by Michael Gow
Offers his hand, WILL and MOLLY shake it.
Bless you both.
WALLY goes.
WILL: Good morning.
Pause.
My name is Will Drummond.
Pause.
I’m here to talk to you about political theatre.
Pause.
In particular, Bertolt Brecht and his theories about theatre. Bertolt Brecht. He was born in Augsburg, a town in Bavaria in 1898 and died in Berlin in 1956. But you can look that up, that’s not… So. Right. During the First World War he saw the suffering caused by the war. On the streets he saw the men broken by the machines, the bombs, the gas. He saw the suffering caused by the collapse in world markets. He looked for reasons for all this misery. He studied Marxism and found answers. What is Marxism? It’s a theory of history that says this: the group of people, the social class, that owns the means of production, which provides all the things beyond the absolute daily necessities, holds all the power. Marx described the rise of industrial capitalism when a few rich people controlled the factories and mines where vast numbers of people slaved for as little as possible so profits were always growing. These two groups were called the Ruling Class and the Working Class. Marx said there will be a crisis when the inequality of this class system causes a war between the classes, which will bring about a revolution. But Capitalism is a brilliant monster. To stay in power, Capitalism has given the Working Class security, prosperity, consumer goods, lifestyle. They no longer feel exploited, oppressed. They’re happy to keep the system going. The old working class has almost disappeared. This leads some people, misguided, ill-informed, ignorant, comfortable, smug people to claim there is no class system, and there will be no revolution or even change of any kind. But. These days, men with swords don’t charge each other on horses. Doesn’t mean there’s no more war. It just looks different. Same with the Class War. It just looks different. There are no more men in top hats smoking cigars driving the workers into their satanic mills. Now it’s the people controlling the stock market and The Banks and The Media and whoever else. They are the Ruling Class. Who are the oppressed, the exploited, the proletariat? We live in a rich country. Maybe no-one looks oppressed. But Capitalism is always at war, creating new markets. It will destroy whatever it can in this war. It’s already destroyed the idea of countries so it can move its money around, making more money wherever it can. It’s global. And now the oppressed are kept apart from the rest of us. Now, maybe they’re in another part of the world, making cheap clothes, say. Or runners, or computers, for a few cents a day. Or answering phones or mining gold for two dollars a day. Or black people, or people of another religion, or women maybe. Anyone who is exploited, so someone else has everything they want, they are the oppressed. You must remember this, whenever you hear there is no more class system. Only if you understand this is there any point studying political theatre. And this is Brecht’s theory. You’ll hear from teachers and academic types that Brecht’s theory was about stopping people from feeling anything. You’re not supposed to identify with anyone on-stage and then you won’t feel anything. So that the political meaning is clearer. This is garbage. You’re being fed garbage. Now I know you’ve read this play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. At the end, the peasant girl doesn’t pull the kid out of the chalk circle because she doesn’t want to hurt it, so the judge, who’s practically a war criminal, lets her keep it because she’s the better mother. And it’s moving, yes? We’re moved that somehow there might be a speck of justice in an insane world. This play, Mother Courage and Her Children? Read it? Tried? No? Spoiler alert, second last scene, Courage’s daughter, she can’t speak and she’s on a roof banging a drum to warn the town of an impending attack. To save the children. The soldiers shoot her down to stop her drumming. We are meant to hang our heads in shame at her sacrifice, weep for the waste of her young life, then explode with rage against the war that did this. The war, and this is the point, the war Brecht says, that is the unending war Capitalism wages against the world to stay in power and keep making a profit. It will smash everything, not just countries but families, communities, even the natural world. It will invade your minds and colonise your imaginations if it thinks there’ll be more things to sell and markets to buy. Brecht says we must resist this, with our sorrow and our rage. Sorrow is a feeling. Righteous anger is a feeling. Even thinking can be a feeling. And he wants us to feel. Feel a lot. But I’m not talking about TV feelings, ‘Ahhh, sad, life is like that, human nature, tragic, or or it’s all screwed but what can you do?’ Huge feelings, great feelings. Optimism. Faith in men and women. A better life for those who come after because we can at least try to change things. Say no to what we’re supposed to take on trust, take for granted, because that’s what suits the oppressor, say no when the oppressors tell us there’s no class system and things are the way they are because that’s the way they’re meant to be and Marxism is dead and look what happened in Russia, proves you can’t change things. And forget theory, okay, forget about theory because Brecht was an artist. Art is more difficult and scarier than theory, like an artist is more difficult and scarier than people who do what they’re told. These days Brecht’d be up on sexual harassment charges or bullying charges and he’d be tried for supporting the Russians putting down a worker’s uprising but he was an artist not a teaching aid. He was not what the syllabus wants him to be, a toothless tiger that’ll help your exam score. What play was he going to direct when he died? My Fair Lady. Put that in an essay and you won’t get a good mark. But he can’t be pinned down. Because he wanted to do, and he said this himself, what all artists do: present an image of the world. That shows us the truth. And to do that you always have to throw away what’s already been said, the familiar, the ordinary, the obvious, the stuff someone else tells us we want to see and take a good hard look. And if we’re worthwhile human beings we pity the people on-stage, feel for them, feel along with these people, like this old woman who’s had everything taken from her, dragging her cart along an endless road. Feel along with everyone on the losing side in the endless war. Because we could all end up on the losing side. Even if you have the material comforts the system bribes you with, if the system demands it, if it means bigger profits can be made, everything you have will be taken off you. Because it’s war. And the war might be endless and it’s probably already lost but that’s not a reason to give up, stop trying, struggling. Is that clear? I’m going to show you something someone said once that sums up Bertolt Brecht in four words. Sums up science, art, politics, life in four words. Someone pointed this out to me once…
He stops. Some emotion has taken away his voice. He lets it subside and goes on.
… and she was right on the money. It’s not an answer to anything, it’s only a question and that means it’s a beginning. It’s only a clue and that’s all I can give you.
On a TV he has set up, he screens the opening of an episode of ‘Why Is It So?’ with Professor Julius Sumner Miller.
MILLER: I am Julius Sumner Miller and I teach physics. Consider this astonishing thing. I have here a little board and here a sheet of paper, ’bout the size of an open newspaper. Now, I put the board under the paper in this fashion, with a little bit of the board sticking over the edge of the table. And now I’m going to deliver a sharp, impulsive blow to this end of the board and we witness a very dramatic thing.
He hits the board. It doesn’t break.
Nothing moved. And we are led to ask: Why. Is it so?
WILL: Why. Is it so? Thank you for listening.
THE END
Copyright Page
CURRENCY PLAYS
First published in 2014
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
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First digital edition published in 2014 by Currency Press Pty Ltd
Copyright © Mi
chael Gow, 2014
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