not German-speaking, and his experience of Brecht is perforce through translations of Brecht into English, this is not a comparative study betveeri the dramatists. It merely uses Fugard's own statements about his reading of Brecht in English at various points in his career, from the 1950s to the present, to show this particular aspect of his own development as a dramatist. The standard works on Fugard - Athol Fugard, Stephen Gray (ed.) (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1982), Dennis Walder, Athol Fugard (London: Macmillan, 1984) and Russell Vandenbroucke, Truths the Hand can Touch (Johannesburg: Donker, 1986) - refer only glancingly to this possibility. The introduction establishes the many references Fugard has made to Brecht in his writing - which includes not only his plays, but his novel, filmscripts, notebooks, letters and interviews and interprets how Fugard perceives various Brechtian theatre principles, such as the use of the alienation effect, the epic nature of drama and the function of theatre in the community. In the following chapters Fugard's vorks are examined, in order to show how Brecht has been of use to him at various key points in his career. This is done chronologically, so that a larger picture of the influence on Fugard's development as a dramatist and his changing use of Brecht as a source may be seen. The conclusion of this dissertation takes the findings of the previous chapters and assesses the nature of the Brecht­ Fugard link, taking into account the different aspects and levels. This is briefly compared to the findings of the latest critical work to have corne out in which Fugard features - Martin Orkin, Drama and the South African State (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1991) - in an attempt to show how using the methodology of a source and influence study like this is of value in coming to a deeper understanding of the dramaturgy of a writer like Fugard. CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: -i- INTRODUCTION: HOW FUGARD PERCEIVES BRECHT 1 CHAPTER 1: LANGUAGE AND DYNAMICS IN THE BLOOD KNOT 32 CHAPTER 2: IDENTIFYING INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN THE SIXTIES 58 CHAPTER 3: CONSOLIDATING FORM AND CONTENT IN MILLE MIGLIA AND BOESMAN AND LENA 83 CHAPTER 4: OPEN PROTEST IN THE COLLABORATIVE PLAYS IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES 107 CHAPTER 5: THEATRE AS A PROVOCATION TOWARDS CHANGE 126 CONCLUSION: 149 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: 161 -i- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank, first of all, my supervisor, Professor Stephen Gray, for sharing his expertise, for his commi tment, for the initial. inspiration which gave rise to the planning of this dissertation and for being such a challenge to work wit~. My thanks to my husband, Rainer, and my children, Carina, Paul-Rainer, Al ice, Carl-Rudolf and Maria, for their patience and encouragement; especi a 11 y Cari na , who was a 1ways prepared to weigh up my thoughts with me. My friends, Uschi Swaine and Gina Niederhumer, have also contributed greatly in their support. In the writing of this dissertation I have been assisted by many people to whom I am grateful. Special thanks go to Dagmar Rojahn, for transferring the text onto the word-processor and to Caroline Crump for assisting in a time of stress. I would also like to thank Yolande du Preez of the Human Sciences Research Counc i 1 and Ronel Smi t of the 1i brary at the Rand Afr ikaans University for their help. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Athol Fugard for being a writer who gives far more than he promises. 1 INTRODUCTION: FUGARD'S PERCEPTION OF BRECHT Attlo] Fugard has been and still is rated by many critics the most significant single force in the development of South African drama in English. He also enjoys wide international recognition; an example is William A. Henry, who has described him as "the greatest active playwright in English" in Time (7 August, 1989). His writings have been examined and analyzed by many a researcher and critic, showing him to be a man of many facets, dynamic and challenging - see, for exam~le, John Read's bibliography which is the most up-to-date. However, more research needs to be done in order to reach an even fuller understanding of Fugard's work. The aim of this dissertation is to single out and identify the influence of the German writer, Bertolt Brecht, on Fugard's thinking, writing and particularly on his work in the theatre. Although this has often been referred to, both by himself and by critics, no study of any depth appears to have been made in this regard. Fugard is not German-speaking and therefore all his reading of - and about - Brecht has been in English. This introductory part of the study is a record of all the statements made by Fugard about Brecht to date. Through these it is established how he sees Brecht, and what role in his view Brecht has played in his work. This introduction begins with a brief outline of the careers of both writers. Fugard's career in theatre was about to begin at the time of Brecht's death, which was also the time when the latter's work rapidly became accessible to the English-speaking reader. It would be of interest to establish whether Fugard has actually modelled some of his working procedures on those of Brecht. To do this it is necessary to examine Brecht in terms of his different facets: a man,o[ his time; the writer of dramas, poems, journals and of theatrical theories; the director and teacher. Then it will be possible, when Fugard's life and work 2 are analyzed, to see to which of the different facets Fugard is responding. The introduction then goes on to focus on actual statements made by Fugard about Brecht and to analyze their impact and impl ications. The following chapters concentrate on selected Fugard plays in terms of the methodology establ ished in the introduction. The conclusion assesses these findings and attempts to answer the initial question: how. and to what extent. has Fugard been influenced by Brecht to date, and what impact has this influence had on his work. and through him on South African theatre as a whole? When Fugard was born in 1932 in Middelburg. Cape Province. South Africa, Brecht in Germany was nearing the end of the first of three major phases of his career, phases determined by political events. Thirty-four years old, he was well establ ished as a controversial and notorious writer of plays, poems, his own kind of opera, f i lmscripts and critical reviews. His plays were performed at major German theatres, twelve having reached performance. of which one. The Threepenny Opera. brought him wide acclaim. He had the critical attention of contemporary authors, directors and reviewers. His poems were published. He was the centre of a circle of friends and collaborators, some of whom were schoolfriends and who were to work with him till the end of his life. He had had the experience of being a medical student and of working as a medical orderly during World War I. seeing many medical horrors and the ruthlessness of sending hardly rehabilitated patients back to the front. This was to influence much of his writing. Deeply sceptical of politics, he ridiculed anything which could show up war in a romantic or heroic light. Turning to Marxism. he directed relentless criticism against the bourgeois society in which he lived. Many an opening night of his plays was accompanied by a scandal, In one instance. members of the audience, comprised of that very society, physically assaulted each other in their anger,l ISee Martin Esslin. Brecht: A Choice of Evils, pp. 44-45. 3 This all changed in 1933. Brecht, a sharp critic of the upcoming Nazi movement, was forced to flee his home country when Hitler came into power. He travelled to Austria, Switzerland and France, settling in. Denmark later that year, where he stayed until 1939. Then, still evading the Nazi threat, he moved to Sweden, Finland and finally to the USA in 1940. During the seven years of his European exile he kept a journal of his life and thoughts, writing down his innovative ideas on theatre. He kept in touch with his friends where possible, and made new ones, was co-editor (by correspondence) of a Marxist publication in Moscow2 and wrote nine plays, five of which were performed in Paris, Copenhagen and Zurich.