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Content A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE ORIGINS AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF DO CUM ENTARY THEATER OF DISSENT
IN THE UNITED STATES
by
Paul Dexter Lion
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE G RADUATE SCHOO L
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DO CTO R OF PHILOSOPHY
( Communi cati on— Drama)
/
January 1975
UMI Number: DP22910
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789 East Eisenhower Parkway
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C o p y rig h t © b y
P A U L D E X T E R LION
1975
U N IV E R S IT Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L IF O R N IA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90 0 0 7
P K . D .
*D
T h is dissertation, w ritte n by
......................P.3,uLD.ex£sx..Li.Qja..........................
u n d e r the d ire c tio n o f h is .... D isse rta tio n C o m
m ittee, and a p p ro ve d by a ll its m em bers, has
been presented to and accepted by T h e G ra d u a te
S chool, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f requirem ents o f
the degree o f
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
Dean
is, m i
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
C hairm an
TO:
DEDICATION
M y parents, David and Anna, for lifetim es of love, support,
wisdom, and indomitability.
Professor James Butler and Mrs. Willena Butler, for in
valuable comfort and aid over several years and on many c ritic a l
occasions.
My Committee, for the requirements they imposed and the
freedom they permitted.
My brothers, Donor and Eugene, and m y friend Dee Hughes,
fo r th eir challenges, appreciation, and sustenance.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION......................................................................................................... i i
Chapter
I. THE PROBLEM............................................................................ 1
Introduction ........................................................................ 1
Statement of the Problem .............................................. 2
Definition of Terms ....................................................... 3
Significance of the Problem ...................................... 6
L im it a tio n s ........................................................................ 10
Review of the L ite r a tu re .............................................. 14
I I . THE GENRE................................................................................. 20
Introduction ........................................................................ 20
Documentary Theater ....................................................... 23
Theme and P u rp o s e ....................................................... 23
Documentation ............................................................... 24
S t y l e ................... 25
Form and S tru c tu re ....................................................... 26
P l o t ..................................... 27
Characters....................................................................... 27
Language......................................... 29
Stage E f f e c t s ................................. 29
P o l i t i c s ................................................................................ 31
T e le v is io n ............................................................................ 32
Segregation from the S o u r c e ................. 34
Segregation from the P a s t ................................... 36
Segregation from One A nother.............................. 37
Segregation from Reality ......................................... 38
M y th o lo g y ............................................................................ 41
Guiding the Individual through Psychological
C ris e s ............................................................................ 43
Through Rites and Rituals, Supporting the
Social Order by Molding the Young ................. 44
Through Rites and Imagery, Wakening Awe,
Gratitude, and Rapture .......................................... 45
Offering a Comprehensive, Comprehensible
Image of the World, Roughly According to
Scientific Knowledge .............................................. 47
i i i
Chapter
I I I . PRECURSORS 57
Introduction ............................................................................ 57
G erm any..................................................................................... 61
Thirteenth through Fifteenth Centuries ................. 61
Sixteenth Century ........................................................... 63
Seventeenth Century ....................................................... 66
Eighteenth Century . . . . . . 67
Nineteenth Century . . . 76
Twentieth Century . . . .......................................... 87
The United S t a t e s ............................................................... 105
P r e lu d e ................................................................................ 105
S o c i e t y ................................................................................ 107
T h e a t e r ................................................................................ I l l
IV. THE PLAYS— INTRODUCTION; I: O U R RACISM,
O U R SECURITY............................. 128
Introduction ............................................................................ 128
Our Racism................................................................................ 130
In White America (Duberman) ...................................... 131
The Song of^the Lusitanian Bogey (Weiss-
Baxendal 1) . . . . . . . . . . .............................. 140
Our S e c u rity .......................................................................... . . 152
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
(Kipphardt-Speirs) . . . . . . . . . ................. 153
Inquest ( F r e e d ) ......................... 163
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (Bentley) . . 171
V. THE PLAYS— I I : O U R SOVEREIGNS, O U R W ARS........................ 177
Our Sovereigns................................. 177
Soldiers (Hochhuth-MacDonald)...................................... 178
Murderous Angels (O'Brien) ..................................... . 198
An Evening with Richard Nixon (Vidal) . . . . . 206
Our W ars....................................................................... 216
The Deputy (Hochhuth-Winston and Winston). . . . 218
The Investigation (Weiss-Swan-Grosbard)................. 230
Pueblo (Greenberg) ........................................................... 241
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Berrigan-
L e v itt).................................................. 255
XA: A Vietnam Primer (Monroe and the Pro
visional Theatre Collective) .................................. 265
VI. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS FO R
FURTHER STUDIES..................... 278
Summary.................................................................................... 278
C o n clu sio n s............................................................................ 284
Recommendations for Further Studies ......................... 292
iv
APPENDIX SYNOPSES OF THE PLAYS ............................................................. 293
Our R a c is m ........................................................................ 293
In White A m e ric a .......................................... 293
Song of the Lusitanian B o g e y .............................. 293
Our S e c u r i t y .................................................................... 294
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer . . . 294
In q u e s t............................................................................ 295
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been........................ 295
Our S o v e re ig n s ................................................................ 296
S o l d i e r s ........................................................................ 296
Murderous Angels ....................................................... 297
An Evening with Richard N ix o n .............................. 297
Our W a r s ............................................................................ 298
The Deputy ................................................................ 298
The In v e s tig a tio n ....................................................... 299
Pueblo . .................................................................... 300
The Trial of the Catonsville N in e ..................... 300
XA: A Vietnam P rim e r......................... 301
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................... 303
v
CHAPTER I
THE PRO BLEM
Introduction
In the last decade, theater has spilled into the streets and
in filtra te d our institutions, while the outside world has invaded the
auditoriums and bounded onto the stages. Documentary theater, also
called theater of fa ct, is a part of this cross-flux.
A single issue of the New York Times, March 17, 1972, contains
several other examples.^ Page 2: the description of a law suit be
tween Jacqueline Kennedy and a dogged photographer reads 1ike a Variety
review of a documentary play--"The best off-Broadway show in town . . .
features a glamorous central figure, dramatic t r ia l counsel, films and
colorful slides . . . a legal duel, with the United States Government
in the wings." Page 3: a guerilla-allegory was performed at a Wash
ington reception when "a young member of the Jewish Defense League
poured a quart of blood over the head of a Soviet diplomat." Pages 2
and 3: elaborate plots are exposed by unusual documents: McGraw-Hill
biographer C lifford Irving tape-recorded interviews with Howard Hughes,
but "Hughes" was impersonated; the author-subject of the same company's
best-selling Memoirs of Chief Red Fox is a suspected imposter and
^"The Week in Review" section.
1
plagiarist; secret memoranda involve ITT in a possible $400,000 fix
with the Nixon administration. Page 7: F.B .I. men te s tify how they
have found environments with instant audiences (a prison, a campus),
disguised themselves as radicals, and conceived, produced, directed,
stage-managed, and provided the props for criminal happenings which,
without these talented men, might not have occurred, and for which
their companions were brought to court. Page 7: one such case is the
Harrisburg tr ia l of Father P h illip Berrigan and six co-defendants,
accused--later acquitted— of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and
blow up Washington heating tunnels. This actual tr ia l seems lik e the
natural sequel to the play by P h illip 's brother Daniel, The Trial of
the Catonsville NineJ a documentary drama which may have been more
real to its public than the court proceeding from which it_was derived.
Life has gone beyond imitating a rt; i t has become a rt. Docu
mentary theater reciprocates lif e 's audacity.
Statement of the Problem
The purposes of this study are to examine the genre "documen
tary theater" and certain representative plays produced in the United
States, to identify com m on and differing characteristics, and to eval
uate the plays as theatrical works. To do th is, the following ques
tions need to be answered.
I. What is "documentary theater of dissent"?
^Text prepared for production by Saul Levitt (New York, Holly
wood: Samuel French, In c., 1971).
I I . What are the social and theatrical precursors of documen
tary theater?
A. Germany
1. Thirteenth through fiftee n th centuries
2. Sixteenth century
3. Seventeenth century
4. Eighteenth century
5. Nineteenth century
6. Twentieth century
B. United States
1. Pre-twentieth century
2. Twentieth century
I I I . What are the c rite ria for selecting the play-scripts?
A. What production factors apply?
B. Which version (published text or production script) is
to be used?
IV. What are the selected title s ?
V. How are the plays and the genre to be criticized?
A. What are the playwrights trying to do?
B. What elements do they use?
C. How well do the playwrights achieve their purposes?
Definition of Terms
Documentary theater of dissent exposes re la tiv e ly recent signal
cases of alleged evils committed by institutions and o ffic ia ls of the
state. The plays' subjects are noteworthy real people and situations,
3
and the contents are the special, usually primary documents these
persons and events have generated.
These documents can be tr ia l and hearing transcripts, memoirs,
le tte rs , sound recordings, speeches, interviews, public remarks, bank
statements, government papers, newspaper and broadcast reports, photo
graphs, film s, videotapes. These materials are often incorporated
almost bodily into the plays. The direct presence of documentation—
and deviations from it--a r e so c ritic a l that both are commonly attested
in one or more places: commentary accompanying the published scripts,
the plays' own dialog and stage directions, program notes, and projec
tions on screen during performance. In the rare case when such citation
is not overt, i t is implied by the play's particular substance: facts,
figures, o ffic ia l assertions.
Editorial lib e rtie s are generally taken with this matter. I t
can be condensed, excerpted, rearranged, paraphrased. Separate state
ments, persons or events may be combined into single speeches, charac
ters, or episodes. Mime, music, and song may be interpolated, as well
as some passages that are consistent with facts but are not fact.
Whatever the departures from raw factual m aterial, much of the sub
stance of documentary plays is assertively uninvented.
Documentary plays tend to take one of three forms: story,
chronicle, and anthology. The story dramatizes a crucial experience,
often a tribunal, of a particular person or set of persons, such as
Hochhuth's The Deputy (the Catholic Church, the Germans, and the Jews),
Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (the atomic physi
c is t's security hearing), and Berrigan's The Trial of the Catonsville
4
Nine (the case of a group of Catholic clergy and laymen who burned
draft file s ). The chronicle and the anthology portray, not the experi
ences of one or a few people, but the histories of whole populations.
Though detailed bibliographies may be appended to both chronicle and
anthology, much of the chronicle's source-material is woven seamlessly
into the play, as in Monroe's and the Provisional Theatre Collective's
XA: A Vietnam Primer (Vietnam from pre-Christian beginnings to the
1970's). By contrast, the anthology's various source-materials survive
in the play as separate segments, as in Duberman's In White America
(two hundred years of race relations in the U .» S .).
Although this study uses Piscator's term "documentary theater,
both i t and Kenneth Tynan's more fam iliar (and more misleading) a lte r-
2
native, "theater of fa ct," misrepresent the plays. The two catch-
phrases in vite a crucially incorrect expectation and provide a conve
nient excuse for indignation, as in this from the New York Times:
CRITICS DEPLORE "THEATER OF FACT"
The so-called "Theater of Fact," by virtue of the w riter's
biases, is an impossibility to achieve as well as a disservice
to the general public when i t mixes facts with fic tio n .
This was the view yesterday of most of the panelists [including
Walter Kerr, New York Times, and Brendan G ill, New Yorker1 who met
. . . under the Drama Desk auspices to discuss the obligation of
the modern playwright of "Theater of Fact" to the fa c ts .3
^Hochhuth told interviewer Martin Ess!in that Piscator had used
the term in a program note to The Deputy. Esslin, Reflections: Essays
on Modern Theatre (New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. 133.
2"Theater of Fact" was "coined by [Tynan] the National Theater
Company's lite ra ry manager." Sally K. Marks (freelance British writer).,
"Theater of Fact: Drama or Animated Newsreels," Los Angeles Times,
January 29, 1967, "Calendar" section, p. 39.
3January 4, 1972, p. 28.
5
Both "documentary theater" and "theater of fact" suggest the im partial
ity of a journ alist's or researcher's study, put on stage. This impli
cation of detached reportage wholly fa ls ifie s the genre's e x p lic it
intent and fundamental character. Peter Weiss, author of Marat/Sade
and the documentaries The Investigation and Song of the Lusitanian
Bogey, asserted,
Documentary Theater takes sides. Many of its themes inevitably
demand and assume judgement. In such a theater, objectivity is
lik e ly to be merely a concept used by the ruling group to ju s tify
its actions. . . . [and by] those who do not wish to lose their
Documentary theater has scholarly significance not merely as a
theatrical form that has attracted worldwide audiences and c ritic s and
has internationally involved the efforts of major theater organizations
and personalities. The genre has unique academic significance because
the idea of original research is inherent in these plays' creative pro
cess. The pervasive incorporation of documentary materials in these
works constitutes one of the most intimate marriages of scholarship and
a rt in our time.
There is more importance to the genre, however, than its a ffin
itie s with academia. For i f academic is not also to mean "too far from
re a lity ," the profound societal significance of documentary theater
must also be considered.
and institutions of its age and culture D ,,4 _
l"The Materials and the Models--Notes Toward a Definition of
Documentary Theater," Theatre Quarterly 1 (January 1971):41 -
privileges.1
Significance of the Problem
Documentary theater, lik e other drama, arises from the myths
and our structures, our gods and our idols are transient, discredited,
or dead. Of our space explorers, whose names and faces we hardly
remember, James Reston wrote in August 1969, " . . . the astronauts are
the new models of the heroic . . . . the spacewalkers have reawakened
the ideal of heroism . . . . now the kids have something to dream
about."^ Three years later to the month, we read, "The Apollo 15 crew
men have been o ffic ia lly reprimanded for smuggling items aboard th eir
2
craft" for covert future sale. The charismatic President who launched
the space program, John Kennedy, is slain, and six months a fte r the
3
inauguration of his monument--a theater--his fa ll from grace begins.
An incipient reincarnation, Robert, is also shot. The aura of the
tr in ity 's third figure, Edward, is tainted, his existence threatened,
his succession withheld.
The loss of tarnished icons and beliefs is sad. More te rrib le
are those once-cherished exemplars and traditions that conceal perni
cious truths, and which, faced with exposure and collapse, become openly
^New York Times, "The Week in Review" section, August 17, 1969,
p. 10.
^New York Times, August 4, 1972, p. 63. One of the Apollo 15,
Colonel James B. Irwin, is retirin g from service "to concentrate on
High Flight, In c ., a non-profit religious organization. ' I don't think
m y mistake w ill damage my ministry;,' Irwin said. ' I t portrays m e as a
human, subject to human f r a i l t y . " 1 Time, August 7, 1972, p. 3.
^Kennedy is repeatedly characterized as a conventional p o lit i
cian, cold warrior, anti-Communist crusader, and im perialist of a Pax
Americana in two recent books: Louise Fitzsimmons' The Kennedy Doc
trine (New York: Random House, 1972), and Richard Walton's Cold War
and Counter-Revolution: The Foreign Policy of John F. Kennedy (New
York: Viking Press, 1972). Both authors admit to being admirers of
Kennedy before research led to th e ir reappraisals.
7
virulent. The Germans struck such a satanic bargain with their cata
strophic vision of a Master Race. As the German documentary playwright
Rolf Hochhuth has shown in The Deputy and Soldiers (Churchill and the
firestorm bombing of German population centers), his countrymen are not
alone.
Americans also have demons to exorcise. W e have ritu a lis tic a lly
congratulated ourselves on being a melting pot, a land of opportunity
for a l l , regardless of race, color, or creed. Yet the Presidential
Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders concluded in 1968: "What white
Americans have never fu lly understood—but what the Negro can never
forget— is that . . . white institutions created . . . [the ghetto],
white institutions maintain i t , and white society condones it."'* War
against the people of neighboring nations, which we have condemned in
others as "aggression," "invasion," and "infamy," we have called in
ourselves "pioneering" the "frontier" or "untamed w ilds."2 Our bloody
westward odyssey attaches to another legend, that of the United States
always having been uniquely favored in war—ever virtuous, never
defeated. This hubris advanced the massive governmental deceits which
beguiled Americans into the most hopeless and devastating war in our
O
history.
^Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.
Special Introduction by Tom Wicker (New York: Bantam Books, 1968),
p. 2.
2"The Old West W hen I t W as New," Newsweek, April 10, 1972,
p. 64, reviewing a major exhibition opening at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art.
^"Vietnam—What Now?," e d ito ria l, New Republic, April 15, 1972,
p. 8.
8
The dreadful accounting continues, and disillusion spreads
beyond the radical dramatist, A Louis Harris poll released October 25,
1971, found that
A significant mark of the times is that public respect for the
leadership of most major U.S. institutions has fa llen drastically
in the past fiv e years, A majority of Americans is currently
w illing to express a "great deal of confidence" in only one pro-
fession--medicine--on a l i s t covering sixteen types of a c tiv ity
[among them: major companies, organized relig ion, education, the
executive branch of the federal government, organized labor, the
press, television, the U. S. Supreme Court, the s c ie n tific com
munity, Congress, and the m ilita ry .]'
Faced with decaying institutions, the concerned playwright can
reveal them, restore them, destroy them, or erect new ones. The
documentary dramatist always exposes, never salvages, usually demol
ishes, sometimes builds.
Such are the purposes and significance of documentary plays for
society. The form is , as w ell, important to theater its e lf. Competing
with theater is an array of other vehicles of information and perfor
mance: books, newspapers, magazines, radio, movies, and above a l l ,
television. In addition, the most affecting experiences in theater are
being thrust aside by the spectacular real events of contemporary lif e .
W e witnessed on television, as i t was happening, Jack Ruby murder Lee
Oswald. Through an amateur's film footage, we had watched, frame by
frame, John Kennedy die. Thirty years ago, poet Archibald MacLeish said
about radio commentator Edward R. Murrow, "You burned the c ity of London
in our houses. . . , You laid the dead of London at our doors, and we
\o u is Harris & Associates, New York City.
9
knew the dead were our dead. . . ,"1 In 1964, another poet, Adrien
Stoutenberg, wrote of President Kennedy and Dallas in "Channel U.S.A.--
Live":
W e were a ll passengers in that motorcade,
caught in the dust of a far street
At home in easy chairs, turning a dial
to bring the image close—the smile, the wave,
we were, in spite of miles or parties, there;
and ride there s t i l l . . . . 2
In the fo rtie s , there may have been some Germans who got no closer to
the war than the sight and odor of crematory smoke. But there are few
Americans today who need the words of a Murrow, for most of us have
seen, on living room screens, the bodies in Indochina.
How can the theater possibly match the impact of rival media
and unsurpassable realities? By appropriating the techniques and
apparatus of those media, and by embracing the subjects and substance
of those events, documentary theater makes an attempt.
Limitations
This study focuses on those documentary plays, foreign and
indigenous, which have been professionally presented in English in the
United States and for which published or production scripts are avail-
^Quoted in Fred W . Friendly, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our
Control (New York: Random House, 1967), p. x v ii.
2
In Erwin Glikes and Paul Schwaber, eds., Of Poetry and Power:
Poems Occasioned by the Presidency and by the Death of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Basic Books, In c ., 1964), p. 100.
10
able, The title s selected are;
1
1. In White America—Martin Duberman: 1964.
2. The Deputy--Rolf Hochhuth: 1964^
3
3. The Investigation--Peter Weiss: 1966
4. In the Matter of J. Robert Qppenheimer— Heinar Kipphardt:
4
1968 5
5* Soldiers--Rolf Hochhuth: 1968
6
6. Inquest— Donald Freed: 1970
7. Murderous Angels--Conor Cruise O'Brien: 1970^
g
8. Song of the Lusitanian Bogey— Peter Weiss: 1970
^(New York: The New American Library, Signet Books).
2Trans. by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Grove Press,
In c ., 1964), o rig in ally published as Per S telIvertrete r (Reinbek bed
Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, 1963).
3
English version by Jon Swan and Ulu Grosbard (New York: Athe-
neum), o rig inally published in German under the t i t l e Die Ermittlung
(Frankfurt and Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1965).
^Trans. by Ruth Speirs (New York: H ill and Wang), orig in ally
published in German as In der Sache J. Robert Qppenheimer (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964).
^Trans. by Robert David MacDonald (New York: Grove Press, Inc., ,
1968), orig inally published as Soldaten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt
Verlag GMbH, 1967).
®(New York: H ill and Wang).
7Rehearsal scrip t, courtesy of Bridget Aschenberg, In ter
national Famous Agency, New York.
^Trans. by Lee Baxendall (New York: Atheneum), o rig inally pub
lished in German under the t i t l e Gesang vom Lusitanischen Popanz (Frank
fu rt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967).
11
9. Pueblo--Stanley Greenberg: 1971^
2
10. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine— Daniel Berrigan: 1971
11. An Evening with Richard Nixon—Gore Vidal: 1972^
4
12. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been--E ric Bentley: 1972
13. XA: A Vietnam Primer--Michael Monroe and the Provisional
5
Theatre Collective: 1972
Although production was necessary for inclusion here, only
scripts are analyzed; no one's performance but the playwrights' is
examined. Each script is assessed on its own terms, and on its play
wright's. The principle is that of Hochhuth: the play is to be under
stood by its e lf.^ Thus, the materials which the dramatist may have
drawn upon were not considered. I
J VMM. p i c u r& ty z M **
To decide the version of each play to be used^-published text o r1
production script--three tests were applied. Which version is the only
or more available one to researcher and public? In a ll but two cases--
1 Unpublished. Production script.courtesy of author.
^Above, p. 2, footnote 2.
3(New York: Vintage Books, Random House).
4 (New York: Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row).
^Unpublished. Production script courtesy of The Provisional
Theatre Foundation, Los Angeles.
^Patricia Marx, excerpted "Interview with Rolf Hochhuth," in
The Storm over THE DEPUTY, ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press,
In c ., 1964), p. 54. The interview was broadcast over station W NYC,
New York, and an edited text printed in Partisan Review 31 (Summer
1964).
12
Greenberg's Pueblo and Monroe-ProVisional Theatre Collective's XA, both
unpublished--this test meant the use of a published text. Which ver
sion, i f there is more than one, most fa ith fu lly reproduces actual per-'
formanee? The published text of O'Brien's Murderous Angels was exten
sively revised for its in itia l American production at Los Angeles'
Center Theatre Group, which was later taken to New York; for this
reason, a production script was used here. The Trial of the Catons-
v ille Nine was f ir s t presented b rie fly and experimentally in the Center
Theatre Group's New Theatre for Now series, a version published as the
t r ia l of the catonsville nine, by Daniel Berrigan.^ I t was later
"prepared"— rewritten--by Saul Levitt for a major production at the
Center Theatre Group's Mark Taper Forum and was brought to New York.
This second version, published by Samuel French, is the one discussed.
Which version, i f more than one, adheres most closely to the documen
tary mode? The published book version of Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy
was used in preference to the Jerome Rothenberg-adapted, Samuel French-
published production script because the la tte r excises most of its
documentary qualities.
Playwrights' published commentaries and/or interviews were con
sulted. Personal conversations were conducted with the authors of two
plays (Greenberg, Pueblo; and Duberman, In White America), and with two
members of a third play's creative ensemble (Elinor Graham and Barry
Opper of XA). Published reviews and criticisms were used, but spar
ingly, as they were usually based on productions. Theater program
1 (New York: Bantam Books, In c., 1971)
2(New York, Hollywood, 1964). %ee chapter V, p. 195.
13
notes have been selectively quoted, chiefly as they describe play
wrights' methods or attitudes.
Review of the Literature
Martin Duberman, "AFTERW ORD:
History and Theater"!
This essay explains Duberman1s b e lief that " . . . the d e fic i
encies of history and theater might be lessened i f each would pay some
attention to the virtues of the other.^ I t was Duberman's contention
that history is ennervated by pedantic o b jec tivity, and contemporary
theater constricted by its preoccupation with defeat and f u t ilit y ; on
the other hand, history provides models of human triumph, while theater
offers immediacy and emotion.
Five years afte r this "AFTERWORD," Duberman repudiated the idea
that the past is in any way a better guide to the present than is the
q ;
present its e lf. This later view is shared by this study.
Donald Freed, "Peter Weiss and
the Theatre of the Future"4
The t i t l e misleads. As the "Editor's Note" indicates, the ar
tic le was solicited despite " . . . its obviously tentative notes for a
book format."5 * So i t is also about numerous randomly organized topics
! ln White America, pp. 177-126. This essay is a revised ver
sion of "Presenting the Past," The Columbia University Forum 7 (Fall
1964)> fi-
2Duberman, In White America, p. 117. " %
3Below, chapter IV, pp. 132, 140. * * * ) , f P -
4prama Survey 6 (Fall 1967):119-171.
51 b i d.
14
and individuals other than Weiss, future theater,.and the relationship
of the two. The style is dynamic, often extravagant, and many of the
points are overstated—much the same as in Freed's Inquest, written a
few years later. There are, nevertheless, provocative and useful ideas:
the connection between documentary theater (Freed refers to i t as
"Theatre of Fact") and the mass media, the need for audience commitment
for closure.
Freed traced epic theater to Brecht, did not mention Piscator.
He distinguished "Theatre of Fact" from Social Realism and Naturalism,
but not from the Living Newspaper, as he promised. There is no d e fin i
tion of "Theatre of Fact."
1
Dan Isaac, "Theatre of Fact"
Isaac analyzed and contrasted Pueblo and Catonsville at length,
and by way of them and a few other cited works, b rie fly examined the
genre. The critiques are comprehensive, detailed, perceptive, and
a rtic u late.
No definition of the genre is attempted. Several points are
arguable: that Pueblo is su rrea listic— i t is expressionistic, an
important methodical and thematic difference; that "One cannot go
2
beyond one's documented statements," - - Pueblo manages to do just that;
that "Pueblo is more interested in the dramatic than the ideological"3—
^The Drama Review 15 (Summer 1971):109-135.
2Ib id ., p. 119.
3Ibid.
15
i t is interested in them equally and inseparably; and that documentary
theater may have an archival and museum function—documentary theater
does not care about filin g away the facts but in putting them to imme
diate use. S t i l l , the intensity and knowledgeability of the play
critiques are vivid and stimulating.
Sally K. Marks, "Theater of Fact:
Drama or Animated Newsreels?"^
Marks attributed the coinage of the term "Theater of Fact" to
Kenneth Tynan, informatively described several British documentary
plays, and correctly identified the influence on this and other
theatrical phenomena as originating with decades of productions by
Piscator. While she wrote, "New Drama these works are,"^ she ques
tioned whether they are theater, since they omit "the structural
skeleton of a play." This appears to be a narrow definition of
theater, and to rule out those documentaries which do have plot-
structures, including Qppenheimer, which the a rtic le reviewed suc
cinctly and favorably.
Rene Hainaux, e d ., "Piscator and
the Documentary Theatre"4
This bi-monthly, bilingual (French and English) review con
tains several articles and photographs in two sections: "Piscator and
the Documentary Theatre," and "The Documentary Theatre." The f ir s t
\ o s Angeles Times, "Calendar" section, January 29, 1967,
p. 39,
^Ibid. ^Ibid. \lo rld Theatre 16 (1968).
16
section gives, in pictures and a rtic le s , some of them Piscator's own,
a vivid idea of Piscator's powerful, radical philosophy, work, and per
sonality. "The Documentary Theatre" contains b rie f descriptive,
synoptic, and theoretical reports of documentary dramas in several
European and Latin American countries, Japan, and the United Arab Re
public. There is also an a rtic le by Peter Weiss, which is a different
translation of "The Materials and the Models," below.
Hilda S. Rollman-Branch, "Psychical
Reality and the Theater of Fact"!
Rollman-Branch is a psychoanalyst; the a rtic le is a comparison
of 1 1 . . . historical and dramatic motivation [in a play] with the
psychoanalyst's special interest in the conscious and unconscious moti
vations of each individual patient's present life ." ^ The conflicting
motives the a rtic le stresses are those between self-respect and se lf-
preservation, between principles and survival. The psychological
analysis of this dilemma, apart from and within several plays, is
thorough, instructive, and fresh. The definition of "Theater of F act--
O
" . . . a Theater of Everyman's Individual Responsibility, NOW !" -- is
rather broad, as some of the illu s tra tiv e plays indicate--B olt's A Man
for All Seasons; M ille r's After the F a ll; Baldwin's Blues for Mr.
Chariie; and Odets' Waiting for Lefty. Rollman-Branch mistook the
purpose of Investigation as did most of the c r itic s , wishing that the
^American Imago 26 (Spring 1969):56-71.
2 lb id ., p. 56.
^ Ib id ., p. 60.
17
play had offered more of a " . . . vicarious emotional reliving of
1
shared conflicts."
Peter Weiss. "The Materials and
the Models"^
These "Notes" are divided in fourteen paragraphs, reminiscent
of Investigation's eleven "Songs." The organization here is haphazard;
individual paragraphs may cover several points, which may also be
treated in other paragraphs. The a rtic le is valuable as the only one
on the genre in English by one of the German originators of the form,
and for the specifications of the genre's characteristics and socio-
political-m edia context. The a rtic le tends to be a manifesto of Weiss'
own work. I t contains some disturbingly or questionably dogmatic
assertions: "In the description of rapine and genocide, black and
white strokes are ju s tifie d ; no conciliatory tra its need be indicated
in the aggressor, while fu ll solidarity must be shown for the under-
3
dog;" and "Documentary Theatre asserts the alternative [to theater of
the absurd]; that re a lity , however opaque i t may appear, can be ex
plained in every d e ta il."^ The a rtic le was particularly useful in
analyzing Bogey. I t is notable that Weiss never uses the term "theater
of fa ct."
1Ib id ., p. 67.
^Theatre Quarterly 1 (January-March 1971}:41-43.
3"The Materials and the Models," p. 42.
^ Ib id ., p. 43.
18
Jack Zipes, "The Aesthetic Dimensions
of the German Documentary Drama"1
Zipes is an American professor of German lite ra tu re , special
izing in theater. "Aesthetic Dimensions" is a compact but vigorous,
detailed, and penetrating analysis of the general characteristics of
the genre, and specific critiques of Bogey, Soldiers, and Gunter Grass'
The Plebeian's Uprising. A minor disadvantage to one who cannot read
German is that the cited play-excerpts are in the original German.
Jack Zipes, "Documentary Drama in
Germany: Mending the C ircuit"2
This e a rlie r a rtic le by Zipes traces the origins in this
century, in America and Germany, of documentary theater. I t also
analyzes Deputy, Oppenheimer, and Investigation, the f i r s t three of
Piscator's productions in the form. Zipes' comments are well-informed,
lucid, lean, and detailed. He did not attempt a defin ition of the
genre. Here, too, the illu s tra tiv e play-excerpts are in the original
German.
1 German Life & Letters 24 (July 1971):346-358.
2The Germanic Review, January 1967, pp. 49-62.
19
CHAPTER I I
THE GENRE
Introduction
I t might well have been a documentary playwright who wrote
approvingly of "a remark attributed to Voltaire: 'History is a pack
of lie s , agreed upon,"1 or who said:
People have had i t with government, with business, with the church
. . . They're disillusioned. . . . Our established in stitutions'
c re d ib ility is at a low ebb. I'm clear . . . about the need to
change . . . the world. . . . We've got to shape i t . . . .
Neither of these statements, however, were those of a documentary play
wright. I t was President Nixon's media c r itic and speechwriter Patrick
Buchanan who scorned History, and Nelson Rockefeller who wants credi
b ilit y restored to government, business, and church.^
One need not conclude from this that the foxes have joined the
hounds. Documentary theater's reformist heresy, as well as its re p li
cation of actual materials and involvement with re la tiv e ly immediate
real experiences, are not exclusive to i t , but inseparable from wide
spread sim ilar trends in other fie ld s .
^Patrick Buchanan, "The Legend of Saint George McGovern," New
York Times, November 24, 1972, p. 37, and Nelson Rockefeller, quoted
by William Kennedy, "Rocky is 64, going on 35 [s ic ]," New York Times
Magazine, April 29, 1973, p. 67.
20
What c r itic Barbara Rose said of the visual arts applies also
to many verbal forms:
. . . we are watching the eclipse of the major [modes] . . . that
depend on the expression of the individual ego, and seeing the rise
of the democratic arts, which involve multiple originals, mass
communication, yet iron ically are based on a greater degree of per
sonalism and intimacy than the monumental forms that demand co
herent cultural goals.^
2
And so, "a genre of tape-recorded books has sprung up. . . . " "Crime
fic tio n is seeing a s h ift toward 'very re a lis tic books--almost docu-
3
mentary in s ty le .'" Sports writing has moved from the sanitized
heroics of the past to works which expose the seamy side of our national
games and of the athletes' personal lives.^ The "New" or "Advocacy"
Journalists, lik e Nat Hentoff and Jack Newfield of New York's Village
Voice, have rejected the sacrosanct impersonality of who-what-where-
when reporting, and have involved themselves ideologically and a c ti-
v is tic a lly in th eir stories. The "New Realism" is a trend in painting
where the "artists use th eir human s k ills to ape the camera and even
''"The Triumph of Photography, or: Farewell to Status in the
Arts," New York, March 6, 1972, p. 68.
2Linda Wolfe, "Luce Women," New York, July 31, 1972, p. 55,
reviewing Jack Olson, The Girls in the Office (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1973).
3
Lawrence Ashmead, mystery editor of Doubleday, quoted by Eric
Pace, "New Trends Are Emerging in Whodunit Genre. Who's Doing It? ,"
New York Times, November 28, 1972, p. 90.
^Jonathan Yardley, "Babe Ruth S t ill in His Heaven," New
Republic, December 18, 1971, pp. 21-23. T itles include Jim Bouton's
Ball Four (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970), Dave Meggyesy's
Out of Their League (Berkeley, C a lif.: Ramparts Press, 1970), Bernie
Parrish's They Call I t a Game (New York: Dial Press, 1971), and
Joseph Durso's The All-American Dollar: The Big Business of Sports
(Boston: Houghton M ifflin , 1971).
21
attempt to surpass its slick perfection. . . . and in sculpture
where languorous nudes have the u ltr a -lif e lik e skin, creases, and hair
2
of real female bodies.
In the sciences, astronomers have witnessed phenomena that
PUT LA W S O F UNIVERSE INTO QUESTION. . . . objects [have been
revealed] that seem to be moving faster than lig h t . . . [o r]
whose energy output defies explanation. . . . matter [may be]
entering this universe from other universes. . . . or fa llin g
into a "black hole," perhaps vanishing en tirely from our uni
verse's framework of space and time. . . . unconventional expla
nations have been put forth by internationally known scientists
and published in reputable s c ie n tific journals.3
Gestalt and encounter psychotherapists, rather than having people
sedentarily dredge up th e ir recollections of distant times and places,
as in traditional psychiatry, instead lead them to perform direc tly in
metaphoric, simulated, and real situations and to relate th eir here-
and-now feelings and thoughts. Geneticists now " . . . have the awful
knowledge to make exact copies of human beings," whether a H itle r, a
da Vinci, or oneself; the process is cloning, "the production of genet-
4
ic a lly identical copies of an individual organism."
^Kenneth Evett, "The New Realism," New Republic. April 15, 1972,
p. 23.
O
Barbara Rose, "Real, Realer, Realist," New York, January 1,
1972, p. 50.
■^Walter Sullivan, New York Times, December 27, 1972, pp. 1, 28.
^Willard Gaylin, "W e Have the Awful Knowledge to Make Exact
Copies of Human Beings," New York Times Magazine, March 5, 1972, p. 10.
Gaylin is an M.D., president of the In stitu te of Society, Ethics and
The Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y ., and professor of psychi
atry and law at Columbia Law School.
22
As comparable as documentary theater is to some non-theatrical
arts and sciences, i t is joined even more closely to Rockefeller's
totemic axis of government-business-church. Here, however, for govern
ment, read p o litic s ; for business, television --
. . . the business community, which knows what is good for i t ,
is quite correct to exploit the secular mass media and the pro
paganda of advertising. . . . ^
and for church, mythology. This chapter w ill describe the generic and
disparate elements of documentary theater, and w ill analyze the bonds
between i t , p o litic s , television, and mythology.
Documentary Theater
Within it s e lf , documentary theater shows more variety than
uniformity. This is only right for plays which seek to scramble the
patterns and destroy the barriers of authority and submission. One is
therefore obliged at least to acknowledge, especially fo r plays lik e
these, that precise en tities lik e "genre" and "documentary theater"
may be as much in the beholder's eye as in the things beheld.
Theme and Purpose
Among the most consistent features of documentary plays are
th e ir theme and purpose. The intended theme of these plays is that the
state is e v il—whether because i t subjugates black peoples and calls i t
c iv iliz in g ; crushes dissent and calls that patriotism; elects k ille rs
and accomplices and calls them Pope, Prime M inister, and President, and
^Donald Freed, "Peter Weiss and the Theatre of the Future,"
Drama Survey 6 (Fall 1967):141.
23
slaughters millions and calls i t honor.
The purpose is a l i t t l e more elusive. The plays are uncomfort
ably but deliberately incomplete. W e too are the state; its offenses
are committed at best in our name and at worst with our help. So these
plays are unique collaborations between playwrights and audience; some
thing is required of the audience for catharsis and consummation. The
members of the audience must come to decisions, whatever they may be,
whether partisan action, further study, or indifference; not until then
is the purpose of documentary plays realized. The one exception is
Murderous Angels, in which the fates of the titan-heroes are their
mutual a ffa ir , not ours, and which treats us as sightseers passing
through the palaces of the mighty.
Documentation
The second factor common to a ll the plays is the clear pres
ence of documentation. Documentary sp ecificity, however, ranges from
the wholly implied of Song of the Lusitanian Bogey to the nearly
to ta lly revealed of In White America, which provides supplements citing
a ll original sources, currently available versions, page numbers, and
in selected illu s tra tiv e cases, exactly what was retained, omitted, and
what l i t t l e , i f anything, inserted.
The quantity of documentation varies from one single or one
major source— the tr ia l transcripts of The Investigation, In the Matter
of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine— to the
voluminousness of Pueblo^ and Deputy, whose appended chapter, "Side-
^Below, chapter V, p. 242.
lights on History," quotes thirty-n ine sources: sixteen German, two
Ita lia n , one B ritish , and nineteen American, a ll of which are "only a
fraction of the material" the author collected .1
The kinds of documents are usually primary, in isolation or pub
lished with other m aterial. Added to or exemplifying those mentioned
2
in chapter I are pamphlets, Congressional Records, diaries, biogra
phies, participants' accounts of presidential interviews, a ship's log,
and m ilitary directives.
The substance of the documents are data and spoken or written
statements. Data may be transferred whole, in part, or in summary.
Statements may be edited (a ll the t r ia l plays), but otherwise quoted
verbatim ( Investigation) or paraphrased (Oppenheimer) ; or used to
suggest the style and invented content of the dialog (C hurchill's, in
Soldiers).
Style
In only one work, Are you Now or Have You Ever Been, has a
play's style stayed fixed a t the level of its documents. All other
playwrights have evolved tones and modes which transmute the original
materials and d iffe r for each play. White America is straightforward
but highly diversified realism. Oppenheimer alternates epic interludes
with r e a lis tic , urbane disquisitions. Soldiers and Deputy are modern
Schllerian classicism tinged with expressionism. An Evening with Rich
ard Nixon mixes slapstick, sa tire, and straight fact. Investigation's
^Hochhuth, Deputy, p. 287.
2Above, p. 4.
25
verbatim truncation and s t e r ilit y are su rrea listic. Pueblo is thor
oughly expressionistic. XA: A Vietnam Primer combines readers' the
ater, mime, and psychodrama.
Form and Structure
Eight of the thirteen plays are stories, having focal charac
ters, plots, and conventional theatrical time-spans. Three others
encompass centuries or m illenia and sometimes innumerable, often un
identified figures; two of these are chronicles (Bogey and XA), one an
anthology (White America). Two more are unclassifiable: Are You Now
has a fin ite chronology and group of notable people, but no p lo t, and
Investigation occurs during a limited period but has ectoplasms for
characters and reconstructed sequence rather than plot.
Six--almost h a lf--o f the plays are cast in a t r ia l format. Are
You Now, though condensed, is the only one that adheres to lite r a l ju
ridical procedure. Investigation, the sparest variant, is so com
pressed and disembodied i t seems almost mythic. Oppenheimer interposes
monologs, newsreels, and topical captions. Inquest presents on one
stage socio-political montages, collateral scenes, and flashbacks, but
separates them from the tr ia l on another stage. Pueblo, in contrast,
mingles its flashbacks, flash-forwards, and protagonist's five
analogous tria ls on a single stage almost simultaneously.
All the plays are fu ll-le n g th . Pueblo, Catonsville, and XA are
written without intermission; the rest are multi-sectioned. Nixon
comes in two in tern ally undivided "Phases." White America contains two
acts and twenty-eight segments. Investigation is composed of eleven
26
"Songs." Deputy is the equivalent of two or three plays, consisting of
an outsize fiv e acts, eleven scenes. Most of these plays' compart
ments and sub-units, while always interrelated, are often separately
complete.
Plot
The plots—or historical surveys--that comprise the plays are
the third and last constant in documentary theater. All are accounts
of "rela tive ly recent [or dated but continuing] signal cases of alleged
evils committed by institutions and representatives of the state.
Characters
The casts of documentary plays may include almost anyone: non
characters; authentic but obscure persons; composites, inventions, or
symbols; and some of the most famous figures of our time. In Investi
gation and Bogey, almost a ll are, in Weiss' words, "speaking tubes . . .
2
steeped in anonymity." Everyone in White America is or was re a l,
some celebrated, many nameless. Are You Now's WITNESSES are actual
individuals; its CHAIRMAN, INVESTIGATORS, and CONGRESSM EN are aggre
gates. Deputy has nearly every kind: fic titio u s or typified charac
ters with names (COUNT FONTANA--counsel to the Holy See, HELGA—young
waitress-hostess, LUCCANI SR.— a converted Jew), or with occupations
(A R O M A N COBBLER, A SCRIBE, THE CARDINAL), or with neither (the
SPEAKERS of the monologs); a real though freely drawn protagonist
^Above, chapter I, p. 3.
^Below, chapter V, p. 235.
(FATHER RICCARDO FONTANA, S. J ., loosely based on Provost Lichtenberg
of Berlin Cathedral); and well-known, e x p lic itly identified persons
(POPE PIUS X II, LIEUTENANT ADOLF EICHMANN).
The breadth of character-types is matched by the extent of
the character-counts. In the eleven plays other than Bogey and XA,
there are 414 roles. The minimums are CatonsyjJHe‘ s 16, and Inquest's
19; the maximums are White America's 83 and Nixon's 85. Tabulating
Bogey and XA is v irtu a lly impossible; the non-obligatory seven to nine
performers in them enact hundreds and thousands of years of events
involving numerous individuals and vast multitudes. In XA there are
51 sp ecifically countable roles (some speak only a sentence or two), as
well as unreckonable referents lik e VILLAGE PERFORMERS, USA PERFORMERS,
SOUTHERN VIETNAMESE GROUP, NORTHERN VIETNAMESE GROUP, "SOCCER G A M E
REVOLUTIONARIES."
Once the totals go into and beyond the th irtie s , some of the
plays assign several roles to each of several performers. In the
majority of the more populous plays, this is nothing other than a
budgetary necessity. In a few cases, there is more to i t . XA, for
example, is "Designed to be produced quickly and without too much fuss.
Designed to be portable. Designed to be available."^ Investigation
(30 performers, 9 of them WITNESSES who individually represent at
d ifferen t times prisoners and camp personnel) and Deputy (24 actors,
45 roles) both use multiple-casting to end the false divisions between
^Monroe, "Notes on XA," p. i i i .
28
heroes and v illa in s , bystanders and victims. Their idea is that every
one— including audience and playwright— is both.
Language
Except for narrative expository passages which dot a few plays
(White America, Murderous Angels, Nixon) and which constitute the
greater part of XA, most of the plays' language is re a lis tic dialog
which varies according to the given documents, characters, and play
wright's talent and purpose. Departing from what the term “documen
tary theater" would lead one to expect, Murderous Angels uses some and
Bogey much metrical and free verse. Investigation is printed lik e
poetry, but reads in English lik e surgically trim prose. The typo
graphy of Deputy and Soldiers is also that of free verse, and though
th e ir dialog in translation is s t i l l largely prose, i t is considerably
heightened until i t approaches and sometimes becomes poetry.
Stage Effects
The stage effects of some of the later plays ( Inquest, Murder
ous Angels, Pueblo, Nixon) are returns to the a n ti-illu s io n a ry tech
niques of Piscator's and Brecht's epic theater: screened captions,
data, photographs, and documentary film s; placards; recordings; loud
speaker voice-overs. Inquest's effects are the most elaborate,
beginning outside the theater with images projected onto the sidewalk
and taped sound-tracks. Inquest's audiovisual collages are, however,
physically d ivisib le from the performed plot. Pueblo's epic scenic
effects, on the other hand, are inseparable from the action and its
29
central character. Its set is a remarkably apt adaption of two
Piscatorean devices: Hoppla wir leben's 1927 construction of "multi-
storeyed iron scaffolds, as though l i f e were a factory,"^ is Pueblo's
"web of horizontal and vertical surfaces formed by catwalks connected
to each other and to the deck . . . by a network of ladders," which at
once and by turns represents the anti human structures that torment
Bucher--the ship, the Navy, the Korean prison camp, the o ffic ia l in
quiries. The luminous stage flo o r, used by Piscator in his 1954 pro-
O
duction of M ille r's The Crucible, is the USS Pueblo's deck, through
which Bucher "is illuminated from below, [by a] ruby-red lig h t from the
[throbbing] engine room which glows in his memory."4
The other plays d iffe r. Soldiers' and Catonsvilie's sets,
props, and costumes are largely re a lis tic (though Soldiers is a m ulti
set drama with an expressionistic-epic prolog); White America and Are
You Now give no technical or design instructions, and Bogey' s and XA's
effects are simplified and improvisational.
Oddly enough, the published texts of the f ir s t documentary
pi ays--Deputy, Oppenheimer, and Investigation—whose premieres were
directed by Piscator in Germany, call for few or none of the devices
for which he was famous. Deputy stipulates several b rillia n tly
expressive sets, props, and costumes, but they spring from situation
and character, and are illusionary in nature. Oppenheimer does specify
TM. -L. Piscator, The Piscator Experiment: The P o litical The
atre (Carbondale: Southern Illin o is University Press, 1970), p. 226.
2Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 1. 3World Theatre, p. 317.
^Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 1.
30
short topical film clips and terse thematic captions, but these b rie fly
precede and do not overlay the essentially re a lis tic action. Investi
gation insists on minimum th e a tric a lity of any kind.
Politics
The parallels between so many of the elements of theater and
of p o litics have been noted by theater people, journalists, and p o li
ticians. Arthur M ille r, writing ju st before Election Day, 1972, said:
. . . an election campaign is not only lik e theater, i t is theater.
What we are doing now is trying to cast the part of President.
McGovern's d iffic u lty , and Nixon's advantage, stems from the
nature of the role both are trying to win . . . [and] the kind of
play they are offering themselves for as the hero.1
A few months e a rlie r at Mount Rushmore, for his f if t ie t h birthday,
McGovern agreed to pose in p ro file against the giant visages of
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. "McGovern
thought the idea might smack of hubris, but an aide told him: Politics
O
is th e a te r." Anthony Lewis, London-based columnist for the New York
Times, wrote from Paris that
The second Indochina war is ending as i t began, in obscurity and
contradiction. I t is lik e a Pirandello play, confounding appear
ance and re a lity . But as in Pirandello, there is a profound theme
. . . amid the confusion.3
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, running for reelection, told a Toronto
audience that Canada "has achieved the assurance and the courage of a
^"Politics as Theater," New York Times, November 4, 1972, p. 33.
2Time, July 31, 1972, p. 14.
3"The Last Tango," New York Times, January 27, 1973, p. 29.
31
fu lly mature actor on the world scene. . . . The most trenchant of
the comparisons was offered by Democratic Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
3rd of Illin o is in a speech to the Senate:
The President speaks, when he speaks at a ll to the people,
from the security of a television studio, or with the help of
scriptw riters, stage managers and make-up men.
W e have come to expect a certain amount of a r tific e in our
p o litic s . But when stagecraft becomes the principal means of
encounter between the President and the people, the result is not
liv e ly public discourse but a series of Presidential monologues.
Thus government becomes, not a relationship between a leader
and his people but a performance between actor and audience.
Leadership becomes a gesture of a r tific e , not truth; the President's:
acts seem more the posturing of royalty than the earnest efforts of
a public servant accountable to the people.2
Documentary plays are not the le f t side of this theater = po litics
equation, but the equal sign its e lf.
Television
Stevenson was nevertheless rig h t to specify a "television
studio" and not a theater stage. In 1972, each s ta tis tic a l person in
the United States saw an average of three hours and twenty-eight
O
minutes of television a day. Every American man, woman, and child
would have to have attended at least a play a day— 365 plays a year--
to match that. When Laurence O liv ie r's film Richard I I I was shown on
KNBC-TV in Los Angeles in the late 1950's, Frank Baxter, the program's
^Jay Walz, "A Bold Trudeau Stance," New York Times, October 13,
1972, p. 17.
O
"Credibility: Someone is n 't te llin g the truth. Mr. Nixon
or Mr. McGovern? Check one," New York Times, October 3, 1972, p. 45.
^Nielson Company figures, cited in Public Notice No. 00900,
Federal Communications Commission, May 9, 1973.
32
host and Shakespearian scholar, said more people would watch Richard
during that one afternoon's telecast than had seen a ll its theatrical
productions in the play's three-and-a-half century history.
Conservative p o litic ian and dissident a r tis t alike agree with
former F.C.C. Commissioner Nicholas Johnson that "Television . . . is
the greatest communication mechanism ever designed by man."^ Presi
dent Nixon, we are told, "has correctly perceived that most Americans
now get th eir f i r s t view of what is happening in the world, and often
2
th eir only view, through television." An unnamed m ilita n t black film
industry member said, "Television and motion pictures are perhaps the
strongest propaganda medium. What people see there they tend to
believe that [s ic ]." 3
Television also offends both conservative and dissident.
Almost as the Congress had cut o ff funds for the job-giving, socially
conscious Federal Theatre Project in the 1930's, President Nixon vetoed
a b ill providing substantially increased monies for public television;
he and most "White House aides view public TV as a tax-supported
4
haven for lib erals who couldn't make i t on C.B.S. or N.B.C."
^Quoted by Bob Maxwell, "A Public Service Index," Media
Ecology Review, September 18, 1972, p. 10.
2Jul ius Duscha, director of the Washington Journalism Center
"The White House Watch over TV and the Press," New York Times Maga
zine, August 20, 1972, p. 92.
3"Rising Complaints Shake Film Truce With Blacks," New York
Times, October 27, 1972, p. 51.
4Duscha, "The White House Watch over TV and the Press," p. 96.
33
On the other hand, Augusto Boal, author-director of documentary plays
in Scfo Paulo, "seeks to destroy the creation and manipulation of 'news'
by the mass media." He argues: "'A news item published . . . is a
work of f ic t io n .'
Journalist Nat Hentoff has defined p o litics as "the way in
2 '
which we liv e with each other." What, then, has been television's
p o litic a l/th e a tric a l impact on people--on the way we liv e with each
other? According to Daniel J. Boorstein, director of the National
Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian In s titu tio n , te le
vision has "democratized experience," but i t has also segregated us in
several profound ways: i t has segregated us from the source, from the
3
past, from one another, and from re a lity . How does documentary,
theater's homeopathic antidote to television, attempt to counteract
these effects?
o
Segregation from the Source
Richard Nixon's b e lie f "that the best way to communicate with
the people was . . . [to go] over the heads of the newsmen . . .[and]
appear on live television and speak directly to [the people]"4 is the
apotheosis of our televised segregation from the source, the illu sion
^Isaac, "Theatre of Fact," p. 134.
^Quoted by Sandra Adi ekes, le tte r-to -th e -e d ito r, Village
Voice, July 6, 1972, p. 65.
^"Television," L ife , October 10, 1971, pp. 36-39.
^James Keogh, President Nixon and the Press (New York: Funk &
Wagnalls, 1972), quoted by Richard Revere, "The Presidential View of
the Press," New York, October 9, 1972, p. 54.
34
of face-to-face contact but the actuality of further isolation, espe
c ia lly from our p o litic a l leaders. Public o ffic ia ls ' televised mes
sages to us are usually programmed electronic monologs and s e lf-
advertisements; our swiftest answers, i f any, are nineteenth century
postals (few of which the Presidential addressee reads), and eighteenth
century referenda once every few years.' There was a time that news
paper, radio, and television reporters served, however inadequately, as
our on-the-spot surrogate respondents to Executive communications, but
even that limited access closes; Presidential press conferences are
increasingly infrequent. W e see and hear government leaders very much
as they wish to be seen and heard; we are rarely seen or heard. A
"Silent Majority" is not regretted, but exalted. Denied the chance to
reply, public desire to do so languishes. Our spokesmen speak more and
more for themselves, to themselves. Our own voices plug in to no out
le t.
Documentary plays w ill have none of th is. They circumvent the
guided tours, locked doors, and reverent hush of State, Court, and
White Houses. By way of the theater, they takeus around the guards
and into the sanctums and vaults. W e see our o ffic ia ls and in s titu
tions as they would not have themselves be seen. W e examine documents
that the state would prefer forgotten or unrevealed.
Access is not enough. Documentary theater is liv e speech and
movement. By means of the in-the-flesh action of the stage, i t also
hopes to return to us our voices and our bodies, so that we may be
more than acquiescent eyes and ears. Once inside the power-centers,
35
documentary theater would not have us quietly go back the way we came,
or obediently leave things as we find them.
Segregation from the Past
The rupture from personal sources is accompanied by a break
with temporal and circumstantial sources. Boorstein explained:
The high cost of network time and the need to offer something for
everybody produce a discontinuity of programming, a constant
shifting from one thing to another . . . [such th at] the instant
present moment . . . [is f ille d ] with experience so engrossing
and overwhelming, i t dulls our sense of the past.l
Documentary theater, by definition dedicated to the record,
revives the past for a ll who wish to see. Dan Isaac, for one, con
siders this a possible special v irtu e , suggesting " . . . an archival
?
and museum function for Theater of Fact." I t may be, however, that
documentary theater's "pastness" is a major weakness.
I t could be argued in documentary theater's defense that i t is
high-brow allegory, that i t explains what is by using the analogy of
what was. Lusitania is not ju st Portugal of the 1960's, but America
of the 1970's. The Deputy is not ju st the dead Pope, but the living
you. Explanation by analogy is a purpose that makes more sense than
"an archival or museum function." Documentary playwrights are not
concerned with storing up the past, but in shaking up the present. And
surely, " . . . analogies are a valuable guide as to the direction in
O
which to look for truth."
^Boorstein, "Television," pp. 37-38.
2Isaac, "Theatre of Fact," p. 135.
^Robert H. Thouless, How to Think Straight (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1947), p. 107.
36
Nevertheless, analogies " . . . are never fin al evidence as to
what we shall discover."^ I t is possible that we repeat the past, not
because we cannot remember i t , as Santayana believed, but because we
know i t only too w ell, and the present too poorly. History may be
simultaneously a useful c la rific a tio n and a dangerous distraction.
While we pause to study the motionless past, the speeding present may
cripple us. And even documentary playwright and college history pro
fessor Martin Duberman came to believe that " . . . a group is most
lik e ly to formulate and pursue goals adequate to the needs of the
present i f i t avoids intense involvement with or adulation of the
past."2
Segregation from One Another
While speaking of the past, i t might be worthwhile to recall
b rie fly the great Greek and Elizabethan theater crowds, people for whom
being and seeing together was much of the pleasure. Today, television
has scattered its audience into private households, and with increasing
numbers of m ultiple-set fam ilies, has splintered even the households.
Unlike the gregarious A ttic and Shakespearian open-air, sunshine
audiences, the twentieth century's human particles are, a ll too l i t e r
a lly , shut-ins in the dark. Their sense of aloneness is not remedied,
but worsened by such devices as the mechanized laughter added to te le
vision comedies.
^Ibid. %elow, chapter IV, p. 140.
37
Such isolation is an effective safeguard of the status quo.
Alone, one cannot change what should be changed. Alone, one must keep
what he has from those who have not. Television's "democratization"
is not democracy; i t is conformity that masquerades as community.
Theater is_ community. I t brings people together for shared
experience. Documentary theater wishes to strengthen the feeling o f
radical human so lid arity. I t wants us to believe once again that we
are not alone; that enmity is suicide; and that to ta lity is freedom.
And ye t, a kind of personal segregation clings to documentary
theater it s e lf . In a ll plays but one, XA, the relationship between
playwright and audience is not that of peers; yes, audience and play
wright are equals in social accountability, but the dramatist is also
the audience's instructor, and, in Catonsvilie, its exemplar as w ell.
The su perior-inferior relationship which documentary plays attack out
side the theater has not en tirely been eliminated from its own house.
Segregation from Reality
Television it s e lf recently trie d to undo this quarantined
anonymity i t fosters and feeds on. One of its millions of "island-
audiences,"^ the Loud family, was drawn liv e through the set's shatter
proof pane and into the tube. The result undid nothing; instead, i t
epitomized television's power to segregate from re a lity .
With the Louds' enthusiastic, unpaid, signed consent, a te le
vision crew in 1972 entered th e ir middle-class Santa Barbara home,
^Boorstein, "Television,” p. 38.
38
which then housed parents Pat and B ill and four teenagers; a twenty-
year-old cunningly flo rid homosexual son, Lance, lived and was taped
together with Pat in New York. Before the end of nine months, and of
three hundred hours of film cut to twelve hourly telecasts title d "An
American Family," the Louds' twenty-year marriage had broken up, and
the entire family— separated parents, campy Lance, and all--w ere
protesting the series on television interviews and ta lk shows. The
Louds were seven characters in search of an image; the parents espe
c ia lly resented and repudiated th eir TV-selves. Pat:! "We've lost
dignity and been humiliated."^ B ill: "We've spent twenty years
building a family and they selected only the negative, bizarre, and
sensational s tu ff. . . . But I'm re a lly grateful. I t was a gratifying
2
experience." This American fam ily's l i f e was produced and publicized
lik e a super soap opera: programs ended with a few seconds' preview of
the next episode, and shows were ballyhooed in advertisements featuring
close-up photographs and boldly lettered teasers lik e "WHILE BILL IS
A W A Y PAT DECIDES TO FILE FOR DIVORCE . . . 9:00 Tonight . . . Channel
J3. "3
Detergent-style merchandising also became B illy Graham's te le
vised Crusades, and were already on the Reverend's mind eighteen years
^Quoted by Crawford Woods, "The Louds," New Republic, March 24,
1973, p. 23.
O
Quoted by Anne Roiphe, '"An American Family'—Things are keen
but could be keener," New York Times Magazine, February 18, 1973, pp.
50, 52.
3New York Times, March 1, 1973, p. 75.
39
ago when he told the London Observer, "I am selling the greatest pro
duct in the world: why shouldn't i t be promoted like soap?"^
Television newscasters are usually handsome, carefully c o if
fured men and women who now o ffer cheerful banter amid the scripted
bulletins. During the televised 1972 Berlin Olympics in which Israe li
hostages were held and la te r killed by Arab g u e rrillas , "a quietly
moving essay on the war-dead memorial at Dachau . . . was followed and
2
obliterated by a bouncily happy commercial."
Television does not, as Jerry Lewis complained, "make every-
3
thing real." O n the contrary, as these examples show, television
turns almost everything--including personal liv es , relig io n , sports,
the news, and somber re fle c tio n --in to Show Biz. O n television, nearly
"Everything becomes theater. . . . Perhaps those viewers who pre
ferred television's soap operas to the Watergate hearings should not be
c ritic iz e d ; they would rather see finished scripts than a f i r s t d raft.
Documentary plays also convert l i f e into theater, but with a
difference. Television transforms re a lity for the sponsors' benefit.
Documentary theater does i t for the audience's benefit.
For opposite purposes, then, television and documentary theater
1 Quoted by Reverend Malcolm Boyd, "Let Us Pray," New York Times,
February 1, 1973, p. 35.
2john J. O'Connor, "TV: 'Real World' Proves to Be Curiously
Elusive," New York Times, September 7, 1972, p. 87.
^Charles Higham, "Jerry Is n 't Just Clowning Now," New York
Times, "Arts and Leisure" section, July 30, 1972, p. 18.
^Boorstein, "Television," p. 38.
40
take from each other. Television uses theatrical devices to make most
things agreeable and illu sory. Documentary theater, outraged, seizes
television's techniques to make certain things awful and inescapable.
Mythology
Cary G ilb ert, the producer of "An American Family," believed
that i f he filmed " . . . any one family over a long period of time
. . . [he would] expose the myths . . . that are American and apply in
some ways to a ll of us."^ I t is no coincidence that our legend-system
uses a form of theater as one of its chief instruments of exposure, much}
as did Greek mythology. Instead of the amphitheater, there is the
living room; in place of the circling tiered seats, the chairs, spaced
but facing one spot; and there, in lieu of Dionysus' a lta r, the set.
And so, Senator Thomas Eagleton could w rite , "W e have done much
in this era of mass communication to create a myth of the Presidency,"
which he proposed should be dispelled. Yale professor of psychiatry
Robert Jay Lifton asserted:
. . . the carefully manipulated spectacle [o f the returning
P.O.W.'s] through which the Administration, the m ilita ry , and
the media (especially television) are synthesizing a hero myth
fa ls ifie s not only the relationship of the returning prisoners
to the war, but, above a l l , the war i t s e l f . 3
^Quoted by Roiphe, "'An American Family,'" p. 8.
^"White House Mythology," New York Times, March 27, 1973, p. 47.
^"Heroes and Victims," New York Times, March 28, 1973, p. 47.
41
A myth is " . . . considered to be in everyday speech a fan
tasy or a misstatement," but more technically, " . . . a veiled expla
nation of the tr u t h .T h e trouble in our time is that there are not
a few festivals of dramatized legends a year, but several hours of
telecast myths daily; and, as Eagleton, Lifton, and even G ilbert sug
gest, the everyday and technical meanings of myth have merged— the
veiled explanations we have been told about ourselves are fantasies
and lie s.
After watching "An American Family," anthropologist Gloria
Levitas said:
. . . the American seems to be losing his power to create or
impose order. His culture no longer provides a central core of
b e lie f. Systems whirl and whirl about with less and less oppor
tunity for the moral intervention of man.2
In short, the American mythology that television projects has stopped
working for us. W e do not win every war, or every Olympic game, or
every space "race." King Dollar has died. There never was a "melting
pot." Consider also what even Joseph Campbell, "probably the world's
3
leading expert on mythology," thought in January 1972 was our most
durable myth and who was an apt illu s tra tio n of it :
. . . the "American Dream" . . . a man is judged on his own
a b ility rather than on his family or place in society. . . .
"The fact that Nixon was a poor boy and was yet elected Presi
dent is a good example.
^Gerald Clarke, "The Need for New Myths," Time, January 17,
1972, p. 50.
2
Quoted by Roiphe, "'An American Family,"' p. 52.
3Clarke, "New Myths," p. 50. ^1b id ., p. 51.
42
What should a mythology ideally do? What has ours actually
done? What are documentary theater's mythologizing and demythologizing
functions? Campbell's view is that a "properly operating" mythology has
four important purposes: (1) guiding the individual through the psycho
logical crises of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death; (2)
through rite s and ritu a ls , supporting the social order by molding the
young; (3) through rite s and imagery, wakening and maintaining in the
individual awe, gratitude, and rapture about the universe and his
existence in i t ; and (4) offering a comprehensive, comprehensible image
of the world roughly according to the best s c ie n tific knowledge.^
Guiding the Individual through
Psychological Crises
One of the f i r s t criticisms of American mythology is that i t is
a supermarket of contradictions: self-reliance and free enterprise vs. *
helping the needy and trust-busting, free speech and the American
Revolution vs. loyalty oaths and if-this-country-isn't-good-enough-for-
you-go-back-to-where-you-came-from, the puritan ethic vs. The Good Life.
Myths in c o n flic t create believers in co n flict. Documentary theater's
aim to heal the divisions caused by television is paralleled by its
intent to destroy the conflicts in our mythology by bringing them to
lig h t. Such work is not always appreciated; in ancient times, the
messenger with bad news might be executed, as i f he were the cause.
Worse than contradicting it s e lf , our mythology does not guide
^Clarke, "New Myths," p. 50.
43
us through crises, but drives us right into them. Our Youth Culture
leaves too many of the elderly to finish their lives in iso lation,
hating th eir i l l bodies, mistrusting th eir wearied minds. The vaunted
American car--Brezhnev gave Nixon a silver samovar; Nixon gave Brezhnev
a Lincoln Continental--is f il lin g the junk heaps, poisoning the a ir ,
and bloodying the roads. Our vengeful penal and charitable welfare
philosophies were policies of containment, not cure, and now we have
time bombs for prisons and metastatic cancers for slums.
While documentary playwrights do not assault these particular
practices (potential exception: Monroe and the Provisional Theatre are
considering a work on the plight of the aged in America), the authors
do mean to turn around the system that engages in them. The new routes
and destinations would vary in kind and sp ecificity. Weiss personally
is a Marxist; Berrigan is a Catholic p a c ifis t; Monroe and the Pro
visional Theatre appear to be ad hoc communalists. Most of the writers
seem to distrust "systems," and certainly abhor this one; they o ffer
the f i r s t , and perhaps the only step--freedom of self.
Through Rites and Rituals, Supporting
the Social Order by Molding the Young
Documentary.theater opposes parts or a ll of this social order.
I t sees this society's laws and orders benefitting the few by deluding
and oppressing the many. Campbell cites the myth of the Asian Indian
caste system, which "Cruel as this may seem to Westerners . . . does
give Indian society a s ta b ility i t might otherwise lack and does make
44
lif e bearable to the impoverished low castes."* Documentary theater
would junk myths lik e this that tranquilize as they leech. I t would
not have young people— or anyone—molded to them. One surmises that
most of the playwrights would object to "molding" of any kind.
Psychologist R. D. Laing was thinking of family dynamics, but
his comments apply to many of Western society's rite s and ritu a ls :
th eir " . . . function is . . . t o create . . . one-dimensional man; to
promote respect, conformity, obedience; . . . to induce fear of f a i l
ure; . . . to promote a respect for 're s p e c ta b ility .‘ Documentary
theater's irreverence and iconoclasm seek to reverse a ll these. Its
function is to create unconfined men and women; to promote s e lf-
respect, non-conformity, independence; to induce a capacity for risk;
to promote a respect for hereticism.
America values these qualities in theory; in practice, young
people--and others— possessing them often find the going hard. Such
persons are classed as tra ito rs , troublemakers, dropouts, malcontents,
Nixonian "bums." Documentary theater casts its lo t with them.
Through Rites and Imagery, Wakening
Awe, Gratitude, and Rapture
Our rite s and images have generated less awe than fear and
animosity; less gratitude than worship and subservience; less rapture
11bid.
^Quoted in "Everyone and His Uncle Speaks His Piece," Los
Angeles Times, June 17, 1973, "Opinion" section, p. 4. \ -
45
than in s a tia b ility .
W e dread the technology which has been one of our greatest ac
complishments. W e are estranged from the fellow citizens on whom our
systems depend. W e fear offending, either by malodorous bodies or
ideas.
W e yearn fo r, and are provided with (synthesized) heroes. Psy
chologist Robert Gould said that fame is a "fetish" in our culture;
"There are countries in Western Europe . . . that don't even come close
to approaching this country in its need to have people become famous."^
Reverend Malcolm Boyd wrote of the "caesaro-papism" of the Presidency,
in which, via such Washington "cultic observances" as the annual
National Prayer Breakfast, "The God ostensibly receiving worship gets
2
confounded with men who act as gods." Historian Barbara Tuchman,
suggesting Cabinet government as a feasible alternative to the auto-
crat-Presidency, conceded that " . . . Cabinet government would not
satisfy the American craving for a father-image or hero or superstar."
She proposed as solutions " . . . to in s ta ll a dynastic family in the
White House for ceremonial purposes, or focusing the craving en tirely
on the entertainment world, or else to grow up."4
^Gould, appearing on the NBC-TV magazine series "Chronolog,"
quoted by Bob Williams, "On the A ir," New York Post, May 24, 1972, p. 90.
^Boyd, "Let Us Pray," p. 35.
^"Should W e Abolish the Presidency," New York Times, February
13, 1973, p. 37.
4Ibid.
46
As a nation and as individuals, no matter how much some of us
have, many want more, and each accretion g ra tifie s less. With an a l l i
ance in Europe, we poured mounting thousands of fighting men and b i l
lions of dollars into Southeast Asia; what was achieved? W e move up to
higher incomes, better homes, second and third cars, nicer nighbor-
hoods—and get psychotherapy.
Documentary theater presses, less bluntly, Tuchman's la s t solu-
tio n --th a t we grow up. The plays fashion th eir own rite s and images so
that we may be awed, g ra te fu l, and enraptured with ourselves. Documen
tary would not have us make heroes—or v illa in s —of others, for then we
lose control of our lives. P itting us against The State, i t makes us
synonymous and equal to i t . Paraphrasing Weiss' de Sade s lig h tly , each
of us is to dig the hero and the criminal out of ourselves, so we can
understand the two and so understand the times we liv e in .1 Once we
understand, we— not some others—are to act—and we w ill t h r il l our
selves.
Offering a Comprehensive, Comprehensible
Image of the World, Roughly According to
S cien tific Knowledge
In one of our own books of myths— "veiled explanations of the
truth"— Christ called Satan "the father of lies" and "a murderer from
2
the beginning." And Christ promised we shall know the truth, and the
^Weiss, Marat/Sade, p. 47.
2John V I I I , 44.
47
truth shall make us fr e e J Documentary theatre agrees: lying is
k illin g , and for men to be free, the truth must be known.
For several f a ir ly fa m iliar reasons, facts— "s cien tific knowl
edge"— have come to be accepted as tru th . Science seemed to make the
world more comprehensible—and more pleasurable--than had mythology.
But the arithmetic increase in the quantity of facts created a geo
metric increase in the need for them. S cientific discoveries revealed
a world so much more vast and mysterious than had been imagined that
we required ever more facts to solve the proliferating enigmas. Trying
to f i l l the growing universe with facts that were themselves expanding
i t became too punishing. So we settled for semblance rather than sub
stance. Because the world's to ta lity --th e truth--became increasingly
inaccessible, an understanding of its parts— the facts—gave " . . . the
2
comforting illu sio n that we understood the whole." "Factuality"
became the new mythology.
Facts were now a need. And since science was also improving
the means of production, distribu tio n , and sale, the necessity became
a commodity. The more that could be sold, the better. Science, ever
resourceful, supplied the salesmen: mechanical p rin t, phonograph,
radio, movies, and, combining a l l , television.
The spectacular American reverence for facts has a distinct
^ Ib id ., p. 32.
^Dwight MacDonald, "The Triumph of the Fact. An American
Tragedy," in The Anchor Review—Number Two, ed. Melvin J. Lasky
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, In c ., 1957), p. 135.
48
history. Tom Paine asserted, "Facts are more powerful than arguments.1 ,1
The f i r s t fu ll-fledg ed detective story, a genre whose point is the
finding of facts, was the invention of an American, Edgar Allan Poe,
The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841. C ritic Lewis Mumford observed:
With a few exceptions lik e Ryder and Emily Dickinson, our most
original American artists--John and Washington Roebling, Herman
M e lv ille , Walt Whitman--shared [photographer Thomas] Eakin's
resolute fa ith in "science" and "democracy." They used the
materials and the techniques of th eir "m aterialistic" age to
express something that transcended the values of that age. "There
is no more need for romances," Whitman declared, "le t facts and
history be properly to ld ."2
One doubts that Whitman could have envisioned how rampantly and impro
perly his advice would be followed. In 1957, before any of the docu
mentaries, Dwight MacDonald wrote:
Our mass culture— and a good deal of our high, or serious, culture
as well — is dominated by an emphasis on data and a corresponding
lack of interest in theory, by a frank admiration of the factual
and an uneasy contempt for imagination, s e n s ib ility , and philo
sophical speculation. W e are obsessed with technique, hagridden
by Facts, in love with information. . . . our scholars--or, more
accurately, our research administrators--erect pyramids of data to
cover the corpse of a stillbo rn idea; our TV and radio go in
heavily for quiz shows; . . . . our way of "following" a sport is
to amass an extraordinary amount of data about batting averages,
past performances, yards gained, etc. . . .; our politicians are
mostly former lawyers, a profession where the manipulation of Facts
is of f i r s t importance. . . .3
^Quoted in MacDonald, "The Triumph of the Fact. An American
Tragedy," p. 136.
o
Mumford, reviewing Gordon Hendriks, The Photographs of Thomas
Eakins (New York: Grossman, 1972), in New York Review of Books, Sep
tember 21, 1972, p. 3.
^MacDonald, "The Triumph of the Fact. An American Tragedy,"
pp. 113-114.
49
Lawyer-politician-sports fan Richard Nixon's most enthusiastic refe r
ences to some major events sound lik e entries in the record-book: he
0
is the f ir s t President to v is it x-number of countries; several days of
space exploits are " . . . the greatest week since The Creation." In
department stores, pocket-size electronic calculators, costing from
$75 to $212, are " . . . the hottest item since the transistor radio"
and may well " . . . become a staple of the well-stocked American
household." The best of them, incidentally, w ill probably break down
a fte r a year and w ill be too expensive to repair.^
But even facts have become a f a llib le mediator of the world,
and the expected breakdown of these handy-dandy calculators mirrors the
breakdown of the mystique of fa c tu a lity . For one thing, those who have
provided the facts (our institutio ns and the transmitting media) have
such enormous vested interests in them that many people have begun to
doubt the "truth" of the "facts." For another, some facts are ju st too
disagreeable; former Defense Secretary MeTvin Laird, for example,
" . . . said that i f President Nixon were involved in the Watergate
2
case, he would not want to be to ld ." So jeopardized have the facts
become, and so frequently has th e ir actual reason-for-being been the
appearance rather than the essence of tru th , that Senator Hart of
Michigan, speaking with unconscious irony of the particular need at
^Grace Lichtenstein, "New Calculators Catch Public's Fancy,"
New York Times, October 28, 1972, p. 33.
2"Laird Would Not Want to Know of Nixon Role," New York Times,
May 2, 1973, p. 30.
50
this time of Watergate for the public to trust the President's Attorney
General-designate, wanted "Appearance . . . [to be] as important as
fact.
Facts, though no longer incontestable, nevertheless retain their
hold on people and the power to affect them. Documentary theater trie s
to exploit this hold and exert this power. In as many ways and degrees
as there are playwrights, documentary theater attempts also to trans
form the facts with a rt— "imagination, s e n s ib ility , and philosophical
p
speculation"— to carry out mythology's last function: to o ffer a com
prehensive, comprehensible image of the world, roughly according to
s c ie n tific knowledge. Documentary theater amends Christ; the tru th --
facts alchemized by a rt, plus action, shall make us free.
Facts and a r t, essentials in documentary theater and constitu
ents also of myth, constitute two serious threats to the effectiveness
of documentary drama. The hazards are fa c t's ra tio n a lity and a rt's
a r tific e .
I t is understandable that documentary playwrights would restore
ra tio n a lity to society's a ffa irs ; ra tio n a lity is a quality that has
been conspicuously absent from our lives. One of Weiss' Marat/Sade
inmates creeps forward and says, "A mad animal /M a n 's a mad animal /
I'm a thousand years old and in my time / I'v e helped commit a m illion
^Quoted by David E. Rosenbaum, "Richardson Seeks Burden of
Inquiry," New York Times, May 10, 1973, p. 1.
^MacDonald, "The Triumph of the Fact. An American Tragedy,"
p. 113.
51
murders. . . . Anthony Lewis, referring to the Christmas 1972
bombing of North Vietnam in an a rtic le title d "Madness in Great Ones,"
wrote:
I f the elected leader of the greatest democracy acts lik e a
maddened tyrant, and not one person in his Government says
the feeblest nay, it is hard to argue against Dr. Laing's view
that ours is a lunatic society.2
So, with a few exceptions, documentary plays are predominantly
characterized by discursiveness, addresses to the mind. The dialog
between characters is rea lly a d ialec tic with the audience. As with
expressionism, there is an implied conviction that man's reason is his
chief hope, and i t is that which must be invoked. Weiss' contention
is perhaps the most e x p lic it: "Documentary theatre asserts . . . that
r e a lity , however opaque i t may appear, can be explained in every
d e ta il," 3
The b e lief here is that this tack, however wistful and well-
meaning, denies the re a lity that documentary playwrights in s is t we
face, Dealing with irra tio n a lity by ignoring its existence is f u t i l
ity . No less a ra tio n a lis t than Albert Einstein wrote in a 1951 le tte r
to a friend, "Reason against passion! The la tte r always wins i f
4
there's any struggle at a ll. . . ."
^Weiss, Marat/Sade, p. 73.
2New York Times, December 30, 1972, p. 27.
3Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 43.
^Quoted by Israel Shenker, "Einstein Letters Show the Physi
c is t as Person," New York Times, December 1, 1972, p. 65.
52
Not only is i t impossible to n u llify ir ra tio n a lity , i t is
perilous to try. Psychiatrist Hilda Rollman-Branch, analyzing what
she saw to be "Theater of Fact's" therapeutic e ffe c t, wrote, " I f the
psychical re a lity is closed o ff against the in stincts, i t remains
ignorant of the danger and w ill not recognize the disguised instinctual
manifestation."1 * In fa c t, the tendency in some documentary plays to
ward an over-dependence on thought can bring on the manifestation
Rollman-Branch thought the plays prevent. Appealing too heavily to our
ra tio n a lity and in te lle c t neither helps us discover our own capacity
for madness— or love— nor prepares us for these irra tio n a litie s in
others, however controlled we or they may seem. The documentary plays
which are directed also to our feelings—White America, Soldiers,
p
Deputy, Pueblo, and XA--do us the greater service.
Nancy Wilson Ross told the story of
A Zen abbot [who] once set before an American aspirant two
sets of small legless dolls: one pair weighted in the bottom
part, the other in the head part. When the pair weighted in the
head part were pushed over, they remained on th e ir sides; the
ones weighted in the bottom bounced back at once. The abbot
roared with laughter over this illu s tra tio n of the plight of
Western man, forever stressing the thinking function at the
expense of the t o t a li t y .3
To discuss the d iffic u ltie s caused by the a rt or a r tific e of
documentary theater, one must return to the d e fin itio n of myth— "a
^"Physical Reality and Theater of Fact," p. 63.
p
The peculiar exception is Investigation; see bdlow, chapter V,
pp. 230-241. ------------ ----------
^"The Square Roots of Zen," Horizon 1 (July 1959):73-74.
53
veiled explanation of the tru th," Most documentary plays, being factual
allegories of the past to explain the present, are also indirect or
"veiled explanations of the tru th ." When Picasso said that "Art is a
lie that makes us realize the t r u t h , h e may have meant that a work of
a rt is a metaphor, a pretense, a refashioning, or a ll three, but the
word was l i e .
"Veiled truth" o r :" lie ," documentary theater must be as rigor
ously subjected to fundamental challenges as are the social institutions
i t assaults. One must ask: I f documentary theater's purpose is to un
cover the truth about others, does i t not weaken it s e lf when its own
truth is "veiled"? I f i t condemns the self-interested manipulation of
facts by others, why should i t be permitted to manage the facts in its
own interest? I f documentary plays, lik e other recent developments in
the arts , want to restore to us " . . . the power to see things at
firs t-h a n d ,"2 why use second-hand material? W hy do we s t i l l get "lies"
to make us realize the truth--why, fin a lly , can we not have the truth
to make us realize the truth?
I t is for these reasons that the judgement here is that Deputy,
Soldiers, Pueblo, and In White America are the richest works of theat
rical a rt among the documentaries, but Investigation and, above a l l , XA
are the fin es t works of p o litic a l a rt. Investigation and XA are extra
ordinarily d ifferen t from each other-, one is c h ill and austere, the
^Quoted by Harold Clurman, Lies Like Truth (New York: Grove
Press, In c ., Evergreen Books, Ltd., 1958), t i t l e page.
^Alfred Leslie, quoted by Robert Hughes, "The Realist as Corn
God," Time, January 31, 1972, p. 55.
54
other warm and demonstrative. There is in them, however, l i t t l e of the
veiled, metaphoric, vicarious, simulated, on-stage action, that is in
a ll the other plays, but uniquely d ire c t, actual, in -seat, contact-
experience. In these works alone, and in XA especially, what happens
in them is happening to th e ir audience, rather than to th e ir characters.
Despite even Investigation and XA, suppose that non-documentary
playwright Max Frisch was rig h t, that " . . . drama has never been able
to change society; p o litic a lly , the theatre is ineffective."^ Suppose
that Weiss was correct, that i t might " . . . be more effective for
[documentary th eater's] members to take part in p o litic a l a c tiv ity out-
2
side the theatre." Suppose, a fte r a ll the playwrights w ill have spo
ken, they w ill have had l i t t l e or no influence—w ill they have failed?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the very least they can hope for is the vision of
the Just Man who went to Sodom in the Hasidic tale told by Elie Wiesel:
One of the Just Men came to Sodom, determined to save its
inhabitants from sin and punishment. Night and day he walked the
streets and markets preaching against greed and th e ft, falsehood
and indifference. In the beginning, people listened and smiled
iro n ic a lly . Then they stopped listening: he no longer even amused
them. The k ille rs went on k illin g , the wise kept s ile n t, as i f
there were no Just Man in th e ir midst.
One day a ch ild , moved by compassion for the unfortunate
preacher, approached him with these words. "Poor stranger. You
shout, you expend yourself body and soul; don't you see that i t is
"Der Autor und das Theater," Neue Rundschau I (1965):33-44,
cited by Jack Zipes, "Documentary Drama in Germany: Mending the Cir
c u it," The Germanic Review (January 1967):61 -
^Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 42.
55
hopeless?"
"Yes, I see," answered the Just Man.
"Then why do you go on?"
" I ' l l te ll you why. In the beginning I thought I could change
man. Today, I know I cannot. I f I s t i l l shout today, i f I s t i l l
scream, i t is to prevent man from ultim ately changing me."*
E lie Wiese!, quoted by Charles E. Silberman, reviewing Elie
Wiese!, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters,
trans. Marion Wiese! (New York: Random House'/ 1972), in New York Times
Book Review, March 3, 1972, p. 26.
CHAPTER I I I
PRECURSORS
Introduction
Documentary theater is o rig in ally a German genre that has been
700 years in the making. The form it s e lf arose in Berlin and Brussels
in the early 1960'sJ Essentially one man, the German editor Erwin
2
Piscator, developed i t .
American documentary theater, therefore, lik e most things
American, is the descendant of immigrants. The blood of even its
domestic forebears is largely Teutonic, mixed with a b it of Scotch
. o n 3
and Slav.
The eventful seven-century lineage of German documentary
theater is clear and almost uninterrupted. Paradoxically, the scant
^Maria-Ley Piscator, The Piscator Experiment: The P olitical
Theatre (Carbondale: Southern Illin o is University Press, 1970), p.
266.
O
Rene Hainaux, ed., "Piscator and the Documentary Theatre," in
World Theatre 17, nos. 5-6 (1968), pp. 303-73; August Closs, ed.,
Introduction to German L iteratu re, 4 vols. (New York: Barnes & Noble,
In c ., 1969-70), v o l. 4: Twentieth Century German L iteratu re , ed. by
Closs, p. 98; and below pp. 99-104.
^The Scotch and Slav are the results, respectively, of the
parentage and European travels of H allie Flanagan Davis, director of
the Federal Theatre and a creator of the Living Newspaper. See chap
ters on Soviet Russia in H allie Flanagan, Shifting Scenes of the
Modern European Theater (New York: Coward-McCann, In c ., 1928), pp.
98-173.
57
four-decade genealogy of American documentary theater is , in places,
broken and dead-ended. I t may not be one family at a l l , in fa c t, but
disconnected generations whose resemblance is real but coincidental.
Serious German theater and the American experience have shaped
each other only in the twentieth century. A minor meeting of cultures,
however, occurred during the American War of Independence, and sharply
contrasted the two nations' attitudes toward theater.
In Germany, the fervent "Storm and Stress" movement got its
name from Friedrich von Klinger's play Sturm und Drang (1776)J The
headstrong lover of this drama dashes o ff to America to jo in the
rebellion against England.2 Had the plot taken him to the meeting of
the Continental Congress on October 20, 1774, imagine his dismay on
hearing his heroes pass a resolution to "discountenance . . . a l l . . .
3
shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments."
Our Founding Fathers' o ffic ia l view of show business was short-lived
and less than a total success. In 1778, fo r example, a performance
^Originally tit le d Per Wirrwarr (Confusion) . Below, pp. 71-74.
O
^George Freed!ey and John A. Reeves, A History of the Theatre,
rev. ed. (New York: Crown Publications, In c ., 1955), p. 247.
2Barnard Hewitt, Theatre U. S. A. 1668 to 1957 (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., In c ., 1959), p. 30. Robert Brustein notes that
several revolutions have suppressed theater. See "Freedom and Con
s tra in t," New Republic, May 6, 1972, p. 22. He omits the American,
Nazi, and Cuban revolutions, but does mention the Puritan interregnum
in England and the French Revolution which closed the theaters fo r a
time, and he refers too sweepingly to the "Bolshevik revolution" ( i t
was, more precisely, Stalin and his successors) that imposed a suffo
cating censorship. See Flanagan, Shifting Scenes, pp. 98-173, passim.
58
of Addison's Cato by troops and officers at Valley Forge was attended
by "a numerous & splendid audience" including General and Mrs. Washing
ton.^ Yet this indication of the difference between the place of the
Revolution in American and in German theater, while a slig h t d e ta il, is
a clue to the whole.
For most of its history, American theater has made pleasure its
product, p ro fit its purpose, the public its patron, and New York its
nucleus. Compare this with Germany, where "Since the middle of the
eighteenth century . . . the theatre has come to be regarded not so
much as a place of entertainment, but . . . as the main vehicle for a ll
currents of thought, s p iritu a l, social, and p o litic a l [emphasis added ]."£■
Experiment, though not synonymous with excellence, is "the very tra d i-
tion of German drama." Important theaters are scattered throughout
Germany, in large c itie s and small provincial towns, where many were
established in the seventeenth century as "court-theatres of the dukes
and princes who vied with one another in a r tis tic accomplishment" and
splendor.^ Patronage passed from the waning n o b ility to the ascendant
^Letter from Colonel William Bradford to his s is te r, from V.aJ.Tey’
Forge, May 14, 1778, quoted in Hewitt*Theatre U. 5. A. , p. 32.
^H. F. Garten, Modern German Drama (New York: Grove Press,
1968), p. 11.
3Peter Bauland, The Hooded Eagle: Modern German Drama on the
New York Stage (Syracuse! Syracuse University Press, 1968), p. 3.
^Garten, German Drama, p. 19; and Richard Beckley, "Germany,"
The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, ed. Phyllis H artno ll, 3rd. ed.
(London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 373.
59
bourgeousie. "Subsidized by c ity or state as a necessary and desirable
cultural in stitu tio n for a population whose love of theatre borders on
the fa n atical," German theater has been free of many commercial pres
sures and the preferences of a single c ity or audience.1 S t i l l , i t is
no accident that " a rtis tic or lite ra ry material . . . o f low q u ality,
often produced to appeal to popular taste, and marked especially by
sentimentalism, sensationalism, and slickness" is id entified by the
2
German word kitsch. German theater has produced that in abundance,
too (and, imported, translated, adapted, or imitated, i t has been a
staple in America for 175 years). But passionate in d iv id u a lity, didac
ticism , social protest, new forms, adequate in stitu tio nal support, and
coequal decentralization of theaters are also basic to German drama.
When these things have appeared in American theater, they have usually
been aberrations or hazards.
The generative contacts of serious German theater with American
drama did not come t i l l the last f i f t y years, and then only a fte r the
two nations had f ir s t tried to vanquish each other. The most recent
concurrence, documentary theater, had its origins in Germany at the end
• o f the Middle Ages.
In examining the national conditions and drama of this period
and those that followed, attention w ill fix only on those trends in
^Bauland, Hooded Eagle, p. 21.
^P hillip Babcock Cove, e d .-in -c h ie f, Webster's Third New In te r
national Dictionary Unabridged (1959), p. 1247.
60
society and on stage that constitute the evolution of documentary the
a te r. Naturally, no slight is intended to circumstances, persons,
works, styles, arts , or philosophies excluded because they are apart
from this particular theatrical development.
This account is divided into centuries, a useful method but an
a r tific e nevertheless. For instance, before the "new" world was found
by the "old" in 1492, i t had long existed and been populated by many
civilize_d nations. Furthermore, this fifte e n th century exploration
was not the f i r s t of several environmental and mechanical discoveries
which led to baroque theater, it s e lf categorized only in the seven
teenth century. So the numbered centuries are not meant to be separate
containers, but markers plunged into continuing events.
Germany
Thirteenth through Fifteenth
Centuries
Society
One could almost forget that Bruno Boesch is describing German
l i f e during much of the thirteenth through fifte e n th centuries, and
think rather of those contemporary young who have an "air of apathy,
of confusion, of purposeless ag itation, . . . [who] u tte rly reject the
[tra d itio n a l] view of the world" and who have made a "move toward mys
tic inwardness. . . . " For the Germans of that epoch, as for a number
of today's adults and minority m ilita n ts , "The burden of care and worry
settled on [th e ir] minds, and instead of g ratefu lly accepting one's
given share of l i f e , one strained for a larger share, setting the pur
suit of material things above the spiritual values." In battle then
and in Indochina now, "The peasant, too, gradually emerged from his
in fe rio r position--witness the defeat of well-equipped knightly armies
by organized bands of peasants."^
Theater
The plays of the time were a response to immediate circumstan
ces. (Some centuries la te r, drama would be as much crystal ball as
m irror, but not y e t.) The major dramatic reactions to the decaying
chivalric order came from a v ig ila n t, perhaps apprehensive Church, the
newly prospering burghers, and even the rising peasants.
The Passion and Easter Plays were designed to alarm and teach.
To help stamp out sin, scenes were enacted of comedy, cruel to rtu re,
and frightening evil forces. Whole towns, sometimes involving three or
four hundred people, spent weeks preparing the productions.
These religious plays taught Christian dogma. They appealed
to many of the middle class who, then as now, having succeeded in the
System, resisted changes in i t . Secular theater, p rin cipally the
Shrovetide plays, appealed for d ifferen t reasons. Bacchic, obscene,
O
"a last flin g before Lent," these plays, with th e ir "merciless revela-
3
tion of human fo llie s " and irrepressible joy and c a rn ality, frequently
provoked crackdowns by municipal o ffic ia ls .
^Boesch, "Late Medieval Literature (1250-1500)," in German
Literature--A C ritica l Survey, ed. Bruno Boesch, trans. Ronald Taylor
(London: Methuen & Co Ltd [s ic ], 1971), pp. 67, 69, 68, 69.
^Ernst Rose, A History of German Literature (New York: New
York University Press, 1960), p. 75.
^Boesch, "Late Medieval L iteratu re," p. 89.
62
The middle class Humanist movement gained ground at this time,
especially toward the end of the fifte e n th century. The philosophy
seemed to o ffer much to admire: the value and dignity of the in d i
vidual, man's capacity for renewed l i f e and personal fu lfillm e n t
through reason. But there was a flaw. Most Humanists wrote in Latin;
v irtu a lly a ll of these men, th e ir works, and th e ir lib ertarian ideas
were inaccessible to the uneducated masses. Humanist plays were lim
ited chiefly to the academies.
So the roots of documentary theater in the diverse drama of
this period were didacticism, agitation against e v il, huge casts, rudi
mentary social criticism , willingness to confront civic authority with
offending m aterial, and the introduction, however e l i t i s t , of the
Humanist s p ir it.
Sixteenth Century
Society
Resentment against the princes of the la ity and the Church had
been building for generations and cut across class lines. By the third
decade of this century, several factions had openly but fu tile ly
rebelled. In 1524-25, the farmers and urban lower classes rose in
massive revo lt, demanding improvement of th e ir social and economic con
dition . To defeat this onslaught, the n o b ility had to respond bru
ta lly ; they did and won. A few years e a rlie r, the obsolescent knights
had mounted an insurrection to recover th e ir lost power; lik e the
farmers and urban poor a fte r them, they too fa ile d .
63
No fa ilu re at a ll was the Protestant Reformation, begun in
1517 when Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of
the Wittenberg Castle Church. Luther had wished, not to found a new
church, but to redeem the old one. He was excommunicated by that
church, however, and had no other choice. S im ilarly, he had to turn
for wordly supervision not to the preferred but unsympathetic German
emperor, but to the ambitious regional princes. This was to further
fracture the empire, another consequence not in Luther's original
design.
Theater
For the f i r s t half of this century, the triumphant religious
reformers dominated the theater. There were s t i l l , of course, the
instructive dramatizations of biblical m aterial. But, because the
Protestants had securely in stituted themselves without also defeating
the adversary, several unusual protest plays appeared. They were not
the polemics of the oppressed, but rather of one successful Establish
ment against another.
These plays depicted venal and degenerate acts by everyone in
the Catholic hierarchy from "the Pope down to the . . . verger."^ "The
2
most impressive of a ll the fighting dramas of Protestantism" was
1 Leonhard Beriger, "The Age of Humanism and the Reformation,"
in German Literature— A C ritic a l Survey, p. 106.
2J. G. Robertson, rev. by Dorothy Reich, assisted by W . I.
Lucas, M. O'C. Walshe, and James Lynn, A History of German L ite ra tu re ,
6th ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1970), p. 163.
64
Thomas Kirchmair Naogeorgus' Pariimachius (1538), in which the Pope was
portrayed as the A ntichrist and servant of Satan. Another was Niki as
Manuel's Per Ablasskramer (The Indulgence Merchant), written in the
year of the ill- f a t e d Peasants' War (1525). In th is , Ricardus Hinter-
l i s t (Dick T ric k s te r), a s e lle r of bogus religious pardons, is attacked
by a horde of female customers, strung up by the hands, forced to con
fess his chicanery and return his fees. Richard Beckley calls Per
Ablasskramer "almost a foretaste of the French Revolution."^
An occasional pro-Catholic satire did appear. Daniel von
Soest's Ein gemeyne Bicht (An Ordinary Confession, 1534) ridiculed a
parade of prominent Protestant citizens and clergymen of the play-
wright's town. I t was not t i l l the second half of his century, how
ever, when the Jesuits introduced acting into th e ir schools, that Catho
licism again became a powerful presence in German theater. Jesuit
drama, lik e the Passion and Easter plays before i t , and the American
Living Newspaper centuries la t e r ,3 was w ritten to give useful work to
great numbers o f people, in this case the students, and to instruct its
actors and audiences. What distinguished the Jesuit plays from most
other scholastic drama was the increasing devotion to elaborate techni
cal effects— lig h t, sound, and scenic machinery.
In this century, then, as in the previous period, some German
1"Germany," Oxford Companion, p. 370.
^Beriger, "Humanism and the Reformation," pp. 106-107.
^Below, pp. 120-124.
65
theater was designed to employ large casts to propagate ideology.
Other popular plays attacked an established order. A th ird feature
related to documentary theater was the growing preoccupation of the
ater with the technology of its time.
Seventeenth Century
Soci ety
Contradiction and cleavage strained this age. Traditional
fa ith and innovative reason made incompatible demands. Humanists were
philosophically encouraged to act fre e ly , but were locked into (and
rewarded by) a tig h t class system. The discoveries of Gutenberg,
Columbus, Bruno, Magellan, Copernicus, and Galileo had both liberated
and diminished man— his universe and his means of exploring i t had be
come vast, his importance in i t minute. The family quarrel between the
two C hristianities turned vio lent; fo r a generation (1618-1648) th eir
secular armies devastated and k ille d , ostensibly to determine who
better served the Prince of Peace.
Though weakened lik e everyone else by the Thirty Years' War,
the te rr ito ria l princes remained separately powerful. Reenforced by
the Reformation and the decline of the mercantile land-route c itie s ,
the regional aristocracies now required augmented corps of e ffic ie n t,
educated deputies. These were recruited from the Humanist-trained
middle class.
Theater
Aside from struggling itin e ra n t players, theater was largely in
66
the hands of those who could s t i l l afford it- -th e Courts and the Church..
The n o b ility shielded themselves against the pressures and unknowns of
the time with lavishly mounted entertainment (baroque^, Ita lian a te
operas). The Church fo rtifie d its clien tele with orthodoxy, also spec
tacularly produced (the Jesuit school dramas).
Nothing new presaged documentary theater. There was, however,
an increase in some of what had come before: a resurgent Humanist
rationalism, educative plays, and a fascination with technology on
stage that "reached the giddiest heights."^
Eighteenth Century
Society
Germany's extraordinary recuperative powers, so evident afte r
World Wars I and I I , are hardly modern. Consider the course of its re
covery from the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries. In matters
of the soul and the theater, seventeenth century Germans had ventured
into a physical and sp iritual void, and had tried to brace themselves
with borrowed grandiose entertainment and gaudy doctrine. Between the
Thirty Years' War begun in 1618, and the Seven Years' War ended in
1763, Germans fought six other wars, most in th e ir own te rrito rie s .
Despite a ll th is , the to ta lity of German personality and a rt around the
la s t half of the eighteenth century surpassed a ll that preceded or fo l
lowed in its own history, and ranks with the e a rlie r Golden Ages of
countries lik e England, France, Spain, and Ita ly .
^Bamber Gasgoigne, World Theatre (London: Ebury Press, 1968),
p. 169.
67
Science had lost its Earth-centered world, religion its God-
centered one. For the Planet or the Deity, philosophy substituted the
Human Being. Seventeenth century men had seen themselves alone in the
universe; eighteenth century men f e l t at one with i t .
"The power with which philosophy from Locke and Hum e down to
Kant made human subjectivity aware of its rights and . . . responsi
b ilitie s . . . could no longer be held back."^ The empiricists re
jected reasoning from general principles fo r reasoning from one's own
experience. Pietism, p articu larly strong in Germany, replaced a theo
r e tic a l, cerebral, in stitu tio n al religion with an ethos that was prac
t ic a l, emotional, personal.
A rt, above a l l , lite ra tu re , was believed to be the one a c tiv ity
that best integrated every element of lif e . In place of the sectarian
fra tric id e of the Thirty Years' War, there were passionate but blood
less lite ra ry feuds between c itie s . Rather than the revolutionary
wars of America and France, there were the rebellious writings of Sturm
und Drang.
As a s t i l l supreme reason now shared its domain with fe e lin g ,
so did a s t i l l absolute aristocracy now rule a self-assured middle
class. Unification into larger states lik e Prussia from the disorga
nized small p rin c ip a litie s helped to consolidate feudal absolutism,
but these te r r ito r ia l mergers, and inventions lik e the steam engine,
also strengthened the merchant-bourgeousie. And so, while the auto-
^Werner Kohlschmidt, "'Sturm und Drang'," in German Litera-
ture--A C ritic a l Survey, p. 166.
cracy "tyrannized individual authors, [ i t could not suppress] the s p irit
of the time."^ The middle class philosophically repudiated extremes of
despotism, as well as of freedom. Their p o litic a l id eal, not always
realized, was an enlightened, rational absolutism; such a system con
formed with th eir vision of a God-initiated universe that was autono
mously lawful.
In society and its lite ra tu re , the middle class had fin a lly
arrived. The lower class, b rie fly celebrated by Sturm und Drang, were
to wait another century to be fu lly acknowledged.
Theater
The tid al wave of in d ivid uality was set in motion on stage most
dynamically by the volcanic movement Sturm und Drang, and by the l i t e r
ary giants Gotthold Lessing, Johann Goethe, and Friedrich S chiller.
Lessing (1729-81) both differed from and foreshadowed the turbulent
social criticism of Sturm und Drang. Goethe (1749-1832) and S chiller
(1759-1805), considered the preeminent Sturm und Drang w riters, bore
its influence long a fte r they had supposedly gone beyond i t . These
three men, by g i f t , temperament, and luck, transcended th e ir contempo
ra ries , who were either less talented or lost themselves in careerism,
prosperity, poverty, self-absorption, illn e ss , or insanity. Lessing,
Goethe, and S chiller were not raging revolutionaries. All affirmed the
eternal and temporal laws which, they believed, rig h tly governed human
existence. Goethe himself was a principal administrator and advisor
^Rose, A History of German L iteratu re, p. 135.
69
to the Duke of Weimar. Their lives and work were nonetheless striking
examples of the eighteenth century drive to te s t, even break conven
tional barriers, and to spur men to th e ir lim its .
Lessing was a remarkable reform er--incisive, conciliatory,
u tte rly fearless. His Hamburgerische Dramaturgie (1767-69) decisively
rejected the restraining unities of time and place. In his fiv e most
mature and best-known plays, though Lessing saw his characters and com
munity with consistent magnanimity, he held up individual and societal
shortcomings for active examination. Moreover, each of these works
deviated from the rest of German theater. Die Juden (The Jew, 1749)
was the story of a generous-spirited Jew, and as "the presentation of
religious and racial intolerance within a comic framework [was] a real
innovation."^ Miss Sara Simpson (1755), "the f i r s t modern German play
2
to be taken from li f e , " in itia te d middle class heroes to the stage and
was a sympathetic exposure of class r ig id itie s , whether those of the
aristocracy or bourgeousie. Minna von Barnhelm (1767) "is new in that
i t deals with a topical subject, the aftermath of the Seven Years'
O
War." Emilia G alotti (1722) also reflected the problems of the upper
and middle classes, and its wide swings in style and content (however
controlled and earth-bound) made i t "in great measure a forerunner of
^E. L. Stahl and W . E. Y u ill, German Literature of the Eigh
teenth and Nineteenth Centuries, v o l. 3 of Introduction to German
L iteratu re, ed. by Closs, p. 19.
^W. E. Delp, "Lessing," Oxford Companion, p. 557.
^Beckley, "Germany," p. 375.
70
the dramatic work of the 'Sturmer und Dranger'. Nathan der Weise
(Nathan the Wise, 1779) was "the f i r s t great ’ Ideendrama1 in the comic
?
mode." I t was written a fte r Lessing's fie rc e dispute with authorities
over his publishing an anonymous w rite r's treatises attacking relig ion
by revelation. The censor fin a lly forbade Lessing from printing fu r
ther documents on the subject. Lessing, not to be silenced, turned to
the theater; Nathan der Weise, "far from extolling any d e fin ite r e l i
gion, only demands from a ll religions^ that they put th e ir doctrines to
4
proof by applying them to l i f e . " Unperformed in Lessing's life tim e ,
this was his last great work. A fter its f i r s t successful production in
1801 by Goethe, and excepting times of dictatorship, i t has "appeared
in German repertory . . . for more than one hundred and f i f t y years.
Sturm und Drang, its way paved by Lessing and others, is
viewed here as one of the great seminal movements in theater, pre
figuring nearly a ll modern dramatic forms including documentary plays.
Yet some knowledgeable commentators of its day and our own have r i d i
culed or ignored i t .
Ernest Rose reports that senior c ritic s of the 1770's "dubbed
^Robertson, A History of German L iteratu re, p. 262.
^Stahl and Y u ill, German Literature of the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries, p. 262.
^Judaism, C h ristian ity, and Mohammedanism in the play.
^Rose, A History of German L ite ra tu re, p. 149.
5Delp, "Lessing," p. 557.
^Freedley and Reeves, History of the Theatre, p. 145.
71
[the Sturmer und Dranger] , ; . Kraftgenies ('forced geniuses'),"!
"Leading c ritic s of the older generation, such as Frederick the Great
. . denounced [Goethe's play Gotz von Berlichingen, (1773)] . . . as
2
destructive radicalism in content and form." Rose himself describes
3
the young w riters' personal language as that "of adolescents," and
4
refers to the movement as having been "spawned." Stahl and Y uill
suggest that the more Goethe and S chiller developed as dramatists, the
5
more they "outgrew" Sturm und Drang.
To substantiate the esteem here for Sturm und Drang, and simul
taneously specify its relation to documentary theater, a few leaps
forward and back across the centuries are required. (Such chronological
jumps, though less broad, abound in Sturm und Drang plays, th e ir action
flashing about in time and locale with cinematic dazzle.)
John Simon, introducing Georg Buchner's 1835 Danton's Death,
wrote:
. . . i t is a play th at, along with its sis te r masterpiece Woyzeck,
anticipates, as the lite ra ry historian Ernst Alkers points out, the
essential elements of realism, poetic realism, naturalism, impres
sionism, expressionism, Sachlichkeit ["new realism "], magic real ism.
And to these we might add also black humor and the theater of the
absurd.6
Clearly Simon should have also lis ted epic theater and documentary the
ater. Apt as a ll this may be to Buchner's prodigious, long-neglected
1 Rose, A History of German L iteratu re, p. 161.
2Ib id ., p. 163. 3Ib id . 4Ib id ., p. 161.
5German Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,
p. 68.
6trans. by Henry J. Schmidt (New York: Avon, 1971), p. 22.
72
plays, Simon, Alkers, and Frederick Lumley^ have completely overlooked
the prior and possibly greater debt owed by theater to Sturm und Drang,
which predates Buchner by six decades.
Buchner, dead of typhus at twenty-three, could well be consid
ered a terminal Sturmer und Dranger, a burnt-out visionary, eloquent
2
to the end amid the rubble of his beliefs. He and most of his Sturm
und Drang predecessors shared much: they attacked the power and values
of the aristocracy and bourgeousie; they assaulted humanity's keepers—
church, police, academy, army, law court, leg islature; they cherished
society's most noted outlaws and most obscure victims; th e ir plays were
peopled by wholly credible human beings and by abstractions,composites,
and types; they created scenes of dark comedy, s a tire, and farce; th e ir
plots vaulted from one place and time to another; their dialog smutted,
rhapsodized, vernacularized, elided, exploded. In whole or part, these
Sturm und Drang features have characterized every serious theatrical
genre that has followed.
Whether or not Goethe and S chiller "outgrew" Sturm und Drang,
*
^"The f i r s t explorer of the p o s sib ilitie s of revolutionary
style and the true creator of Epic a century e a rlie r than Brecht had
been Georg Buchner. . . ." New Trends in 20th Century Drama (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 78.
2 ..
Buchner wrote a moving fic tio n a l fragment about Jakob Lenz,
one of the fin e r Sturm und Drang playwrights who became an acquaint
ance of Goethe a t the Weimar Court, behaved eccentrically, l e f t , went
mad, and died, forgotten, in Moscow at forty-one, "some say a beggar."
Georg Buchner, Complete Plays and Prose, trans. with an introduction
by Carl Richard Mueller (New York: Hi 11 and Wang, 1963), p. x x vii.
73
from th e ir f i r s t Sturm und Drang dramas to th e ir last "Classic" and
"Romantic" sagas, they continually mined that mother lode fo r tech
niques, m aterials, and themes. Their changes of scene were protean.
Repeatedly, th e ir central characters were Sturm und Drang maverick-
tita n s , "towering figures, aspiring fa r beyond the normal lim its of
1
mankind." Goethe's and S c h ille r's renegades were often defeated yet
always ennobled by the enormity of th e ir strivings and by "the very
2
real lim itations of the l i f e of [th e ir] time." Goethe's and
S c h iller's favorite hero was, in short, a Prometheus.
Goethe called him by many names: Prometheus, Mahomet, Sokrates,
and Caesar in several unfinished dramas; and, in completed works, Gb*tz
von Berlichinqen (1773), a m ilita r is tic Robin Hood-prince who puts him
s e lf at the head o f the Peasants' War; Egmont (1775-88), a title d
leader of the Protestant uprising in Holland against the Spanish; and,
at the base and summit of a l l , Faust (1775-1832).
S ch ille r's Prometheus also has various incarnations. One is
Karl Moor, Die Rauber (The Robbers, 1781), a Gotz-like fu g itiv e noble
man who aids and avenges the oppressed during the Seven Years' War, but
unlike Gotz, seeks ju stic e more than power, and is of a recent, not
remote time. The play it s e lf has the quality of "tabloid realism."^
Another Promethean embodiment is Johanna--Joan of Arc, Die Jungfrau von
Orleans (1801). S chiller betrayed Joan by deserting history and
^Robertson, A History of German L iteratu re, p. 291.
2Ib id ., p,^ 288,
3Werner Kohlschmidt, "Classicism," in German Literature— A
C ritic a l Survey, p. 219.
74
inventing a death on the b a ttle fie ld for her as expiation for three
merely potential yet somehow s t i l l compromising love a ffa irs , also of
S ch iller's imagining. A third Promethean equivalent is Wilhelm Tell
(1804), the legendary Rousseausque figure who, by k illin g the dicta
to ria l Austrian governor, personifies the Swiss people's epic rebellion
against Austrian tyranny.
So the two men wrote dramas, sim ilar and contrasting, of monu
mental individuals in struggles for social change. Goethe, who was
from birth accustomed to wealth and opportunity, made privileged males
his central characters, and generally emphasized th e ir personal desires.
S c h ille r, subjected to poverty and subordination fo r many early years,
sometimes chose marvelous peasants and women as heroes, and gave more
prominence than Goethe to his protagonists' social motives.
In contemporary counter-culture terminology, however, Goethe
and S chiller "ripped off" th e ir characters and subject-matter. Both
a rtis ts capitalized on the excitement generated by radical individuals
and causes, but the writers consistently subverted the revolutionary
p o litic s of th e ir plays. Goethe often did so with the magnificent
egocentricity of his major figures. S c h ille r, conversely, showed that
bold self-assertion leads to f u t i l i t y and destruction (Tel 1 is a
notable exception).
The second half of the eighteenth century is unsurpassed in
precedents for documentary theater. Lessing, and Goethe, S c h ille r, and
other Sturmer und Dranger advanced "new models of a contemporary
[upper-, lower-, and] middle-class drama which [absorbed] . . . in d i
75
vidual, p o litic a l, and ultim ately religious questions."^ Rebels and
lawbreakers, the protagonists of many documentary plays, were the
d istin ctiv e theatrical heroes of the time. Governing in stitutio ns and
practices were evils to be ra tio n a lly reformed or vio le n tly overthrown,
depending on the playwright. An inkling of jo u rn a lis tic , "factual"
drama appeared (Die Raliber). And when a mass medium, having long
broadcast established doctrine, was denied to the dissident ideologist,
he (Lessing) took to the stage.
Nineteenth Century
Society
At midnight of the las t night of the eighteenth century,
Goethe, S c h ille r, the philosopher Schelling, and the Norwegian
Steffens, attending a masquerade Goethe had produced fo r the Weimar
Court, withdrew to a nearby room and toasted the new century with
O
champagne and fin e speeches. The time, place, and two leading cele
brants were id eally suited. Viewing th e ir country and theater from the
ducal palace, Goethe and S ch iller had reason for satisfaction. National
conditions, and th e ir own considerable works and eminence, had helped
smother the clamorous, socially conscious individualism of Sturm und
Drang, and foster the so ulful, escapist individualism of Romanticism,
^Max Wehrli, "The Age of Enlightenment," in German Literature—
A C ritic a l Survey, ed. Bruno Boesch, p. 148.
o
Robertson, A History of German L ite ra tu re , p. 371.
76
which continued to flourish for the next three decades.
But Goethe's and S ch iller's festive prospect from Olympus was
a delusion. At and below the crest, and behind a sometimes solid
facade, nineteenth century Germany crumbled and cracked, and in the
twentieth century, the buried demons were loose.
The Holy Roman Empire had existed from about the ninth century.
However great its flaws, Germans preferred i t to the rule of Napoleon,
who shattered the Empire in 1806 and reigned until defeated in 1814.^
Napoleon's dominion was succeeded t i l l 1848 by the Austrian Prince
Metternich's despotic Holy Alliance. The July Revolution of 1830
against this regime achieved limited lib e ra liza tio n s , only to be fo l
lowed by more suppression, including censorship of the m ilita n tly pro
gressive press of the so-called "Young Germany movement." The Revolu
tion of 1848-49 at f i r s t secured wide-ranging promises and reforms.
These soon perished in a "period of reaction, with persecution of
Liberals in general, [and] favors to n o b ility and Junkers, the la tte r
O
f il lin g the court posts, high m ilita ry and o ffic ia l positions. . . ."
German u n ificatio n , the patrio ts' dream, fin a lly materialized in 1871
under Prince Otto von Bismarck. The reactionary, m ilita r is tic Prussian
Chancellor controlled the Second Reich t ill* 1890 with a credo of
^Goethe did admire Napoleon "Not as a matter of p o litic a l pref
erence but precisely the expression of a classical predilection for the
forces of law and order." Kohlschmidt, "Classicism," p. 219.
O
William L. Lang, ed. and comp., An Encyclopedia of World His
to ry , 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton M ifflin Company, 1968), p. 728.
77
"blood and iron." The s o c ia lis t movement was driven underground by
le g is la tiv e sanctions for the la s t twelve years of Bismarck's admi
n istratio n , while he wooed the poor with occasional sops lik e insur
ance for sickness, accident, and old age. Bismarck was dismissed in
1890 by Kaiser Wilhelm I I , young, charming, in te llig e n t, and deter
mined to rule himself. Wilhelm became known as the "Labor Emperor."
Under him, the a n ti-s o c ia lis t law was not renewed, and several addi
tional measures were enacted to benefit the workers and deflect them
from socialism. In th is , Wilhelm fa ile d . Socialism's influence spread
rapid ly, even among lib eral non-socialists.^
The rationalism which Sturm und Drang had fought, and from
which Romanticism had retreated, burgeoned. Life was increasingly
mechanized. Mankind was seen in a changed, s c ie n tific way.
The f i r s t German railroad opened (1835). Alfred Krupp b u ilt
his f i r s t cannon foundry (1847). Germans invented a steel smelter
(1859) and the f i r s t e le c tric motor (1867). The creative, contempla
tiv e arts lost many potential talents to the proliferating colleges of
science and engineering. Technological progress, and the immediacy of
current a ffa irs , produced the spread o f, and demand fo r, news. The
poet declined, and there arose a new class of lite ra ry sp ecialis t—
the professional jo u rn alis t.^
h b id ., p. 740.
^Karl Fehr, "Realism (1830-1885)," in German Literatu re—A
C ritic a l Survey, ed. Bruno Boesch, p. 255; and Stahl and Y u ill, German
Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, pp. 147, 149.
78
I f at last the state seemed outwardly unified and f u lf ille d ,
its people were estranged and abased. Humanism was overtaken by physi
ology, biology, and psychology. Men, who were once Classicism's peer
less, self-defining but mutually responsible individuals, became
Darwin's riv a l animals, with the same needs and drives as other ani
mals. They were predetermined creatures of heredities and environ
ments over which they had no control, and within which the select
survived. These teachings fed the repressive ruling systems. Many
in te lle c tu a ls , and most bourgeoisie, the la tte r p articu larly profiting
from in d u s tria liza tio n , became internal exiles, withdrawing from
societal concerns into th e ir family circles and personal material
interests. All the while, industrialization was f i l l i n g the towns and
c itie s with growing millions^ of laborers, children and adults, sub
jecting them to lifetim es of grind, privation, squalor, and disease.
What would Goethe and S ch iller have thought i f they could have
seen this future in th e ir wine glasses? For i t had not been, as Rose
claims, the em pirical, anti-system atic, in stin ctu alists anticipating
Sturm und Drang in the eighteenth century who almost turned "Enlighten-
O
ment against it s e lf ." Rather, i t was Enlightenment's prized science
^In 1971, the year of u n ific atio n , the combined population of
the German and Austrian Empires was 76 m illion ; 23.6 m illion lived in
urban communities. By 1900, while the total figure— 102 m illio n — had
increased one-third, the urban population— 43 m illio n -h a d nearly
doubled. Albert Battex, "Modern Literature (1885 to the Present)," in
German Literature— A C ritic a l Survey, ed. Bruno Boesch, p. 290; and J.
Scott K e lti, e d ., Statesman's Yearbook (London: MacMillan & Co., In c .,
1904), pp. 420, 438, 664, 665.
2Rose, A History of German L iteratu re, p. 158.
79
and reason, which, by the close of the nineteenth century, were not
only fa ilin g to solve man's problems, but multiplying them beyond
precedent.
Theater
With the July Revolution of 1830, and the end of Romanticism,
the polemical "Young Germans" seemed to burst upon lite ra tu re and p o li
tic s . They were too competitive, diverse, and uncoordinated to consti
tute a single school or movement, yet they were so bunched by the 1835
Federal Assembly's order to suppress them.
The columnists among them outnumbered the playwrights. Some of
th e ir materials and methods, however, and one exceptional dramatist,
1
Georg Buchner, have profoundly influenced modern theater, including
documentary plays.
Topicality, fa c tu a lity , precisely observed descriptive d e ta il,
human interest vignettes of social l i f e (a ll classes), and whole or
excerpted diaries and le tte rs were the s tu ff of th e ir newspaper and
magazine a rtic le s . Such jo u rn a lis tic elements were as much the pro
ducts of as the antidotes to the conditions the writers denounced.
These devices became the property of subsequent protest lite ra tu re ;
naturalism was one of the f i r s t legatees. As for the fie ry "Young
Germans," prior to or soon a fte r the suppressive 1835 edict, some
expatriated themselves (Buchner for one); a few were imprisoned (lik e
Karl Gutzkow), and the rest generally shifted to p o litic a lly acceptable,
^Above, pp. 72-73.
80
even chauvinistic hackwork.
The warrant issued fo r Buchner's arrest a fte r his escape was
perhaps the highest public notice given the young medical scien tist in
his truncated l i f e . Between 1835 and his death in 1837, he wrote his
three extant plays, Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck. Only
Danton's Death was contemporaneously published— in a version altered
** 1
without Buchner's permission "on almost every page' — and he saw none
of the three produced. Leonce and Lena, a mocking romantic comedy,
premiered nearly sixty years la te r in 1895, Danton1s Death in 1902, and
Moyzeck in 1913.
Danton's Death is one of the most scathingly n ih ilis tic works
in dramatic lite ra tu re , a b itte r epic d is tilla te of the French Revolu
tio n's Reign of Terror. Woyzeck is an expressionistic nightmare that
chronicles the humiliations of an in sig n ific an t, compliant m ilita ry
orderly driven to murder and suicide. Though both plays were based on
re la tiv e ly recent real people and events—Woyzeck from a medical journal
report, i t is Danton's Death that is p a rticu larly sig nifican t to docu
mentary theater, for "much of the dialogue was taken over d ire c tly from
o
o ffic ia l records." These sources, and thus the verbatim dialog, are
now almost two centuries old, but Danton's Death— and Woyzeck— fa r from
being dated, seem ja rrin g ly new.
Despite punitive government repression and the capitulation of
the "Young Germans," the use of documentary ac tu a lity on behalf of the
^Buchner's le tte r to his fam ily, July 28, 1835, quoted in the
supplementary material to Buchner, Danton's Death, trans. by Schmidt,
p. 175.
2
Robertson, A History of German L ite ra tu re, p. 445.
81
working classes could not be en tirely quashed. Bettina von Arnim, for
example, who composed Romantic poetry, admired Goethe, and revered the
king,^ also wrote a large unfinished volume, Armenbuch (Book of the
Poor, 1844). For its preparation, she had sent "questionnaires to per
sonalities a ll over Germany , . . building up a series of case histo-
2
ries of poverty."
O ffic ia l h o s tility to social criticism toughened a fte r the
transiently successful Revolution of 1848-49. Two former jo u rn alis ts,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, wrote th e ir Kommunistische Manifest
(1848) and Das Kapital (1867-94) in ex ile. Following Napoleon's defeat
in 1814 and again a fte r unification in 1871, the state-financed the
aters were converted to court-theaters administered, not by theater
professionals, but by royal bureaucrats. While this continued the
"trad itio n of respect and support fo r the theatre as a cultural in s ti-
3
tu tion," the true purpose was "to tighten the censorship against
4 5
lib eral ideas," and the usual result was mediocrity.
Among court-theater managers, Duke Georg I I (1826-1914) of the
small east German town of Meiningen was exceptional in ta le n t, typical
in outlook. He formed a private acting company fo r his own theater,
11b id ., p. 460.
^Fehr, "Realism," p. 260.
3
Barnard Hewitt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the
Present (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 4.
^Ibid.
5Freedley and Reeves, History of the Theatre, p. 498.
82
directed the plays, designed costumes, lig h tin g , and scenery, and
presented the ensemble's repertory in nine European countries and
th irty -e ig h t c itie s in sixteen years (1874-90).^ The Duke's influen
t ia l theater practices were not pioneering innovations, but re fin e
ments of existing trends, severed of th e ir p o litic a l fib e r. Meininger
productions were renowned for meticulously detailed accuracy in dress
and setting, and for th e ir director's handling of crowds as dynamic
presences. Georg was a nobleman; his elaborate realism served to en
rich plays of the past, not to expose social injustice in the present.
Georg Buchner's Danton would probably have shrugged at the irony; one
of the f i r s t important a rtis ts to respond to Buchner's bid that theater
im itate, not g lo rify re a lity was the very sort of person against whom
Buchner would have used the technique.
o
Buchner, speaking in the voice of the deranged Jakob Lenz,
had specified more:
Let them [ i . e . , playwrights] try ju s t once to immerse themselves
in the l i f e of humble people and then reproduce this in a ll its
movements, its im plications, in its subtle . . . play of expres
sion. . . . the organs of feeling are the same in almost a ll
men. . . .3
The playwrights, a fte r decades of "flimsy farces, sentimental domestic
* A
plays, and pseudo-classical blank-verse histories," fin a lly answered
11b id ., p. 504.
2
Above, p. 73, footnote 2.
Lenz," in Buchner, Complete Plays and Prose, trans. by
M ueller, p. 150.
^Garten, Modern German Drama, p. 15.
83
Buchner's summons with turn-of-the-century Naturalism.
Naturalists believed that men, especially the working classes, ■
were hardly better o ff than laboratory test-anim als, exploited and vio
lated in inescapable, maiming environments.^ So Naturalism was an in
surgent strategy by which socially c r itic a l writers adapted th e ir ad
versaries' own weapons--science and technology. The dramatists were
O
"compilers of human data." They rid dialog of a formal, lite ra ry
German and transcribed almost phonographically the d istin c tiv e regional
dialects, some of which "even Germans were not always able to compre-
3
hend." Biologists placed imagistic slides of l i f e on microscope
stages; playwrights mounted photographic s iic e s -o f-1 ife on theater
stages. As psychologists examined the sicknesses of the s e lf, Natural
ists diagnosed the diseases of society, attending most to those who
suffered most, the poor.
German Naturalism's theatrical masterpiece is Die Weber (The
Weavers, 1894), by Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946).^ I t dramatizes the
^Experimental animals are routinely sacrificed at the ends of
th e ir tasks, as they are too conditioned or injured to be useful in
other studies, and too numerous and costly to keep a liv e .
^Hewitt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present, p.
56.
^Bauland, Hooded Eagle, p. 6.
^The kinship of N aturalist writers and scientists is exempli
fied by Hauptmann's tr ip to Zurich in 1888 to v is it his brother, Carl,
a student of physiology and psychology. Their c irc le included the bio
logist Alfred Ploetz, and Karl Steinmetz, s o c ia lis t, la te r Edison's
chief assistant, and distinguished ele ctric al inventor in his own
righ t, ftaskell M. Block and Robert G. Shedd, eds., Masters of Modern
Drama (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 126, 127.
84
1844 revolt of Silesian fabric workers and th e ir fam ilies, cruelly
abused by the employers and threatened by new te x tile machinery. Haupt
mann researched the play by traveling through the Silesian d is tr ic t,
"observing conditions with a keen and sensitive eye, and gathering
details of the uprising . . . from surviving witnesses and p a rtic i
pants."^ Despite vivid individual characters, there is no central
figure. The Duke of Meiningen had used crowds as a u x ilia rie s ; Haupt
mann made them the hero.
Die Weber was a great success with the audiences in Otto Brahm's:.
prestigious Deutsches Theater. The royal box, however, was given up in
protest; a Prussian Junker parliamentarian suggested that the proper
place for Hauptmann was prison, and the police objected to the f i f t y -
year-old subject-matter as a threat to public order. Hauptmann's
abandonment of the original Silesian d ialect version of the drama ( Da
Waber) for a revision in High German was the en tirety-in-m iniature of
Hauptmann's long career. He continued to w rite n a tu ra lis tic a lly , but
he also moved to other styles. Disclaiming any ideological intent in
Die Weber, he never again dramatized events so recently p o litic a l.
Hauptmann had been introduced to German theater in 1889 by the
newly opened and short-lived Freie Buhne (Free Stage), a theater club
formed by Otto Brahm and several w riters. In 1890, the year the Freie
Buhne closed, the Freie Volksbuhne (Free People's Stage) was organized
^Block and Shedd, eds., Masters of Modern Drama, p. 127.
^Bettex, "Modern Literatu re," p. 292; and Robertson, A History
of German L ite ra tu re, p. 255.
85
by three members of the s o c ia lis t Social Democratic Party. The Freie
Volksbuhne and the riv a l Neue Freie Volksbuhne (established in 1892)
worked closely with trade unions, and were "dedicated to the dual pur
pose of advancing the Party program and of building a truthfu l theatre"^
that would "belong to the people and not to be the privilege of one
social class." By 1914, the audience membership of the Neue Freie
Volksbuhne's productions of such playwrights as Schnitzler, Strindberg,
3
Wedekind, Ibsen, Shaw, and Tolstoy would reach f i f t y thousand. Otto
Brahm had become manager of the prominent Deutsches Theater in 1894,
and for ten years presented many of the same playwrights as the two
Volksbuhnes in productions matching the standards of the Meininger
court-theater.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the development of docu
mentary theater would seem to have become v irtu a lly inevitable. The
problems of lower class individuals and groups were accepted theatrical
subjects on well-established and new proletarian stages. Protest
w riters laid siege with s c ie n tific and technological devices corre--
sponding to th eir opponents' own. Literature, affected by its acquired
ta c tic s , grew a l i t t l e less interp retive; fa c tu a lity and reportage were
the new requisites. Where eighteenth century w riting had provided
documentary theater's fa vo rite heroes (dissidents and outlaws), nine-
^Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 155.
^Bruno W ille, a founder of both VOlksbtihnes, quoted in Garten,
Modern German Drama, p. 27.
^Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 155.
86
teenth century p o litic s supplied its v illa in --th e State.
Twentieth Century
Society
The German Empire, lik e King Oedipus, could luxuriate in its
ascendance, at f ir s t . The warnings of those eighteenth century
"forced geniuses," and the prophesies of the nineteenth century oracles
Marx and Engels, seemed thwarted. In te lle c t and technology were
solving problems that made the Sphinx's ridd le a t r i f l e , and were
bringing prosperity for a ll . As with Oedipus, however, each succes
sive step, every new maneuver, not only fa ile d to avert disaster, but
brought i t nearer.
In the ancient Greek theater, the mechane delivered miracle-
performing Gods. By the twentieth century, machines were the Gods.
Through them, in Germany,
Middle class merchants and manufacturers became rich, and the new
suburbs and fashionable vacation centers assumed a look of com
fortable s o lid ity . Well-conducted concerts and b r illia n t theater
performances f ille d the leisure time between energetic hours of
work, museums were rearranged or newly founded, and publishers
made fortunes. , The German masses were on th e ir way to a brighter
fu tu re .*
For these miracles, man reprocessed himself in the Machine's image.
His work allowed l i t t l e variatio n, s k ill, or feeling. He surrounded
himself, not with the natural, but the fabricated--whether things or
people. Science furnished his toxic Scripture, bringing with new
revelations fresh p e rils . His medical discoveries led to population
^Rose, A History of German L iteratu re , p. 279.
87
increases that "necessitated an expansion of industry and commerce,"
which in turn "intensified international r iv a lrie s , and resulted in
1
protective policies that fin a lly became im p eria listic adventures."
He devised inadvertent remedies for s e lf-p ro life ra tio n ; sophisticated
weapons k ille d him impersonally and en masse. "The means of extermina-
tion . . . had fin a lly outgrown the power of human decision."
The successful, once-idealistic German Social Democrats, having
lost several Reichstag seats in 1907, moderated th e ir policies along
jin g o is t lines. As the majority party in 1914, they voted war credits
fo r th e ir expansionist nation. After 1918, following the A llie s '
victory, a c iv il rebellion , and Kaiser Wilhelm I I ' s abdication, Germany
trie d to become a modern democracy. The attempt was doomed by faction
alism, ineptitude, and anti-communism. In 1919-20, the centrists
fo rcib ly put down an insurrection by the radical l e f t , but they did i t ■
with the help of the extreme reactionaries. Thirteen years la te r, in
1933, the floundering minority moderates, fearing an imagined revolu
tion from the le f t , ra tifie d a real one from the rig h t. The mid-to-
late 'twenties had been a time of illu so ry economic and p o litic a l
s ta b ility . By 1932, central Europe, including Germany, had collapsed
fin a n c ia lly , and German democracy had degenerated to rule by presiden
tia l decree. The right-wing National Socialists were now the dominant
Reichstag party, and in 1933, th eir leader was Chancellor. Adolf
11bid., pp. 280-81.
p
‘'■Reinhardt Baumgardt, quoted in Hochhuth, Soldiers, I ["Every
man" ]>, p. 31.
88
H itle r was seen by big business and the w ell-to-do as "the las t bulwark
against communism," by the ruined middle class as the eliminator of
Jewish competition in business and the professions, and by thousands of
unemployed workers as the enemy of bourgeois capitalism.^ This combi
nation gave H itle r the enemies he needed to win the next election and
lose the next war. Jews were nearly annihilated, but the abnormal
alliance of communism and bourgeois capitalism was less grotesque and
blundering than H itle r's own mania. The th ird Reich was overrun.
Again, Germany was sundered. One part is a sealed-off dictatorship,
the other a prosperous state shadowed by the price paid before for
industrial renaissance. As Hochhuth's diabolic Auschwitz "Doctor"
te lls Riccardo Fontana, the voluntary Jesuit internee of the camp:
"What gives priests the rig h t to look down on the SS? / W e are the
2
Dominicans of the technological age."
One may question, a fte r Germany and other countries have
plagued and mutilated themselves with two world wars, whether van
quished or victors are any closer the sacred groves of Colonus. Among
others, documentary playwrights think not.
Theater
A fter the 1918 revolution, numerous court-theaters which had
been supported and managed by the n o b ility were reconverted to public
\a n g , World History, p. 1008.
2Hochhuth, The Deputy, p. 78.
89
playhouses endowed by states and towns. The Volksbuhne, dating back
to the 1890's and up t i l l 1918 located in B erlin, proliferated into a
pan-Germanic network of three hundred local theaters and h alf-a-m i11 ion
members.
The f i r s t two to three decades of this century may also have
been the la s t time a r tis tic imagination could outmatch technical inven
tio n , and the stage would be more dramatic than re a lity . "The European
theater" was s t i l l a co llective drama, not yet one of several global
war grounds.
"Expressionism" produced the most striking e th ic a l-p o litic a l
plays of the period. Quotation marks modify the term here because,
lik e many c r itic a l designations, i t is simultaneously too broad and
too narrow. I t appropriates a crowd of diverse dramatists, plays, de
signers, and directors in jo stlin g lumps under its one blanket, and
excludes kindred others. A few inclusions here may come from the
la tte r number.
Some porous generalizations are possible. Expressionist dramas
struggle for a moral rebirth . One kind, more metaphysical, emphasizes
sp iritu a l redemption; the other, more p o litic a l, stresses social up
heaval. The more socially involved plays savage mechanization and the
m ilitarism , materialism, and bourgeois morality i t helps propagate.
Although expressionist theater abominated machinery and its
effects, i t depended on both. Sets were no longer n a tu ra lis tic a lly
appointed habitats, or even great baroque toys. Sharp-cornered or
mechanized, with loudspeakers, lig h ts , film s, slides, conveyor belts,
90
turntables, elevators, and zig-zagging tie rs , steps, ramps, and
girders, the sets performed with the actors, obliterated the charac
ters. The Swiss Adolphe Appia (1862-1928), the English Gordon Craig
(1872-1966), the Austrian Max Reinhardt (1879-1943), and the Germans
Leopold Jessner (1878-1945) and Erwin Pi seator (1893-1966)^ envisioned
and u tiliz e d spectacular stage technology that found its way into and
out of expressionism. Rigorous acting departures were conceived by
Craig, and developed and imposed by Reinhardt, Jessner, and Piscator.
Despite expressionists theater's revulsion for robotization of people, ,
i t called for its performers, alone or in groups, to operate lik e demi-
machines:
For the passages of telegraphic dialogue . . . the actor needs a
staccato, nervous, intense, violent delivery. . . . He must chant,
intone, shout, or bark. . . . For long ly ric or hortatory pas
sages, he needs passion, range, and control. . . . His movement
. . . must be abstracted from l i f e and magnified in distorted
patterns. . . . Sometimes [he] is required to move mechanically
lik e a marionette; sometimes with the power and freedom of ecstacy.
The jangling paradox of man-as-and-against-machine is only one
of the clashes within and among the plays. Successions of clipped
dialog and compact episodes jumble with coiling perorations and flowing
dreams. The most acute subjectivity is often expressed through name
less, depersonalized character-types. Witness the cast of Reinhard
Sorge's Der B ettier (The Beggar, 1911), directed by Max Reinhardt in
^Below, pp. 99-104.
2
Hewitt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present, p.
113.
91
1912:
The Human Beings
THE FATHER
THE MOTHER
THE SISTER
THE POET THE GIRL
THE OLDER FRIEND
THE PATRON OF THE ARTS
THE THREE CRITICS
The Groups
THE NEW SPAPER READERS
THE PROSTITUTES
THE FLIERS
Incidental Persons
THE NURSE
THE WAITRESS
Mute Persons
THE ATTENDANT WAITERS
THE PATRONS OF THE CAFE
Projections of the Poet
THE THREE FIGURES OF THE DIALOGUE
THE FIGURE OF THE PAST,
THE FIGURE OF THE GIRL1
Against the evidence of human behavior, against the tortured irra tio n
a li t y of th e ir own works, many of the dramatists appeared to believe
that man's regeneration was possible, more, i t could be taught. Ex
pressionists envisioned "der neue Mensch" ("the new Human Being'1) in
plays which, while occasionally comic, were shot through with violence,
harshness, ugliness, and horror.
^In Walter H. Sokel, ed., An Anthology of German Expressionist
Drama--A Prelude to the Absurd, trans. by Walter H. and Jacqueline
Sokel (Garden C ity, N. Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, In c .,
1963), p. 23.
92
Frank Wedekind (1864-1912) was a jo u rn a lis t, poet, actor (per
forming in his own plays), and lik e Bertolt Brecht a fte r World War I ,
a guitar-strumming s a tiric singer in uni versity-area cabarets that
specialized in socially c ritic a l skits, songs, monologs, and impro
visations. Plays lik e Erdgeist ( E a rth s p irit, 1894) and its sequel Die
Buchse der Pandora ( Pandora's Box, 1901)--the two known as The Loves of
Lulu, and Der Marquis von Keith (The Marquis of Keith, 1900), bru tally
lampooned middle class hypocrisy, cupidity, and sexual taboos. Wede
kind scandalized audiences with an underworld of oddities and pariahs
even naturalism ignored--"acrobats, clowns, gamblers, prostitutes,
whoremasters, nymphomaniacs,"^ and sex murderers, who were more
2
authentic to Wedekind than were his pretentious spectators.
Karl Sternheim (1881-1942) wrote comedies scourging the social-
climbing, money-hungry middle class. Such plays as Der Kassette (The
Strongbox, 1912) and Der Snob (The Snob, 1913) created re a lis tic set
tings for fan tastic , distorted bourgeoisie delirious for wealth. Nor
did Sternheim "credit the lower classes with superior moral standards;
^Block and Shedd, eds., Masters of Modern Drama, p. 27.
^Wedekind never was in the United States, yet f e lt curiously
unrequited tie s to i t . His father had been a naturalized American, and
Wedekind's actual given names were Benjamin Franklin. Wedekind the
playwright so admired what he thought was a r tis tic and p o litic a l free
dom in this country that he fancied himself a citizen of i t . However,
by his death in 1918, the only plays of his New York had seen were the
non-controversial Der Karmersanger (The Tenor, 1897) and Fruhlings
Erwachen (The Awakening of Spring, 1891). Awakening opened and was
closed a fte r one performance in 1917 by the opposition of the New York
License Commissioner, the State Supreme Court, and the c r itic Burns
Mantle. Bauland, Hooded Eagle, pp. 44, 47.
93
th e ir . . . only ambition [was] to obtain middle-class respectability."*
One of the most renowned German expressionist playwrights is
Georg Kaiser (1878-1945). In Von Morgen bis Mitternachts ( From Morn
to Midnight, 1912), a caged "Cashier" (ju s t that; he and th ir ty -fiv e
other characters and two Crowds are anonyms) seeks and sequentially
abandons a ll he has craved--money, sex, domesticity, power, fa ith ,
li f e . The Gas trilo g y ( Die K oralle, The Coral; Gas I ; Gas I I ; 1917-20)
climaxes with apocalyptic suicide and murder via gas-bomb committed by
the B i11ionaire-Worker, the Great Engineer, and the soldier-
p ro le ta ria t. Kaiser, lik e numerous compatriot a rtis ts (Reinhardt,
Sternheim, Piscator, and Brecht among those already mentioned) fled
Germany a fte r the Nazis took power. Kaiser went to Switzerland; many
came to America.
Ernst T o ller (1893-1939), another 'th ir tie s emigre', is one of
this century's most compelling prophet-playwright-activists. In 1914
he volunteered for combat. War's re a litie s changed T o lle r, and he was
discharged because of a heart condition and a "newly acquired pacifism,
which the old monarchical guard could in terp ret only as an irre fu ta b le
p
sign of madness." Back home, he was arrested in 1917 fo r his out
spoken anti-war views, and released a year la te r. He fought in the
November 1918 c iv il rebellion, became Chairman of the Independent
^Garten, Modern German Drama, p. 100.
^Bauland, Hooded Eagle, p. 78.
94
German S ocialist Party, and was ja ile d again, this time for fiv e years,
for his part in the abortive 1919-20 revolution.^
Toller wrote Die Wandlung (Transfiguration, 1917) during his
f i r s t imprisonment. The plot paralleled T o lle r's immediate past and
future, and forecast the 1918 uprising. Friedrich, an ardent p a trio t, '
is converted from a sculptor who embraces the war to a man who smashes
his statue of "Victory" and ra llie s a responsive throng to insurrec
tion.
To ller always remained a revolutionary, but the humanist and
class triumph of Transfiguration changed to near-disillusion in sub
sequent plays beginning with Masse-Mensch (Man and the Masses, 1920)
and Die Maschinensturmer (The Machine-Smashers, 1922), both written
during his long second ja ilin g . The id e a lis tic , revolutionary W om an in
Man and the Masses is arrested and put to death by the reactionary
Nameless One, aided by the workers themselves. The Machine-Smashers
is based on the revo lt of the English Luddites in 1815. The protago
n is t, Jimmy Cobbet, wishes to reconcile the workers with the machinery
by accepting and transcending i t , but is k ille d by the very men he
hoped to lib erate . Feuer aus den Kesseln ( Fire from the B o iler, 1930)
te lls of the unsuccessful naval mutiny of 1917, whose leaders are
executed. What saves these plays from u tter hopelessness are one or a
few surviving characters who glimpse the meaning of the heroes' deaths.
^Hewi'tt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present, p. 108,1-.
Garten, Modern German Drama, pp. 139, 141; and Closs, Twentieth Century
German L ite ra tu re , p. 383.
95
Hoppla, wir lebenl ( Look Out, W e Live!, directed by Piseator in 1927),
is unrelieved. Karl Thomas, a former revolutionary, is le t out of an
insane asylum, where he has been confined for eight years a fte r a
suppressed rebellion. Seeing the state of society, he means to return
to the asylum. He is mistakenly arrested fo r a re trib u tiv e p o litic a l
assassination he had planned but which a natio nalist fanatic had com
mitted before he could. Despairing of an insane world, Thomas hangs
himself in his c e ll.
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind's a f fin ity for the United States
had amounted to l i t t l e more than being the namesake of a colonist and
having fanciful notions of American n a tio nality and freedom.^ T o lle r
involved himself more deeply, with g ifts of a rt and s e lf. He wrote to
H allie Flanagan a fte r receiving pictures of her Vassar Experimental
Theatre's 1930 production of Man and the Masses:
Dresden* Germany
January 20, 1930
I am moved by the strikin g beauty and pure strength of your
pictures of Masse-Mensch, and equally am I moved to think of stu
dents so young and so fortunate, in so young and fortunate a land,
turning th e ir thoughts to the problems of ju s tic e , speaking out
fo r the miserable masses of men. At th e ir age, when I wrote the
play, I was in a Bavarian prison. . . . There may come a time,
even in your own rich and peaceful land, when the strength of
young people w ill be needed to work fo r ju stic e and for peace.
Tell them they can work with a poem or a play as well as with a
sword. ?
ERNST TOLLER
^Above, p. 93, footnote 2.
2H allie Flanagan, Dynamo (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce,
1943), pp. 102-103.
96
Emigrated to America, To ller visited Vassar in 1936, "and when the
students were impressed with the story of his new play No More Peace," :
he gave i t to them for the American premiereJ Later To ller planned
a never-realized Living Newspaper, Europe, Last Edition, fo r Flanagan's
2
Federal Theatre Project. T o lle r's dark theatrical visions and per
sonal fate ultim ately merged. At fo rty -s ix , on the eve of the Second
World War, a fte r a period of depression and possible physical illn e s s ,
To ller hanged himself in his New York hotel room.
T o lle r's plays had grown more re a lis tic as his pessimism had
deepened. This coincided with sim ilar changes in many German plays of
this period— the deceptive s ta b ility of 1923-29 and the p o litic a l and
economic disorder ending with H itle r's election in 1933.
German lite ra ry terminologists met the challenge head-on,
exactly as they had with "Sturm und Drang." They put these new plays
in one batch, and labeled the whole thing with a particu lar play's
c o llateral t i t l e , "Der neue Sachlichkeit," ("The New Realism," whose
main t i t l e is Der Schule von Uznach, The School of Uznach, 1926, by
Sternheim ).
1 Ib id ., p. 104. 2Ib id ., pp. 105-106.
^Sternheim gives categorists d iffic u lty . Garten called him
"one of the principal forerunners" of expressionism (Modern German
Drama, p. 101); German c ritic s made him the nominal progenitor of "the
new realism," while Sternheim considered himself a "'modern Moliere'"
(Garten, Modern German Drama, p. 96).
97
Translations of "der neue Sachlichkeit"— "the new realism,"
"the new o b je c tiv ity ," and "the new m atter-of-factness"—are a ll mis
leading. True, compared to expressionism, "Sachlichkeit's" style was
fa r less extravagant, and its plots and characters lif e - lik e rather
than abstract. The plays nevertheless retained several no n-realiS tic,
subjective features: terse, intense dialog; dream sequences and
risen dead; discontinuous episodes; and massive discontent.
The genre is important to documentary theater, not as much for
individual playwrights and plays, as fo r its diverse, rancorous sub
genres. The "Heimkehrer" ( li t e r a lly , "homecomer") began as stories of
the returned soldier, once id e a lis tic , now disillusioned and dis
located.^ "Zeitstucke" ("plays of the present") enacted immediately
topical issues. "School plays," most often set in a variety of
secondary schools (e .g ., a progressive school, a school for o ffic e rs '
daughters, a reformatory), dramatized co nflicts between the conser
vative old and lib e ra l young. The "history plays" masked current
?
figures and a ffa irs as persons and events of former times. The "law
plays" specialized in courtroom scenes and denounced the old Empire,
the Weimar Republic, the advent of the Nazis, and the inhumanities of
Germany's ju d ic ia l system.
^"By 1930, Heimkehrer plays had romanticized the horrors of
war, in fa c t made them seem desirable. By 1933, those horrors were
being g lo rifie d . The o ffic ia l Nazi drama was born." Bauland, Hooded
Eagle, p. 98.
^The Nazis found a use for these plays also— the id ealization
of the German past.
98
Erwin Piscator (1893-1966), with his own kind of "new objectiv
ity ," "epic theater," was the pivotal personality in the development of
documentary theater. Heinar Kipphardt, whose In the Matter of J.
Robert Oppenhelmer was directed by Piscator in 1965, said of him a fte r
his death:
The time has come to t e ll you, dear Erwin Piscator, that we
a ll stem from your Hoppla, w ir leben, from your Rasputin, from
your Schwejk [ The Good Soldier Schweik] . . . from your P o litic a l
Theatre. Wherever the present-day theatre . . . denounces
re a lity 's bloodstained, d e c e itfu l, and bloated visage . . . there
are the guiding threads of your work. . . . When in 1928, a t the
age of 35, you had to close the Nollendorfplatz [ Piscatorblihne]
theatre . . . even then your work contained the seeds of the
modern theatre. . . . . a new form of open, less impassioned
play . . . actors of a new, harsh, d ire c t, non-psychological,
controlled style . . . designers . . . directors . . . and a
working method in which cooperated a ll the a rts , commensurate
with theatre. . . . '
Piscator practiced the "epic theater" he had named and pio
neered for much of the almost half-century he was a regisseur. Be
tween 1919 and 1966, he was the founder and/or director of seven the-
2
aters, six in Germany and one in the United States. O n his own
stages and others', he directed, often adapted, or produced one film ,
three radio and television programs, andlover 200 plays representing
^"Heinar Kipphardt Pays Tribute to Erwin Piscator," in World
Theatre, pp. 303, 309-10.
^Das Tribunal, 1919-20; Das Proletarisschebuhne (The Proletar
ian Theater), 1921-1923; Central Theater, 1923-24; Volksbuhne (People's
Theater), 1924-27; PiscatorbDhne, 1927-28; the Dramatic Workshop of
the New School fo r Social Research in New York C ity, 1939-51; and the
Freie Volksbilhne (Free People's Theater), 1962-66. M.--L. Piscator,
Piscator Experiment, pp. 292-297.
99
periods, nations, and types from A ris to tle to Alfred Henschke1 to
Arthur M ille r.^
Piscator's epic theater was p o litics without disguise and
dramaturgy with a vengeance. I t physically assaulted illu s io n . Capi
talism — and "dramatic theater" (Brecht's p h ra s e )--fa ls ifie d ; epic the
ater would not, not even to entertain. Depending on the play and the
money available, Piscator used documentary film s; b itte r animated
cartoons; projections of maps, captions, blueprints, posters, photo
graphs, and data; conveyor belts carrying props and people; record
ings; loudspeakers; translucent r e a r - lit drops displaying liv e silhou
ettes; transparent glass stage-floors illuminated from below; great
spherical stages, segmented and motorized. All these, accompanying and
interrupting dialog and action, were designed to instruct and s ta rtle
people out of th e ir c re d u lity --in and out of theater--and to arouse
them to social revolution.
Piscator had disdained naturalism for its "in tellectual
3
poverty," and had abandoned expressionism because of "its noncom
m ittal pathetic generalization . . . inevitable imprecision . . .
[and] vague ly ric a l scenes. . . . " At least some epic acting,
1 Under the pseudonym "Klabund," Henschke (1891-1928) wrote Der
Kreidekrels (The Circle of Chalk, 1924), which was eventually a prin
cipal source of Brecht's Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (The Caucasian
Chalk C irc le , 1948). Bauland, Hooded Eagle, p. 148.
^M.-L. Piscator, Piscator Experiment, pp. 293-297.
^ Ib id ., p. 144.
^Erwin Piscator, "Postface to 'The P o litic a l Theatre"' [ Das
Politische Theater (Berlin: Adalbert Schultz Verlag, 1929); and The
atre Politique (Paris: L'Arche, 1962)], in World Theatre, p. 353.
staging, and w riting techniques sprang from Piscator's determination to
shake up and reshape non-epic plays fo r epic's purposes. No empathetic
personal comedies or tragedies for Piscator--instead, fa ctu al, socio
p o litic a l panoramas. The discordant acting style Kipphardt described^
was one way of redeploying the content of "dramatic" plays. Piscator's
and his designers' active scenery was another. A third was to work
with a co llective of w riters (Brecht among them in 1927-28) who adapted
novels or revamped others' plays, often in fixin g s e lf-s u ffic ie n t epi
sodes and narration in place of continuity and action. Despite these
strategies, Piscator wrote in 1966,
. . . I don't degrade those w riters who worked with m e in the
twenties when I say that plays which were my ideal at the time are
ju s t now being w ritten. . . . At that time . . . the plays con
tained only very incompletely and inexactly what they purported
to represent; . . . s c ie n tific precision and . . . the entire
gamut of so cio-political constellations.2
For Piscator, who "managed to avoid the systematization of a
method,"3 a ll theatrical elements— p lo t, characters, theme, speech,
stage effects, music, physical movement--were to be freshly discovered
and arranged fo r each production, not to conform to theories of "art"
or "s tyle ," or to provide emotional release, but to educate and in c ite .
Entertainment was not unwelcome; diversion was. With documentary plays
^Above, p. 99.
2E. Piscator, "Postface to 'P o litic a l Theatre,'" p. 353.
3Ha ineaux, ed., prefatory remarks to Erwin Piscator, "Supple
ments to 'The P o litic a l Theatre'— Several Contributions," in World
Theatre, p. 325.
101
by Hochhuth (The Deputy) , Kipphardt (Oppenheimer) , and Weiss (The
Investigation) , whose premieres he produced and directed at the climax
of his career in the 's ix tie s , Piscator got the works he had visual
ized fo rty years before.
The compared importance of Piscator and B ertolt Brecht (1898-
1956) can be a matter of judgemental extremes. Eric Bentley, disciple
of Brecht, wrote in 1946 that "Today, Piscator’s work is interesting
as a prelude to Brecht."^ Kenneth Tynan, champion of "theatre of
O
fa c t," saw i t d iffe re n tly : "Epic Theatre is a phrase that Brecht
borrowed from Piscator in the 'twenties and went on defining until
3
the end of his lif e ." Whichever view, i f e ith e r, is correct, Brecht
l e f t his mark on theater because, apart from his a r tis tr y , his play-
scripts and fa ith fu l performances of them by the B erliner Ensemble he
established have continued to be available, while Piscator's produc
tions naturally have not. Further, i t was Brecht, not Piscator, who
"took pains to leave behind him not only one, but several accounts of
his experiments."^
^The Playwright As Thinker (New York: Meridian Books, 1955),
p. 213.
^Above, chapter I , p. 5, footnote 2.
^Quoted in M.-L. Piscator, Piscator Experiment, p. 284.
^Editor's remarks, E. Piscator, "Supplements to 'P o litic a l
Theatre'," p. 325. Piscator published ju s t Das Politische Theater,
translated only into French (above, p .100, footnote 3). A two-
volume publication, Erwin Piscator Schriften ( Erwin Piscator W ritings)
was collected by Ludwig Hoffman for the Deutsche Akademie der KCinste
(German Academy of A rt) and published in 1968 by Henschelverlag,
B erlin. I t is a reprinting of Politische Theater and seventy shorter
pieces, most of them newspaper a rtic le s , interviews, and program notes
102
There is another difference between Piscator and Brecht. For
a ll the paucity of Piscator's published thoughts.about epic theater, in
p ro lific practice he hammered scripts into inevasibly p o litic a l shape,
and, at career's close, presented the documentary plays--undisguised,
uningratiating accounts of recent real p o litic a l outrages. Brecht did
w rite volumes of theory about alienating the audience into cerebral
analyses leading to forceful public action. Most of his plays, how
ever, despite obvious pertinence and sting, are quirky, far-away
parables or distant histories, palpably appealing to audiences'
feelings fo r the figments o in stage.
Im Dickicht der St*adte ( In the Jungle of C itie s , 1927) and Der
aufhaltsame Aufsteig des Arturo Ui (The Resistable Rise of Arturo U i,
1941) take place in fantasized Chicago gangster-worlds that exist no
where but in Brecht's imagination. Leben des G a lile i (G alileo , 1938-39,'.
second version 1957) and Mutter Courage und ih rer Kinder (Mother
Courage and Her Children, 1939) are set in the seventeenth century.
There are two Joan of Arc plays, Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthofe
(St. Joan of the Stockyards, 1929-30) and Die Gesichte der Simone
Machard (The Visions of Simone Machard, 1941-43); a "Chinese" play,
(e d ito r's remarks, E. Piscator, "Supplements to 'P o litic a l Theatre,'"
p. 325).
Among Brecht's works are "fifte e n volumes of . . . writings
published by Kippenheuer, B erlin, from 1930-32, and by Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt, and Aufbau, East B erlin, from 1949 on . . . . seven volumes
of theoretical writings . . . published by Suhrkamp and by Aufbau in
1963 and 1964," (John W ille t, ed. and tra n s ., Brecht on Theatre: The
Development of an Aesthetic [New York: Dramabooks, H ill and Wang,
1966], p. x iv ); and a twenty-volume edition of Brecht's works in 1967
by Suhrkamp (Closs, Twentieth Century German L iteratu re , p. 225).
103
Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good W om an of Setzuan, 1938-42); and
a medieval Sino-Russian play, Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (The Cau
casian Chalk C irc le , 1948).
One result of Piscator's severe immediacy and Brecht's exotic
sentimentalism is that Piscator became "suspect with the ' le ft'" ^ as
well as the rig h t, while Brecht can be both a Communist subsidized
in s titu tio n in East Germany's Berliner Ensemble and a fa v o rite of
2
afflu e n t audiences at Minneapolis' highly successful Guthrie Theatre.
Because Piscator, Brecht, and many colleagues either supported
the Weimar Republic or were radical le f t is t s , H itle r barred th e ir works
from stage and bookstall when he assumed power. Most of these men
chose e x ile . From 1933 to the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, the
ater in Germany was a propaganda instrument of the government. No
divergence was permitted. More thoroughly than in the period of court-
theater control at the end of the nineteenth century, "the th ird and
fourth-raters came into th e ir own. . . . During the twelve years of
O
Nazi ru le, not a single new playwright of importance emerged."0
Piscator, Brecht, and most others eventually returned to
th e ir country a fte r the war. No innovative trends began in German
theater until Piscator's sensational production at the Freie Volksbuhne
in 1963 of the f i r s t documentary play, Hochhuth's The Deputy.
^Hochhuth, quoted in M.-L. Piscator, Piscator Experiment, p.
287.
^Comments by Eugene Lion, guest director in Germany and at the
Guthrie, personal conversation, March 1972.
3
Garten, Modern German Drama, p. 230.
104
In the half-century before the furor caused by this play
wright and play, German theater had become p o litic ize d as never be
fore. While Marxism could not revolutionize its fatherland as i t had
Russia, i t energized many of Germany's a rtis ts . On the stage, and, in
one case (T o lle r), in the streets, playwrights directed furious
assaults against the most pervasive, powerful, and exalted in s titu
tions of state, including the m ilita ry , courts, and sovereigns them
selves. Dramatists mobilized th e ir materiel in modes and media of the
time: quick-changing or flu id sequences of discrete units, lik e those
of assembly lin es, newspapers, radio, and movies. For some in the
a te r, the shocks and velocity of twentieth century l i f e le f t no time
for fic tio n . Facts, massed and immediate, were imperative. The
Deputy was a j o l t ; documentary theater was to be expected.
The United States
Prelude
The documentary theater that appeared in the United States in
the 1960‘ s was separated from its e a rlie s t American forerunners by
only two generations. There was enough discontinuity among these
precursors, moreover, that i t may be incorrect to think of them as
ancestral. More lik e ly , they were unconnected ad hoc responses to
circumstances which recur because, oppressed and oppressors, we cling
to our fa u lts .
Theater in the Thirteen Colonies was ch iefly the product of
touring and resident Englishmen, sustaining themselves with the things
of home. Post-Revolutionary theater long remained quasi-B ritish—
105
l i t t l e social protest in th at.
Indigenous nineteenth century theater did tackle, in its
fashion, two of America's greatest issues. The red man appeared
either in dozens of "Indian plays" that presented him as a noble
savage speaking classical or romantic bombast,^ or in works lik e Dion
Boucicault's (1822-90) The Octoroon (1859), in which Chief Wahnotee of
the Lepens is a monosyllabic sot. The stage black man, with rare
exceptions (and most of those in black playwrights' works), had a few
standard roles: the impish Topsy or the submissive, forgiving Uncle
Tom in the many versions of "the most popular of a ll American plays,"
2
Uncle Tom's Cabin; the s h iftle s s , shuffling , dancing, singing,
laughable, good-natured, loud-mouthed, drunken, improvident, gaudily-
dressed, thieving, gambling, watermelon-eating comically black-faced
white and black performers in "the most popular form of entertainment
in the United States from 1840 to 1880," the minstrel show;'* or
fin a lly , the behaviorally superior (because part-white) doomed beauty
in shrewdly equivocating melodramas lik e Octoroon.
For the melodramas of the oppressed to be melodramas, th e ir
social significance had to be sham. One did not go to a melodrama to
leave distressed. The hollowness of these pieces was f i l l e d with
*Allardyce N ic o ll, "United States of America," in H a rtn o ll,
Oxford Companion, p. 969.
2Myron Matlaw, ed ., The Black Crook and Other Nineteenth-
Century American Plays (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1967), p . 14.
3"M instrel," in H artnoll, Oxford Companion, p. 644; and Loften
M itch e ll, "Negro in the American Theatre," in H artn o ll, Oxford Com
panion, pp. 672-73.
106
hyperbolized sentiment and c ris is situations— shipwrecks, railroad :
crashes, horseraces, fra n tic escapes, often played out on stage with
spectacular scenic machinery. With overcharged emotions, astonishing
turns of p lo t, and th r illin g technology being melodrama's chief attrac
tions, social in ju s tic e , when i t was the ostensible subject, was
actually the occasion for delight.
In the 1920's, a fte r two centuries, the cloying merchandise
that had been American theater was cracked open.
Society
What was roaring about the 'twenties was the noise, speed, and
excitement that comes before a crash. Generations of immigrants to our
"golden door," victory in the f i r s t global war, postwar iso la tio n is t
policies, and self-absorbed, high-living prosperity shut out the rumble
of the looming debacle.
The end of the 'twenties and the 'th ir tie s were a time of
devastating economic collapse, social dislocation, radicalism of the
l e f t — genuine and d ile tta n te , and slow recovery. Radio, s t i l l finding
its way in the 1920's, became in the 'th ir tie s "so fa s t that i t k ille d
the newspaper e x t r a , a n d so effective that "Franklin D. Roosevelt in
the United States, H itle r in Germany, Churchill in England . . . a ll
2
consolidated th e ir power through the use of radio hookups."
^Friendly, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control, p. xiv.
^Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting, vol. 2: The Golden
W eb 1933-1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 302.
107
In 1939, a second world war began. M illio n s, combatants and
c iv ilia n s , were slaughtered by b ru tally destructive devices of both
sides. The war ended in 1945, when nuclear bombs, the most te rrify in g
weapon in the world's history, were dropped by the United States on
densely populated c itie s in Japan.
The Truman Doctrine of 1947, o rig in a lly promulgating the
m ilita ry containment of communism in Europe, was extended to Asia and
became epidemic in our own land. Between the f i r s t shipment of
American arms and advisers to the French in Viet-Nam on August 10,
1950, and the French defeat on May 2, 1954, the United States paid
two b illio n do llars, or seventy-eight percent, of the cost to the
French of the Indochinese war. ^ By 1950, American soldiers were
fighting two communist forces in Korea. Within our borders, fear of
domestic communism was o f f ic ia lly fomented and exploited. The cure
was more ruinous than the supposed disease.
From 1947-1958, lo yalty-security hearings and black lis ts
shattered the reputations and lives of many Americans in government,
show business, industry, and the professions, who were now, once, or
never Communists or "sympathizers." One prominent or obscure person
^Bernard B. F a ll, "How the French Got out of Viet-Nam," in
Marcus G. Raskin and Bernard B. F a ll, eds., The Viet-Nam Reader (New
York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1965), p. 83, from New York Times
Magazine, May 2, 1965; Felix Greene, Vietnam! Vietnam! (Palo A lto,
C a lif.: Fulton Publishing Company, 1966), p. 126; and Peter Weiss,
"Chronology":-3to Discourse on the Progress of the Prolonged War of
Liberation in Viet Nam and the Events Leading Up to I t as Illu s tra tio n
of the Necessity for Armed Resistance Against Oppression and on the
Attempts of the United States of America to Destroy the Foundations' of
Revolution, ih Two'PI ays by Peter Weiss, trans. by Geoffrey Skelton
and Lee Baxendall (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 240.
108
a fte r another was faced with the choice from which film star Larry
Parks begged to be spared: " . . . either being in contempt of this
[House of Un-American A c tiv itie s ] committee and going to j a i l or
forcing me to re a lly crawl through the mud to be an informer. . . .
Parks, and numerous others (e .g ., Abe Burrows, Elia Kazan, C liffo rd
Odets, Lee J. Cobb), "crawled." A smaller number, lik e Arthur M ille r,
L illia n Heilman, Dalton Trumbo, and Pete Seeger refused to name names
when called to te s tify . Countless more could find no more jobs in
th e ir fie ld s , were driven to seek employment abroad, or worked under
pseudonyms. A few committed suicide.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, conducting his own investigations, was
the most conspicuous and feared inquisitor of the era which took his
name. Remorselessly hectoring and impugning witnesses, he would make
charges and brandish purportedly evidentiary documents, s k illf u lly
timing his allegations to catch late-breaking headlines and peak-hour
radio and television newscasts. Television, which served McCarthy so
w e ll, eventually helped destroy him. F irs t there was the s o lita r ily
courageous 1954 See I t Now broadcast by Edward R. Murrow, exposing the
Senator with le th a lly factual newsclips and precise passion. Shortly
a fte r, the extraordinary "Army-McCarthy" hearings were telecast.
McCarthy had overreached; he had moved from accusing the powerless to
attacking high Army o ffic ia ls . The Army counterattacked. At day a fte r
day of dramatic televised sessions, McCarthy was on the defensive; "a
^Parks, quoted in John Cogley, Blacklisting: I. Movies (New
York: The Fund for the Republic, In c ., 1956), p. 99.
109
whole nation watched him in murderous close-up— and recoiled.
Senator McCarthy plummeted from the period's most dreaded figure to
its castoff scapegoat. His suddenly virtuous Senatorial colleagues
censured him, but the House Committee on Un-American A c tiv itie s was
never denied any of the large appropriations i t annually requested.
Though Red-hunting at home brought diminishing returns, "the
sad American willingness to use violence as a response to social un-
*
2
rest" abroad rampaged. Undeterred and uninstructed by the French
defeat in Indochina and the lim ited but expensive fa ilu re of Truman's
and Eisenhower's assistance, the United States under Kennedy, Johnson,
and Nixon has been drained by the longest, c o s tlie s t, and cruelest war
i t has ever waged. Many times a year for twelve years, Presidents
Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon and White House experts assured the nation that
our job would be over in a few months, that there was lig h t a t the end
of the tunnel, that the enemy's w ill to fig h t was weakening. Several
years before the "Pentagon Papers," columnist Richard Starnes wrote in
the conservative New York World-Telegram: "Never in the long, squalid
history of governments' conditioning people for war, has so much
rubbish, h a lf-tru th , dissembling, falsehood, and righteous paltering
3
been heard."
^Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting, vol. 3: The Image Empire
from 1953, p. 54.
p
nom Wicker, "The Hijack Dilemma," New York Times, November 14,
1972, p. 47,
•^Quoted in Greene, Vietnam! Vietnam], p. 160.
110
Theater
I t seems more than coincidence that the adventurous new
polemic theater of the 'twenties followed the rise of the co lleg iate,
resident, and off-Broadway playhouses that f i f t y to sixty years la te r
would premiere most of the native and translated documentary dramas.
Systematized university theater began with George Baker's 1912 Workshop
47 at Harvard. Baker became the Yale University Drama Department's
f i r s t director in 1925. In 1972, with Robert Brustein as chairman (on
sabbatical), the Yale Repertory Theater debuted Eric Bentley's docu
mentary play Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, about the Congressional
security investigations of film and theater personalities. The oldest
and s t i l l thriving resident professional theater (or in V a rie ty ' s
phrase, "hinterland le g it" ) is the Cleveland Play House. I t was founded
in 1916 by experimental amateurs, turned professional in 1921, offered
sixteen productions in 1966-67 usually of "recent Broadway hits and
other safe scripts,"^ and, in 1968, owned two m illion dollars of real
2
estate. S t i l l , i t was this conservative theater that in 1969 f i r s t
presented Donald Freed's The United States vs. Julius and Ethel Rosen
berg (la te r title d Inquest) in the smallest of its three houses for a
three-week run extended to nine. The " ' l i t t l e theatres' . . . sprang
^Julius Novick, Beyond Broadway— The Quest for Permanent The
atres (New York: H ill and Wang, 1968), pp. 22-23.
2Ib id ., p. 22.
3Jul ius Novick, "'The U. S. vs. The Rosenbergs,'" New York
Times, April 20, 1969, "Arts and Leisure" section, p. 3.
I l l
up in various parts of the country during the twenties," wrote Julius
1
Novick [startin g in 1900, according to Jack Morrison; in 1912— Howard
p
Taubman ] , " fu ll of high hopes and ringing manifestoes, to present the
3
avant-garde dramas of the day." One of the most successful of these
groups was the Washington Square Players, who opened in 1915 at the
East 57th Street Bandbox Theatre in New York City. The Players pro
duced foreign and domestic one-act and occasional fu ll-le n g th plays;
admission was f i f t y cents. By th e ir third season* they "v irtu a lly
took on Broadway in head-on competition."4 The Washington Square
Players disbanded in 1918, but some of them formed the Theatre Guild,
which became in the next decade a fountainhead on Broadway of exhila
ratin g , experimental, sometimes lucrative works by w riters lik e Kaiser,
T o lle r, Ibsen, Shaw, Capek, and Strindberg. "Washington Square" it s e lf
is a cosmopolitan park and gathering place in New York's Greenwich
V illage. This d is tr ic t was the center of the off-Broadway movement
th at caught on in the 1950's, and there, in the Sheridan Square Play
house, the f i r s t American documentary play opened in 1963—Martin
Duberman's In White America.
The 'twenties were boomtime years on Broadway. 1920-21 saw
157 shows; 1927-28, 280 (200 of them new); and in 1929-30, 240, even
^"The Theatre Outside New York," in H artnoll, Oxford Companion,
p. 975.
o
The Making of the American Theatre (New York: Coward McCann,
In c ., 1956), p. 149.
•^Novick, Beyond Broadway, p. 4.
^Taubman, Making American Theatre, p. 153.
112
a fte r the stock market f a ilu r e .1 Broadway's avidity fo r product cre
ated a new market for European theater. Between 1919 and 1929, the
2
Theatre Guild presented forty-seven foreign plays. The s t r ic tly com
mercial Shuberts traveled abroad and returned with "promising, often
3
p ro fitab le, and occasionally worthwhile game." The prosperous audi
ences frequently relished these imports, some of which, especially the
n a tu ra lis tic and expressionistic works, were already passe in th e ir own
countries but novelties in New York. The well-being shared by both
bourgeousie and p ro le ta ria t generated l i t t l e sympathy fo r those
American playwrights appalled by the rot below the g lit t e r of 'twenties,
prosperity. For three struggling years (1927-1930) the New Playwrights
Theatre, endowed paradoxically by a m illio n aire banker art-patron , Otto
Kahn, dramatized urgent themes of the underprivileged. The t it le s
alone speak across the decades. John Howard Lawson's Loudspeaker is a ;
p o litic a l farce, his International a condemnation of c a p ita lis t imperi
alism. Emjo Basshe wrote of victimized minorities in Earth (the blacks)
and The Centuries (Jewish immigrants). The subject of Upton S in c la ir's .
Singing Jailbirds is the anarchist International Workers of the World.
Paul and Claire S ifton's The Belt deals with the assembly-line system
in automobile fa c to rie s .4
The unfavorable climate of the 1920's fo r indigenous radical
theater changed once into the hard times of the 't h ir t ie s . The le f t -
^Ibid. , pp. 155-56. ^Ibid. , p. 161. ^Ibid.
4Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 400; and Taubman, Making American
Theatre, p. 163.
113
wing Theatre Union was a successor to the New Playwrights Theatre. I t
flourished on East 14th Street between 1933 and 1937 with the support
of labor unions, s o c ia lis t and communist groups, and the attendance of
large working class audiences who could afford the low tic k e t prices or
were admitted free i f unemployed. Again the t it le s are evocative:
George Sklar's and Paul Peters' Stevedore (1934)— the unionization of
southern blacks; John Wexley's They Shall Not Die (1934)— the Scotts-
boro case; Albert M altz' Black Pits (1935)—working conditions of coal
miners; and Lawson's Marching Song (1937).^ Peters adapted Brecht's
1932 Die Mutter (The Mother) for the Theatre Union in 1935, but i t was
both too late (its class-struggle points seemed naively obvious) and
too early (the vogue for Brecht in America was twenty years o f f ) . The
play was almost universally panned by the c r itic s , including the com
munist Daily Worker's,but the production techniques, even then referred
to as P iscatorei, impressed some reviewers, Brooks Atkinson of $h_e New
York Times".among them.^
Workers did more than attend proletarian theater; they created
i t . Their own versions of the middle class " l i t t l e theaters" were
"agitprop" (agitation-and-propaganda) troupes lik e those in Germany.
Labor-based theater, resident or mobile, had existed in Germany for
about fo rty years. The Volksbuhnes had originated in the 1890's.
Piscator wrote that early in his career he had hauled a "push-cart,
^Gorelik, New Theatres, pp. 403-4; and Taubman, Making American
Theatre, p. 228.
2Bauland, Hooded Eagle, pp. 130-131.
114
along with a few spotlights and props . . . around the beer halls and
meeting places of the Berlin suburbs."^ Agit-truppen (agitation
troupes) of amateur worker-performers were formed around 1930 in pre-
Nazi Germany by the marxist German Workers' Theatre League to take
Agitstiicke (agitation plays) to workers' gathering places— union h a lls,
2
summer camps, strike headquarters, r a llie s for the unemployed. I t was'
natural, then, that the f i r s t agitprop group in America was the German
speaking Prolet Buhne. Beginning in 1930, the troupe performed in New ■
York City where German working-class audiences assembled.
[T heir] plays and mass recitations [used] very l i t t l e scenery and
simple, symbolical costumes, deliberately calculated for m obility
and ad aptability to the playing environment. The plays themselves,
lik e a ll the scripts in the early years, were crude in plot and
characterization and fu ll of revolutionary labor "cliches." Yet
they had a hard-hitting directness of statement that would often
strik e o ff flaming sparks of emotion in the beholder. S a tiric
rhymed verse and powerful rhythmic refrains characterized most of
th e ir work. . . .
"In Scottsboro,
In Scottsboro,
Murder stalks the streets,
In Scottsboro,
In Scottsboro, -
Death haunts the c e lls ."
"The new agitational technique spread quickly across the country"^ ahd>
several groups loosely organized into the League of Workers' Theatres
^E. Piscator, "Postface to 'P o litic a l Theatre,'" p. 351.
^Bernard Sobel, The New Theatre Handbook and Digest of! Plays
(New York: Crown Publishers, In c ., 1959), p. 15; and Gorelick, New
Theatres, p. 381.
%en Blake, The Awakening of the American Theatre (New York:
Tomorrow Publishers, 1935), quoted in G orelik, New Theatres, p. 401.
4Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 402.
115
(1932-1935)J A few lines from Unemployment, one of the f i r s t American
agitprop plays, may give some of the flavor of these works.
5 W ORKER: Won't somebody give m e a job?
1 W ORKER: I am hungry, why can't I have food? I see lots of food
in the restaurants. I am cold, why can't I have a coat? I
see many coats in clothing stores. . . .
CAPITALIST: There is n 't anyone can have a better yacht than I.
I'v e got to have the best l i t t l e yacht in the world. . . . 2
Compare this with a scene from the 1936 Triple-A Plowed Under, one of
3
the most-famous Living Newspapers.
VOICE OF LIVING NEW SPAPER (over LOUDSPEAKER): In the troubled
fifte e n years, 1920 t£ 1935, farm incomes f a ll fiv e and one-
half b illio n dollars; unemployment rises seven m illio n ,
fiv e hundred and seventy-eight thousand.+ ( Four spotlights
come up on the four protagonists of this scene. . . .)
FARMER (to DEALER): I can't buy that auto. (Light goes out. . . .)
DEALER (to MANUFACTURER): I can't take that shipment. ( Count of
one, 1ight out. . . . )
MANUFACTURER (to WORKERJT I can't use you any more. ( Light goes
out. W O RKER speaks d ire c tly fro n t. )
W ORKER: I can't eat. ( Light goes out. )
*a. "The Agricultural Situation"--Bureau of Agricultural
Economics, b. Yearbook of Agriculture— 1955.
+a. National Bureau of Economic Research, b. National
Industrial Conference Board, November 1935. [Footnotes lik e these
append nearly a ll of the fo rty -fiv e pages and twenty-six scenes
of the published s c rip t3
Nothing has ever prevented non-radicals from appropriating rad
ical modes while gutting the radical messages. Exactly that was done
^Hewitt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present,
p. 155.
^Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 402. ^Below, pp. 120-124.
^The Editorial S ta ff of the Living Newspaper Under the Super
vision of Arthur Arent, in Federal(Theatre PI ays, ed. Pierre de Rohan
(New York: Random House, 1938), i i i . 1 - 8 , p. 14.
116
from 1931-1951 by fiv e great c a p ita lis t enterprises--Time magazine;
Batten, Barton, Durston, and Osborn (the Madison Avenue ad agency);
the Columbia Broadcasting System; the National Broadcasting System; and
RKO.^ To advertise Time, the magazine prepared and sponsored what was
o rig in a lly planned as a one-year series of weekly radio half-hours. On
Friday night, March 6, 1931, the f i r s t program was aired in what be
came twelve years of broadcasts (1931-39, 1941-45) and sixteen years of
film features (1935-1951). That in it ia l March of Time established the
basic pop-epic pattern fo r most of both radio and film versions.
The . . . program . . . began with a fanfare followed by bars from
"The March of Time." Then as the music faded a voice intoned [fo r
most of March of Time*s history, that voice was the portentous
basso of Westbrook van Voorhis]:
On a thousand fronts the history of the world moves s w iftly
forward—
(Music up and end)
Tonight the Editors of Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine, attempt
a new kind of reporting of the news— the re-enacting as clearly
and dramatically as the medium of radio w ill permit of some
memorable scenes from the news of the week— from The March of
Time!
(Music Up)
A thousand new d e ta ils , new facts in the world's history,
come into being every hour. In India, a t midnight, nut-
brown Mahatma Gandhi comes out of conference with Viceroy
Lord Irw in, te lls his followers that peace with England is
approaching.
In Peru, three men . . . a l l have been president within
the past week.
From every corner of the world come news facts about
p o litic s , and science, people, crime and re lig io n , a rt and
^Research memorandum, "The March of Time," Time Inc. Archives,
February 24, 1955, pp. 1, 3.
117
economics. There is one publication which watches, analyzes
and every seven days reports the march of human history on a ll
its fronts. I t is the weekly newsmagazine--Time.
Tonight with The March of Time, a new kind of report
ing, le t 's review some of the dramatic events of the week.
(Orchestra--Fanfare)
Chicago! In the executive offices on the f i f t h flo o r of the
City H a ll, adherents of the Mayor have gathered to celebrate
with th e ir chief his victory at the polls. . . .
So began the re-enactment of the victory celebration of “Big B ill"
Thompson, the mayor of Chicago who gained some notoriety in the
1920's by promising to "punch King George in the snoot." There
were six other episodes. . . . The introduction and setting for
each episode was read by an actor designated as "The Voice of
Time. " His voice was the element th at, along with the music, uni
fied the [program's otherwise unrelated episodes with the declara
tion at the conclusion of each, "TIME . . MARCHES ON!"]. . . - 1
The radio March of Time was noted fo r accurate vocal imper
sonations of the public figures in its re-created events. "Wherever
possible, dialogue was based on v e rifia b le quotations," but since
there was much dramatization as well as re-creation, a good deal of
the conversations and characters had to be fabricated. The kind of
a c tu a lity which seemed most important to The March of Time s ta ff was
described in a 1942 promotional release:
Sticklers fo r fact and realism, the M ARCH OF TIME editors find
no detail too in sig n ific an t for research. B ritish ers, for example,
probably would not complain were M ARCH OF TIME'S Big Ben to sound
o ff in "G" but cabled inquiries nevertheless were made and MOT's
lik e London's Big Ben chimes in low "E." Other typical examples of
^Robert T. Elson, Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Pub
lishing Empire, ed. Duncan Nortdn-Taylor (New York: Atheneum, 1968),
pp. 178-179.
2Ib id ., p. 180.
118
MOT's devotion to fact include the investigation to find how
long i t takes a bomb to f a ll 5,000 feet and explode and the
research to find which has the higher pitched meow, a Siamese
cat or a Maltese. . . .
Careful attention is also paid to the dialogue of the M ARCH
OF TIME'S "mob", and m ob members have had to learn snatches of
such varied languages as Chinese and Navajo so that th e ir back
ground chatter would lend realism to the show.'
Time had intended to end The March of Time a fte r one year.
Regardless of its enormous popularity at the end of that period, i t
was, "of course, an advertising campaign," publisher Henry Luce wrote
to his directors. "Obviously TIME cannot be expected to buy adver
tising when i t does not want i t , in order to perform a public
2
service." Other sponsors assumed the costs with Time, which s t i l l
had fu ll ed ito ria l control, and the march continued. In 1935, the
program went on nightly and March of Time cinema was launched.
Louis De Rochemont of Fox-Movietone News was the f i r s t to con
ceive and then co-supervise an acceptable film counterpart with Roy
Larsen, creator and producer of the radio program. The basic format of
narration and topical segments was preserved. Impersonation, which
was au rally convincing but visually fake, was out. Using current
newsreel clips combined with archival m aterial, re-creation of events
was at f i r s t kept to a minimum. Later, many events were re-enacted by
the original participants. Cabinet members, Senators, labor leaders,
and hundreds of individuals lik e Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Wendell
^"History of March of Time," Time Inc. Archives, March 4,
p. 4.
^Memorandum, "March of Time," p. 2.
119
W illk ie , General Douglas MacArthur and several Army units w illin g ly
restaged th e ir newsworthy experiences for Time's cameras.
According to El son, in the case of a controversial issue "The
March of Time, lik e Time, trie d to indicate 'which side i t believed had
the stronger position' . . . .[b u t] lik e Time and Fortune at that
period, the [film ] series did not follow a specific e d ito ria l policy."^
2
Listening today to several recorded radio programs, however, one hears
a subtle but persistent slant rig h t-o f-center when i t came to Franklin
Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Clearly, the epic techniques on The March of Time's grand pro
fessional scale had not a social protest made. This was to come from
the theatrical arm of the Works Project Administration, Roosevelt's
agency to provide work for unemployed m illions during the Depression.
O n March 14, 1936, fiv e years and eight days a fte r Time Inc. had in tro
duced its liv in g magazine, the W.P.A.'s Federal Theatre offered the
f i r s t Living Newspaper.
O
The Living Newspapers--there were nine, between 1936 and 1938
—were only a p a rtic le of the Federal Theatre's a c tiv itie s during its
four-year existence (1935-39). I t published a national Federal Theatre
Magazine. Its Planning and Research Bureau assisted "schools,churches,
^Time In c ., p. 239.
O
At the Lincoln Center Library and Museum for the Performing
Arts, New York City.
H allie Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre
(New York: Benjamin Blom, In c ., 1965), p. 390. Copyright 1940 by
H allie Flanagan, reissued by arrangement with the author.
120
and community theatres throughout A m e ric a .O ve r 860 theater works
were presented, new and standard, including classic, modern, children's,
foreign language (French, German, Ita lia n , Spanish, Yiddish), musical,
Negro, pageant and spectacle, puppet, relig io u s , and vaudeville and
?
circus productions. Nine thousand radio programs were broadcast.
"At its height, the Federal Theatre employed approximately thirteen
3
thousand people on projects scattered over thirty-one states."
Rightly or not, the Living Newspaper is singled out by theater
historians from the myriad of Federal Theater creations. Taubman calls
i t the "most novel and successful of the Project's ventures."4
Hewitt's discussion of the Project speaks of nothing but the Living
5
Newspaper. Whether this kind of judgement is ju s tifie d or exagger
ated, the form's resemblances to documentary plays are unmistakable.
The Living Newspapers dealt with national problems in an ener
g e tic, partly n o n -illu s io n ist style. The plays mixed quick, f l a t
scenes of lit e r a l news events, public statements, data, and diagrams,
spoken or projected on screens, with b rie f dramatic episodes peopled
by representative types or real persons (FARMER, HOUSEWIFE, COP,
M.-L. Piscator, Piscator Experiment, p. 32.
p
^Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre, pp. 380-
431.
3
Jane De Hart Mathews, The Federal Theatre, 1935-1939: Plays,
R e lie f, and P o litics (Princeton, N. J .: Princeton University Press,
1967), p. v i i i .
4The Making of the American Theatre, p. 230.
^History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present, p. 155.
121
BUTCHER, M A N W H O KNOW S, EARL BROW DER, THOM AS JEFFERSON, REPRESENTATIVE^
JOHN RANKIN, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS). Musical interludes bridged the
scenes, as did a narration over a public address system. Later the
narrator '‘ceased to be merely an annotator or dateline, and began to
take on in d iv id u a lity. . . . I t spoke lin es, i t e d ito ria liz e d , i t
became a d e fin ite character, but never the same one for long."1 The
narrator was variously called VOICE OF THE LIVING NEW SPAPER (Triple-A •
Plowed Under, Roosevelt's agricultural p o licies, by the Living News
paper s ta ff, 1936),^ LOUDSPEAKER (Power, the dispute over public and
private ownership of e le c tric power, by Arthur Arent, 1937), and THE
ANNOUNCER ( Spirochete, the history of the fig h t against s y p h illis ,
Arnold Sundergaard, 1938). Since one of the purposes of Living News
papers was to employ people, cast lis ts were prodigious (though there
was some m ultiple ro le-p la yin g )—Triple-A: seventy-six plus extras;
Power: one hundred eighty-six; Spirochete: ninety-seven plus extras.
Four of the nine Living Newspapers were c o lle c tiv e ly authored by the
Project's staffs: Highlights of 1935, a survey of the year's news
(1936); Injunction Granted, a chronicle of labor in the courts, (1936);
The Living Newspaper, a Cleveland production referred to only by t i t l e
in the Production Record of Flanagan's Arena,^ (1936); and Triple-A
Plowed Under.
^Arthur Arent, "The Techniques of the Living Newspaper,"
Theatre Quarterly 1 (October-December 1971):59. Reprinted from The
atre Arts, November 1938.
2Above, pp. 116.
■^Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre, p. 390.
122
I f the Living Newspaper sounds reminiscent of The March of
Time and expressionistic and epic theater; that is because i t is
reminiscent of The March of Time, expressionism,and epic. Yet two of
the creators of the Living Newspaper are curiously insistent that i t
owes nothing to any precedent forms (Arent), or almost nothing to
foreign forms (Flanagan).
Arent:
As a matter of fa c t, i t was only about a year ago that I
learned that there had ever been anything lik e a Living Newspaper
before ours. . . . I find the number of claimed birthplaces of
this p articu lar medium is exceeded only by the number of beds the
Father of Our Country . . . is supposed to have slept in. These
[birthplaces] range a ll the way from Soviet Russia, where the
p o litic a l form has been an in s titu tio n for years, to Vassar
College; from the P o litic a l Cabarets of the Left Bank c e lla r
theatres to the al fresco Varieties put together by Chu Teh's
propaganda divisions in Red China.
These events certainly took place. Everybody says so. But,
and here is the point, I never seem able to locate anybody who
saw one. Nor have I ever seen the script of such a production.
And so, while admitting the p o s s ib ility of a whole avalanche of
predecessors, I deny th e ir existence. . . .
What are the sources of this technique? As fa r as I know,
th e re .a re n 't any. At least i f there are, we d id n 't know about
them. 1
I t is possible, though d if f ic u lt to believe, that eight years a fte r
March of Time's inception Arent had found no one who had heard a
broadcast or seen a film of i t . I t is impossible that he had located
nobody who had seen a Vassar College production, since H allie Flanagan,
national director of the Federal Theater and originator of the Living
Newspaper idea, had been the director of the Vassar Experimental The
atre from 1925 to 1935.
^"Techniques of Living Newspaper," p. 57.
123
Flanagan:
Although i t has occasional reference to the Volksbuhne and the
Blue Blouses, to Bragaglia and Meyerhold and Eisenstein, i t is
as American as Walt Disney, the M ARCH OF TIME and the Congres
sional Record, to a ll of which in stitutio ns i t is indebted.'
This too is odd. Flanagan was well aware of European genres, yet dis
played peculiar lapses. In 1926-27, she traveled through Europe on a
Guggenheim grant v is itin g and studying continental theaters. Though
Piscator had been adapting, producing, and directing epic productions
since 1924 in B erlin, she does not mention him at a ll in Shifting
Scenes' chapter on Germany. Instead, she observed only luxurious
O
theaters, prosperous people, old dramas, reactionary staging. I f she
overlooked Piscator in B erlin, she was oblivious of him in the States,
too, even though epic theater techniques had become fa m ilia r enough
3
here by 1935 to be known by his name. With the incredible repertory
of expressionist, epic and a ll other German-language plays from which
to select, only four were chosen fo r Federal Theatre production, while
twenty-two Ita lia n standards were mounted.
Gorelik is blunt about Arent's and Flanagan's strange denials.
The Living Newspaper has an American content and American idiom,
but i t is no more indigenous than any other theatre form the United
States has ever had--which is none, with the exception of Indian
dance ceremonies and, possibly, the minstrel show. The immediate
ancestor of the Living Newspaper was, beyond question, the March
of Time radio program. And that was in turn preceded by the so-
called agitprop plays of the American workers' theatres, which .
were inspired in some degree by a n ti-fa c is t theatres of Germany.
^Introduction to Federal Theatre Plays, p. x i.
^Flanagan, Shifting Scenes of the Modern European Theatre,
pp. 184-86.
^Above, p. 114. ^Gorelik, New Theatres, p. 399.
124
Regardless of this minor proprietary conceit, the Federal
Theatre was a staggering achievement. But by 1939, the economy was
recovering, and the government was no longer prepared to subsidize
people who occasionally raised disturbing questions about our society.
In a foretaste of the purges to come, the House Committee on Appro
priations and the House Committee to Investigate Un-American A c tiv itie s
conducted hearings and submitted grossly distorted reports condemning
the Project.^ Everett Dirkson, then a Representative, called its pro-
O
ductions "salacious trip e ." The investigating committees' m entality
is evident in the exchange between Flanagan and Congressman Starnes.
Flanagan had described the audiences' enthusiasm
. . . as having "a certain Marlowesque madness."
"You are quoting from this Marlowe," observed Mr. Starnes.
"Is he a Communist?"
The room rocked with laughter, but I did not laugh. Eight
thousand people might lose th e ir jobs because a Congressional
Committee had so pre-judged us that even the classics were "com
munistic." I said, "I was quoting from Christopher Marlowe."
"Tell us who Marlowe is , so we can get the proper references,
because that is a ll we want to do."
"Put in the record that he was the greatest dramatist in the
period of Shakespeare, immediately preceding Shakespeare. "3
Starnes subsided, but not the Committee. By vote of Congress, on June
30, 1939, the Federal Theatre vanished.
In the 'fo rtie s we were again at war. I t was no time for
social c ritic ism ; we were expected to love our country, a t least lik e
^Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre, pp. 333-
393.
^Quoted, ib id ., p. 337.
3Flanagan, Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre, p. 342.
125
the Soviet Union, and hate Germany and Japan. Most of the s t i l l -
active (once-)radical dramatists— Lawson, M altz, C liffo rd Odets
(Waiting for Lefty, 1935; Golden Boy, 1938)--settled in Hollywood.
One socially conscious playwright, Arthur M ille r , did appear in the
'fo rtie s . His plays in this decade explored the corruption of a
common man seduced by America's success-myths: The Man W ho Had A ll
the Luck (1944), A ll My Sons (1947), and Death of a Salesman (1949).
Despite e x p lic it social criticism and expressionist touches, the plays
were s ty lis tic a lly conventional, sentimental, and essentially pro-
tagonistic rather than societal.
The 'f i f t i e s was the Eisenhower decade—an end to the Korean
War and a period of benign torpor, except for Congress' lo yalty and
domestic espionage probgsv ? M ille r responded to the era's McCarthyism
by refusing to id e n tify others when asked to te s tify , and by w riting
The Crucible (1953), about the Salem witch-hunts. The play obviously
paralleled the frenzied, opportunistic search for communists, though
M ille r 's public statements inexplicably trie d to deflect such a con
nection.
The hibernation of the 'f i f t i e s erupted into the hot summers
and dreadful events of the 's ix tie s . With them came va rie tie s of
iconoclastic theater, including the documentary dramas.
In this century, the flux of campuses, communities, ethnics,
underclasses, science, and p o litic s have altered theater. However
great Broadway's continuing force, i t is no longer the sun and a ll
else petty s a te llite s ; there are several centers, not one. New per-
126
forming and informing media appeared. Oppressive conditions produced
recalcitran t plays. The le g is la tiv e star-chamber became a fact of
American l i f e . The executive governed by coversion and deceit. Almost
one hundred years to the year a fte r the C ivil War, black-white battles
flared across the nation and burst out s t i l l . Pyromania became wars'
world-strategy: the gas and f ir e of German concentration camp "shower
rooms" and disposal ovens; the flaming "Gomorrahs" of B ritish incen
diary bombs;^ the solar holocaust of American nuclear explosions; the
splattered, pitted flesh ablaze from America's adhesive napalm and
phosphorous p e llets. For some playwrights, the urgency and magnitude
of twentieth century re a lity has made of fic titio u s theater a waste
product— at best, useless; at worst, noxious.
1"Gomorrah" was B ritain 's codeword for Hamburg (and by exten
sion, other German c it ie s ) , especially the heavily populated working-
class areas, which B ritain deliberately incinerated by fire-storm a ir
raids.
127
CHAPTER IV
THE PLAYS— INTRODUCTION; I: O UR RACISM, OUR SECURITY
Introduction
The documentary plays, even those whose action occurs a few
decades ago or in foreign countries, mean to say specific things to us
about ourselves now. The plays have therefore been grouped into four
contemporary topics, and within each topic, chronologically in order
of publication.^
O UR RACISM
In White America—Martin Duberman
The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey— Peter Weiss, translated by
Lee Baxendall
O UR SECURITY
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer— Heinar Kipphardt,
translated by Ruth Speirs
Inquest— Stan!ey Freed
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been— Eric Bentley
^Because production scripts rather than published texts have
been used fo r Murderous Angels, Pueblo, and XA: A Vietnam Primer,
in it ia l production dates determine the order of th e ir lis tin g .
128
O UR SOVEREIGNS
Soldiers— Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Robert David MacDonald
Murderous Angels--Conor Cruise O'Brien
An Evening with Richard Nixon— Gore Vidal
O UR W A R S
The Deputy--R olf Hochhuth, translated by Richard and Clara
Winston
The Investigation— Peter Weiss, translated by Jon Swan and Ulu
Grosbard
Pueblo—Stanley Greenberg
The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine— Daniel Berrigan, text pre
pared for production by Saul L evitt
XA: A Vietnam Primer—Michael Monroe in conjunction with The
October Collective
These divisions id en tify common themes, but also reveal the
variety among documentary dramas. Plays in any one set can d iffe r
markedly in attitudes and form. In O UR SOVEREIGNS, for example,
Soldiers is a demanding, admiring, yet hideous condemnation (of Winston
C hurchill); An Evening with Richard Nixon is a fa c ile , contemptuous
cartoon.
Yet while differences occur within groups, connections exist
between them. The T rial of the Catonsville Nine— O U R WARS--refers
d ire c tly to O UR RACISM. Mary Moylan, one of those accused of napalming
d ra ft board file s 1968, te s tifie s that as a Catholic nurse in A frica,
she saw American planes bomb Congolese v illa g e s , and that when
129
she returned home and saw Washington^ D. C. police b rutalize black
citize n s , she "found i t to be ju s t lik e our p o litician s say; our
foreign policy is indeed a refle c tio n of our domestic policy.^
Because every play is ultim ately an autonomous work, each one,
even those in the same set, is discussed separately from the others,
with two exceptions. Given the many s im ila ritie s between Hochhuth's
Soldiers (O UR SOVEREIGNS) and The Deputy (O U R W ARS) , several observa
tions about the author and both plays are made in the c ritiq u e of
Soldiers, which appears f i r s t .
F in a lly , in keeping with the materials and purpose of documen
tary plays, the groups are introduced by recent news items.
Our Racism
In White America—Martin Duberman
The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey— Peter Weiss, translated by Lee
Baxendal1
CITY AGENCY SEES A PATTERN OF VIOLENCE AGAINST MINORITIES
The [New York] City Commission warned yesterday that a "dan
gerous pattern" of arson and vandalism against blacks and Puerto
Ricans had developed in several white neighborhoods of the
c ity . . . .
In a 34-page re p o rt, the commission cited 11 cases in the la s t
18 months in which minority-owned homes had been set a fire or van
dalized, a church had been burned, and a school bus had been
attacked.
The commission report asserted that "the reaction of f ir e and
I d. Berrigan, Catonsville, pp. 17-19.
130
police authorities had been to minimize the seriousness of the
in it ia l incidents, and even to focus suspicion on the fam ilies
themselves. .
--David K. Shipler, New York Times, December 13, 1972.
RIGHTS UNIT SAYS NIXON STILL LAGS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9— The United States Commission on C ivil Rights,
for the fourth time in three years, painted today a bleak picture
of the Nixon Administration's enforcement of laws and regulations
affecting minority groups. . . .
In the [429-page] report released today the commission used
the same sort of blunt language i t used in three previous assess
ments of the Administration, but its tone was noticeably more
pessimistic. . . .
The Commission found that "the in e rtia of agencies in the area
of c iv il rights persisted" and that no agency accorded high-level
p rio rity and commitment to c iv il rights enforcement.
— Paul Delaney, New York Times, February 10, 1973.
In White America—Martin Duberman
In White America is the story, much of i t in the words of black
men and women, of what i t has been lik e for the la s t two centuries to
liv e as a black person in this country. To read the play and Duber-
man's commentaries on i t is to immerse oneself in ironies that please
and pain.
Duberman, a white writer-professor of history, set out to jo in
his fie ld with theater "to enrich historical presentation [and] . . .
3
re v ita liz e th eatrical statement." Above a l l , Duberman wanted this
combination to be a guide, not to people's losses, revolts, or
absurdities, however common, but rather to th e ir p o s s ib ilitie s and
triumphs, however rare. " . . . Both history and drama might become
] Pp. 1, 54. 2Pp. 1, 37.
3Duberman, "Afterword," In White America, p. 121.
131
vehicles for change. . . . " The sadness of the f i r s t of the ironies
about this play is that Duberman has succeeded, but in the lig h t of
events since In White America's appearance, its very success now looks
lik e a delusion, even to its author. Duberman has subsequently repu
diated his hope that the learning of history is so cially or personally
therapeutic, and he believes that race relations in America are degen
erating.
The play is possibly the most absolute and scrupulous of a ll
the documentaries. Yet its academician-author has cared less about our
learning than our passions. So--irony two— In White America offers the
pleasures of fastidious scholarship that leads and yields to strong
emotions; "truth of fact has less durable relevance than truth of
2
fe e li ng."
In White America was a documentary before the vogue started in
this country, and was wholly independent of the Piscator-Hochhuth in
fluence. I t is l it e r a lly subtitled "A Documentary Play"--Duberman re
calls without being certain this was his idea, not the publishers, and
he knows he had not heard of Piscator or Hochhuth at*the time.^ The
play's twenty-nine separate sections are arranged chronologically in
two acts, from 1788 to the C ivil War, and from the War to 1963; the
year of the play's composition, the material evenly distributed over
the two-century span. The segments are composed e n tire ly of documents
1 Ib id ., p. 126. 2Ib id ., p. 124.
q
Statement by Duberman, personal conversation, May 1973.
132
that have been edited but "not added to or paraphrased except in those ;
few cases where a word or two was absolutely necessary for c la rity or :
transition."^ The episodes include interviews of former slaves con
ducted in the 1930's; speeches by white and black spokesmen lik e Thomas
Jefferson, John Brown, United States Senator Ben Tillman of South
Carolina, Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington (who urged
social subservience fo r his black people), and Marcus Garvey (leader of
a back to Africa movement); and meetings between black representatives
and white Presidents Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson. Among the
documents are autobiographies; the Annals of Congress (fo r Congressio
nal addresses and debates); Federal W riters' Project records (the ex
slave interviews); diaries and journals (one of them belonging to a
Northern woman who went South to teach freed slaves); the transcript of
a t r ia l (of Ku Klux Klan members accused of torture and murder); a
French m ilita ry directive (forbidding, as a gesture of goodwill to the
U. S. government, French officers from associating with black American
troops). Introducing each segment is a source-citing narration, as:
NARRATOR:
In 1859, John Brown, who has a lte rn a tiv e ly been called a saint and
a madman, made an unsuccessful attempt at Harpers Ferry, V irg in ia ,
to free the slaves. Brought to t r ia l and sentenced to death, John
Brown addressed the courtT^
The passages are sometimes preceded also by a b rie f black s p iritu a l or
white fo lk song:
^Duberman, "Preface," In White America, p. 15.
^Duberman, In, White America, p. 40.
133
NEG RO ACTRESS (sings):
Oh, freedom, Oh, freedom,
Oh, freedom, over me!
And before I ' l l be a slave,
I'll be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord
And be f r e e .1
or,
(Music— qui t a r is t )
I am a good old Rebel,
And th at's ju s t what I am.
And fo r th is land of lib e r ty ,
I do not give a damn.
I'm glad I fought against i t —
I only wish we'd won,
And I a in 't asking pardon
For what I been or doneT^
A supplement cites a ll the o rig in a l, and where possible, the currently
available sources for each episode, and discusses whatever small
changes have been made in these m aterials. To illu s tra te his ed ito ria l
technique, Duberman has appended twenty-seven pages of four complete
documents, marked to show the portions he used and any insertions he
made.
The published te x t, then, is an exposition of almost c lin ic a lly
v e rifia b le non-invention, but even more, i t is an avowed attempt to
inspire and rejoice. Such a positive vision is rare among documen
ta rie s . For most of them, to expose means to accuse; for In White
America, i t means to celebrate.
Of course, there is much in In White America "to enrage and
3
sadden the Negro" — and many non-blacks. Though provoking fury and
g rie f is not the heart of the play, how can we feel when we hear from
T Ib id ., p. 20. 2Ib id ., p. 56.
^Duberman, "Preface," In White America, p. 9.
134
the journal of a mid-eighteenth century slave ship doctor, near the
play's beginning:
The wretched negroes are immediately fastened together, two and two,,,
by handcuffs on th e ir wrists and by irons rive tte d on th e ir legs.
. . . They are frequently stowed so close [between the decks] as
to admit of no other position than lying on th e ir sides. Nor w ill
the height between decks allow them to stand.
The d ie t of the negroes while on board, consists ch iefly of horse-
beans boiled to the consistence of a pulp.
Upon the negroes refusing to take food, I have seen coals of f ir e ,
glowing hot, put on a shovel and placed so near th e ir lips as to
scorch and burn them. I have also been credibly informed that a
certain captain in the slave-trade, poured melted lead on such of
his negroes as obstinately refused th e ir food.
On board some ships the common sailors are allowed to have in te r
course with such of the black women whose consent they can procure.
The o fficers are permitted to indulge th e ir passions among them at
pleasure.
. . . Whenever the sea is rough and the rain heavy i t becomes
necessary to shut every conveyance by which a ir is admitted. The
negroes' rooms very soon grow intolerably hot. The confined a ir
produces fevers and fluxes which carry o ff great numbers of them.
The flo o r of th eir rooms can be so covered with blood and mucus in
consequence of the flu x , that i t resembles a slaughter-house.
. . . One evening while the ship lay in Bonny River, one of the
negroes forced his way through the network on the larboard side of
the vessel, jumped overboard and was devoured by the sharks. C ir
cumstances of this kind are very frequent.'
What do we think on finding that no less than Thomas Jefferson could
w rite in a le tte r that "The love of ju stice and the love of country
plead equally the cause of these people, and i t is a moral reproach to
us that they should have pleaded i t so long in vain," but could con
clude a speech by saying "that the blacks . . . are in fe rio r to the
2
whites in the endowments both of body and mind"? Whites may remember
^Duberman, In White America, pp. 21-22. ^1b id ., pp. 24, 25.
135
Woodrow Wilson as the tragic architect of a world peace that is yet to
come. But how shall we react on learning that under Wilson, "segrega
tion of Federal employees became widespread for the f i r s t time," and
th at Wilson told a delegation of distinguished black leaders that
"Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit. . . . "?^
S t i l l , the soul of In White America is not these abominations, ’
* -..-................ i
but rather the "victims'" responses to them which Duberman believed
can "make [the black man] . . . proud: here is a people who maintained
th e ir humanity while being treated inhumanly, who managed to endure as
2
men while being defined as property." This was Duberman's hope with
In White America— for blacks and whites— that amid a ll the present
despair and defeat, the example of black transcendance in the past
could bring d ig n ity, purpose, structure, and compassion to our lives
today.
More characteristic of the material in the play, then, are such
episodes as those rare cases of correspondence between escaped slaves
and the masters seeking th e ir return:
JARM:
Mrs. Sarah Logue: . . had you a woman's heart, you never could
have sold my only remaining brother and s is te r, because I put
myself beyond your power to convert me into money.
You sold my brother and s is te r, Abe and Ann, and twelve acres of
land . . Now you ask m e to send you $1000 to enable you to redeem
the land, but not to redeem m y poor brother and sisterJ You say
that you shall sell me i f I do not send you $1000, and in the same
1 Ib id ., pp. 65, 66. 2Ib id ., "Preface," p. 9.
136
breath you say, "You know we raised you as we did our own c h il
dren." Woman, did you raise your own children fo r the market? Did
you raise them fo r the whipping post? Did you raise them to be
driven o f f, bound to a c o ffle [a tra in of animals or slaves tied
together] in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and
sisters? Can you te ll? W ho was i t that sent them o ff into sugar
and cotton fie ld s , to be kicked and cuffed, and whipped, and to
groan and die . .?
Did you think to te r r if y m e by presenting the altern ative to give
my money to you, or give my body to slavery? Then le t m e say to
you, that I meet the proposition with scorn and contempt. I w ill
not budge one hair's breadth. I w ill not breathe a shorter
breath . . I stand among free people.1
Another was the i l l i t e r a t e ex-slave, Sojourner Truth, who in 1851 unex
pectedly arose at a Woman's Rights Convention.
Wal, ch ilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out
o' k ilte r .
Dat man ober dar say day womin needs to be helped into carriages,
and lifte d ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar.
Nobody eber helps m e into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs
me any best place! And a*n't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my
arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns and no
man could head me! And a'n't I a woman? I have borne thirteen
ch ilern, and seen 'em mos' sold o ff to slavery, and when I cried
out with my mother's g rie f, none but Jesus heard me! And a'n't
I a woman?
Den dey talks 'bout did ting in de head*, what dis dey call it?
(A voice whispering): In te lle c t.
Dat's i t , honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights? I f m y
cup won't hold but a p in t, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye
be mean not to le t m e have my l i t t l e half-measure fu ll?
Den dat l i t t l e man in black dar, he say women can't have as much
rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ
come from? Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman!
Man had nothin' to do wid Himl^
^Duberman, In White America, pp. 34-35.
^ Ib id ., p. 39.
137
And fin a lly there was the quiet heroism of the fifte e n year-old g irl
who in 1957 was the f i r s t black to try to go to school at Central High,
L it t le Rock, Arkansas. The night before she had reassured her worried
parents. The next morning she walked past a name-calling crowd,
scared, but thinking the national guardsmen at the school door would
help her. Instead, the guards raised th e ir bayonets against her. She
turned. The crowd closed in. "Lynch her! Lynch her!" someone
yelled . An old woman with a kind face spat on her. "Nigger bitch!"
The g irl walked back through the mob, down the block, and sat on a
bus stop bench. A white man also sat down and comforted her. A bus
came as the crowd began shouting again. She boarded and rode to where
her mother worked in a School fo r the Blind. Her mother put her arms
around her and the g irl cried, not yet able to t e ll her mother she was
a ll r ig h t.1
" L ittle Rock" is the las t major episode of the play. Post-
1957 w ritten or spoken words of Martin Luther King, James Baldwin,
Malcolm X, and President Kennedy were trie d but abandoned. Duberman
explained that " i t was d if f ic u lt to 'top' the L it t le Rock scene drama-
2
t ic a lly , and I f e l t events since then were s u ffic ie n tly fa m ilia r."
In White America is encyclopedic and variegated. A to tal of
eighty-three real people, from colonial to contemporary, famous to
obscure, "cultivated" to unlettered, appear in the twenty-nine scenes.
The language of the play is , therefore, equally diverse: as examples,
^ Ib id ., pp. 74-77.
2Ib id ., "Appendix," p. 87.
138
the s t i f f but heartsick prose of the colonial slave-ship doctor; the
ir re s is tib le , down-home d ia le c tic of Sojourner Truth; the flo r id ,
frightening, 1907 rhetoric of Senator Tillman, advocating lynch ju stice
for the theoretical rape of a Northern Senator's daughter by a hypo
thetical black man:
Is i t any wonder that the whole countryside rises as one man and
with set, stern faces, seek the brute who has wrought this infamy?
. C iv iliz a tio n peels o ff us, any and a ll who are men, and we
revert to the original savage type whose impulses under such circum
stances has always been to " k ill! k i l l ! k i l l ! " ; 1 '
and the unaffected eloquence of the L it t le Rock g ir l.
The scrip t is also simple and spare. There are no instructions
about scenery or costumes, and very few to the performers. Three black
and three white actors, one woman and two men in each case, play the
roles, speak the narrations, sing the songs. A g u ita ris t performs the
music. Yet the play, with a ll its breadth, economy, and profusion, is
clear, emotive, and whole.
This is Duberman's ambiguous achievement. At f i r s t , one is
deeply moved by the range of courage, eloquence, w it, d ig nity, and
defiance of some of those people his fellow white Americans have
degraded for two hundred years. I f history enlivened on stage is a
guide, as Duberman maintained, perhaps there is even time for American
whites to rediscover th e ir best natures.
But this promise is f r a il and fading. That blacks--or any
humans—who have h is to ric a lly prevailed over abysmal conditions are
^Duberman, In White America, p. 63.
139
exceptions, as Duberman concedes, is a d is p iritin g fa c t, not an en
couraging one. Can we re a lly find in such historic r a r it ie s , black
or non-black, directions or hope for our present selves, as Duberman
so ardently believed in 1964?
Five years a fte r the publication of In White America, Duber
man, for one, no longer thought so. In a 1969 collection o f his
essays, he wrote:
To me, the opposite . . . seems truer: that the individual is
most lik e ly to find fu lfillm e n t by exploring his "specialness"—
how he d iffe rs from a ll others— and that a group is most lik e ly
to formulate and pursue goals adequate to the needs of the
present i f i t avoids intense involvement with or adulation of
the p a s t.1
As for relations between American whites and blacks in the 1973
present, Duberman says, "This country as a whole has moved to the
rig h t, and couldn't care less [about blacks]. This w ill continue as
long as Nixon is in o ffic e ."
So fo r Duberman and some others the past is uninstructive,
the present regressive, the future unpredictable. Considering th is ,
the epic buoyancy of In White America, s t i l l more because of its
authenticity and s k ill, now seems fa r away, mocking us.
The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey— Peter Weiss
translated by Lee Baxendall
"W e want our rights and we don't care how / W e want our
revolution NOW," sing the insane asylum inmate-actors in Weiss'
^The Uncompleted Past (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 206.
Statem ent by Duberman, personal conversation, May 1973.
140
celebrated Marat/SadeJ The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, less w ell-
known, is revolution, from part of the process that created i t to its
overall theme, s ty le , and content. Its immediate targets— establish
ment theater and c a p ita lis t exploitation of blacks—may relax, however.
This revolution stumbles and f a lls , sabotaged by its frie n d s (s ), play
wright and/or tra n sla to r, boring from w ithin.
Bogey stages the data, more than the story, of the Portuguese
subjugation of resource-rich Angola in A frica, beginning with its dis
covery in the fifte e n th century, but concentrating on the modern c ir
cumstances that incited the native blacks to revo lt in 1961. "Lusi
tanian" is a fig u rativ e word referring to modern Portugal; l it e r a lly ,
i t designates warlike Portuguese tribes in Roman times.^ The "Bogey"
is the play's central image— a great visored e ffig y b u ilt of scrap tin ,
rags, and straw. This idol of junk personifies not only the Portuguese
dictato r Salazar, but also the structured co lon ial-p lutocratic system
that has tyrannized black Angolans for centuries. The Bogey's trapdoor
mouth periodically c la tte rs open in huge yawns, delivers harangues, and
clangs shut, d iffe re n t actors declaiming its speeches through the metal
maw.
Bogey is divided into ten disjunctive scenes and two arb itra ry
acts— there is no natural break between the acts. The e ffe c t, consis
tent with a play whose theme is revolutionary change, is that of
^Weiss, Marat/Sade, p. 26.
^Jack Zipes, "The Aesthetic Dimensions of the Documentary
Drama," German L ife and Letters 24 (July 1971):348.
141
kinetic collage. Speakers (few of the multitudinous "roles" are more
than fle etin g stereotypes, i f th a t), and locales, dialog, and styles
undergo continual transformations— s lig h t and orderly, radical and
brusque.
The fa ile d rebellion that ends both Bogey and Marat/Sade is
one of several devices that recur in Weiss' works. The prison which
appears as a captive nation in Bogey is a mental in s titu tio n in Marat/
Sade, a concentration camp in The Investigation,^ and a steeple in the
radio play The T o w e r Despite these s im ila ritie s , Weiss' long dramas,
even the two documentaries, have coupled th e ir p articu lar purposes with
s trik in g ly unique total styles.
The purpose of Bogey is , as noted, revolution— the overthrow
of authoritarian ru le , in and out of theater. So, in rehearsing for
the premiere in Stockholm, as the published play records, power
customarily the playwright's was shared by the entire company. This
company and procedure are described as "the theater co lle c tiv e , in
which everyone, together with the author, len t a hand in shaping the
performance s ty le ." 3
This communally devised performance technique, improvisation,
is one member of another c o lle c tiv e — four disparate dramatic forms
coalesced by Weiss into Bogey' s revo lt against c a p ita lis t racism and
^Below, chapter V, pp. 230-241.
?
Trans, by Michael Hamburger, in Best Short Plays of the World
Theatre, 1958-1967, ed. Stanley Richards (New York: Crown Publishers,
1968), o rig in a lly published as Der Turm (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1963).
3
Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, p. 4.
142
conventional theater. Separately, two of these rebels— improvisation
anc* documentary— are unruly or muckrakish; two--oratorio and ritu a l —
are disciplined and tra d itio n a l. Together, they reshape and augment
each other.
Weiss associated the f i r s t , improvisation, with the theatrics
of mass p o litic a l protest.
. . . The spontaneous open-air demonstration with its placards and
slogans, . . . giving out le a fle ts , [and] marching in ranks . . .
have a strong dramatic qu ality . . . improvised as they are . . .
[and represent] lik e Documentary Theatre . . . a reaction against
the contemporary situation and a demand fo r explanations.1
Sets, props, and costumes, therefore, consist of m aterials-at-hand and
simple objects— "a couple of crude wall boards . . . a c ru c ifix , a sun
2
helmet, a s tic k , a sack . . . everyday clothing." Seven numbered
actors— four female, three male (the figures are not obligato ry)— play
dozens of "parts"; nameless characterizations which are to give "the
3
e ffe c t . . . of street-corner improvisation"— transparent, artle ss.
Broad-stroke physicality— sounds, actions, tableux— punctuate the dialog.
( 7, with microphone, as Announcer)
7: 1000 [black] men and women . . .
w ill seek to demand the lib e rty of th e ir leaders
200 soldiers are waiting for them
Without warning there were shots
The dead and the wounded
sprawl in the streets
( Drumbeats im itate the bursts of a machine gun. The group
[which moments before was pantomiming other people—white
Colonizers at a cocktail party] scatters and sinks to the
ground. A creeping and running in slow motion. A picture
of collapse and te rro r. Isolated cries from 3 .)^
1Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 41.
2Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, p. 3.
3 lb id . 4 ib id ., p. 44.
143
A few musicians, v is ib le on stage i f possible, support the actors.
They play folk-instrum ents: a harmonica, flu te , g u ita r, accordion, and
hand-drum. "Lighting is continually bright."^
Improvisation alone, however, leads to "diffuse tension, to
2
emotional sympathy, to an illu s io n of p articip atio n. . . ." Docu
mentary, the second and controlling form in Weiss' revolutionary mix,
while s t i l l trying to "retain the q u ality of spontaneity . . . leads to
q
atten tion , consciousness, re fle c tio n ."
Unusual for documentary plays, Bogey1s published script cites
no sources. Evidence o f its documentation is wholly in te rn a l— i t is
crammed throughout with o ffic ia l rh eto ric, facts , s ta tis tic s . A portion
of Scene V III contains a ll three:
( 7 represents a foreign high-ranking M inister of Justice
on a v is it to Lusitania's African provinces. 1, 2, 3, 4
[females] in a c irc le about him. His words are g ratefu lly
receivedT)
7: I w ill speak only
of what I have seen with my own eyes
I saw only progress
in Lusitania's African provinces
Angola and Mozambique
I saw only islands of peace
For centuries the equality
of rights between the races
has prevailed here . . .
the mother country has opened
to every Black
the opportunity
of a ll forms of education . . .
^ Ib id ., p. 3. ^Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 42.
3lbid.
144
All offices are open to everybody
Of colonial force
I could not detect
the least suggestion . . .
Some fanatics groups do s t i l l
carry on with th e ir troublemaking
Apart from that the white
v is ito r meets only frien d ly
and grateful faces
Not Portugal
threatens the world's peace
in Africa
and le t m e make this clear
and emphatic
the danger today
comes only and alone
from without
( 7 departs. 1, 2, 3, 4 at once redispose themselves.
They pantomime women working in the f ie ld s .)
3: Where are the men of Mozambique
Why are there no men to be found
in the villages and in the fie ld s
of Mozambique
(1, 2, 4 as CHORUS.)
CHORUS: Our men have gone fa r away
across the borders
For longer than a year
we have not been able to see our men. . . .
3: W hy a re n 't they here
the men of Mozambique
CHORUS: The men were taken o ff
and do not know where they w ill go
Only the masters of the pits
in South Africa Rhodesia and Katanga
know where they w ill go
And our authorities know
where they w ill go
and the authorities get a head-price
6 dollars for every man
and our authorities receive a half
of each man's wages
and only when our men return
do they get this pay
a fte r the tax is taken
The authorities have an 18-month contract system
which tig h tly binds the men
of Mozambique to the pits
of South Africa Rhodesia and Katanga
And many of our men never come back
dead of th e ir in juries
weakness and sickness
in those pits
of South Africa Rhodesia and Katanga
Their wages are collected
by our authorities
300,000 men of Mozambique
dig gold coal and iron
for the p it masters 1
of South Africa Rhodesia and Katanga
Improvisation's spontaneity, and documentary's ra tio n a lity , are
not enough fo r Weiss.
Documentary Theater, so long as i t does not it s e lf take the streets,
cannot compete with an authentic p o litic a l event. . . . I t must be
a form of a r tis tic expression. . . . a useful pattern . . . . to
have any v a lid it y .2
Weiss' fa vo rite esthetic pattern is the o ra to rio , operating most fu lly
in Bogey, which brims with choral passages, re c ita tiv e s , and at least
one aria-fragment. In Scene I , the Bogey reacts to growing signs of
unrest. Actor 6 flings open the face of the Bogey and y e lls :
BOGEY: Barbari sm
is threatening the world
The enemy—
is advancing in our land
Spreading poisonous
i nternationali sm
Putting in danger
the sacred rights of property
Undermining
family m orality
Eroding
our previous re lig io n --
( Yawns. )
The young
as never before
you must become strong
in body and in s p ir it
so that tomorrow we are prepared
1 Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, pp. 50-53.
, p
Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 42.
146
to assign the soldiers fo r
the defense of our values
(6 delivers the last sentence of THE BOGEY'S speech
as an a ria . . . . )* :
The oratorio also forms Marat/Sade and The Investigation, but i t is
most apt fo r Bogey, since oratorios usually have a scriptural subject,
and the Bogey (Salazar-Portugal-capitalism ) repeatedly claims a divine
basis for powers and purposes.
BOGEY: I receive my injunction
from the Lord God
I t is Lusitania's task
to disseminate the Holy Gospel
on the earth. . . .
My purpose i t must be
to rescue mankind
. .... to tra in him
to be an ethical being
always conscious 2
of the other and higher world
Weiss s a tirize s the sanctimonious mouthings of such autocrats by
describing the conquest of Angola in a three-page anti-paraphrase of
The Creation.
2: Diego Cao with his sailing fle e t came
to the mouth of Congo's great brown stream. . . .
then they erected near Cabinda
the f i r s t of th e ir forts
Diego Cao next with a ll his people
traveled down the f e r t i le coast. . . .
then they erected by Luanda
the second of th e ir forts
Diego Cao sailed with a ll his people
^Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, pp. 9-10.
2 lb id ., pp. 6, 7.
147
up the swollen Cuanza toward its source. . . .
and they erected on the Kunene
the th ird of th eir forts
. . . And he took from the inhabitants th e ir land
and he took from them a ll else belonging to them
And he stripped the villages of th e ir occupants
so the villages turned to shambles and the fie ld s lay
fallow . . . J
Together with improvisation, documentary, and oratorio, and
given the plays' religious m otif and on-stage icon, Weiss has mustered
one more performance mode for his a n ti-illu s io n a ry style: r i t u a l .
This too is especially apt fo r Bogey, fo r i t is the kind of ritu a l that
Afro-American theater groups have been using in an "attempt . . . to
deal with the way black people re a lly come together— to move and
groove. . . . "2
American black theatrical rite s consist of (1) music, (2) a
deemphasis of story, (3) a message, (4) re p e titiv e , rhythmic verbal
patterns, and (5) a "dual participatio n of some kind . . . [w ith]
spectators . . . taking part . . . by clapping hands, humming, singing,
q
calling out, holding hands, or dancing." No musical score is printed
in Bogey1s published te x t, but musicians, instruments, and songs are
specified. Story is heavily subordinated to information. There is
c le arly a message. The play's ritualism comes unglued, however, in
Weiss'/Baxendall's concepts and executions of the verbal patterns,
^Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, pp. 14, 15, 16.
2Lisbeth A. Grant, "The New Lafayette Theatre," The Drama
Review 16 (December 1972):51.
3Ibid.
148
audience p a rticip atio n, and th e ir interplay.
Weiss, whose studio displays a picture of his fa vo rite play
wright, B ertolt Brecht, has disparaged the "diffuse tension, emotional
sympathy, and . . . illu s io n of participation"^ that Afro-American
theater's "clapping . . . humming, singing, callin g out, holding hands,
2
or dancing" would surely generate. On the contrary, what Weiss has
sought is Brecht's now-familiar alien atio n— "attention, consciousness,
O
re fle c tio n ." Audience-action, which is s t i l l desired, is to come
a fte r the play, not during.
So Weiss'/Baxendall' s re p e titiv e verbal compositions--which
are profuse— are not meant to be energizing and lib id in a l, but didac
tic and cerebral. Fair enough— but teaching and informing through
re ite ra tio n , rhythm, and rhyme do not ju s tify addressing the audience
as kindergartners. Most adults— the play is too long and f a c t - f ille d
for children—are ready fo r instructional passages above the level of
4. See the porters on the dock
working in long rows
See the cranes
They swing th e ir loads
down into the ships
See the gentlemen on the dock
th eir faces otherwise so pale
and red. . . .
See the smoke
pour from the stacks
Hear the turbines
Hear the sirens
The birds fle e 1 *
1 Weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 13.
^Grant, "The New Lafayette Theatre," p. 51.
3weiss, "Materials and Models," p. 13.
4Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, p. 42.
149
The verse, which pervades the play, is even worse, Baxenddll
is responsible fo r th is , the most crippling fa u lt of the translation.
Jack Zipes, who is an American professor of German lite ra tu re , w riter
on German documentary theater, and translator of Jacob Lenz' playsJ
says Weiss' German verse is "not b r illia n t language, but i t is compe-
?
tent— pithy, sharp, unstrained." Evidence of Baxendall's errors are
apparent even to one unpracticed in German, fo r they occur gratuitously,
where the d iffic u lty of translating rhymes is not involved. Word
choices are careless (it a lic s added):
From the study of history we w ill p lain ly learn
that the uprising came by yearly turn
They discharged th e ir spears and they hurled th e ir darts
at an enemy heavily armed in a ll parts3 - -
aside from the sloppiness of "by yearly turn" and v irtu a l meaningless
ness of "armed in a ll parts," spears are not discharged and darts
hurled; i f anything, i t is the reverse. Tenses s h ift without reason:
the number of black corpses mounted but our onlookers were not
troubled
be the casualties 30,000 men or that figure doubled.^
And when rhyme is called fo r, blunders p ro life ra te . Rhyme-
words are repeatedly inaccurate, sometimes to the point of twisting
a connotation into its near-opposite:
Of one and a half m illio n [A frican] school-age children this
^See Bibliography.
^Statement by Zipes, personal conversation, May 1973.
O
Weiss, The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, p. 17.
4Ib id ., p. 48.
150
year
at most 90,000 are able to appear
for study of the missionaries' catechism
which is it s e lf you might say a cataclysm —
a cataclysm is usually a disaster, not a marvel. For rhyme's sake,
superfluous and redundant phrases pad the lin es, and word order is to r
tured:
The workers who are white men in our land
get 6 times higher pay put in th e ir hand
than in a month we're paid for longer hours ?
and the taxes on th e ir pay is less than ours
To be f a i r , the whites' syntax is no better. The Colonizers t e ll us
they are the ones
who c u ltiv a te sugar coffee tobacco and cotton _
and ore manganese diamonds from the mountains have gotten
An audience's re fle c tiv e in te llig en c e , to be appealed to , must f i r s t be
respected. Most of the good work Weiss and Baxendall have done else
where in the play is undermined by Weiss' occasionally sim plistic
alienation techniques and Baxendall's ever-present doggerel.
This is a shame, fo r Bogey has important things to say, an in-
triguing amalgam of styles, and several vivid moments. At the play's
end, fo r example, the blacks1 rebellion has been defeated. In a rage,
they f a ll upon the Bogey, pulling a t him, tearing him apart. The great
fig ure topples, crashing to the ground. Its proppings are empty. Straw
dangles. The rags flu tte r . All is quiet. The blacks are not deceived
^ Ib id ., p. 36. ^ Ib id ., p. 29. ^ Ib id ., p. 18.
151
that they have destroyed what the e ffig y represented, or that they
are now free. Two actors pass a small curtain before the scene.
Three others step through the curtain from behind. They speak
harshly:
2: But don‘ t you get lo st and wander down those stony paths
that lead to the shanties where we have to liv e
Just keep your eye on the splendid boulevards
else you s ta rt to hear mid the garbage and crowds
another voice one of rage and re v o lt
5: . . . don't you walk inside those pompous edifices
where we stand before judges who're bought and sold
and where we're condemned hour a fte r hour
workers and students c le rica l types too
who want a d iffe re n t Lusitania than this
CHORUS
OF ALL: And there shall be more
you w ill see them
Many already in the c itie s
and in the forests and mountains
laying in th e ir weapons and planning with care
the Liberation
which is near*
This fin a l scene is Bogey's improvisation-documentary-
o ra to rio -ritu a l revolt a t its most powerful, but i t comes too la te .
Like the Bogey it s e lf , perhaps lik e the society from which the audi
ence comes, the play, as translated, has already collapsed.
Our Security
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer--Heinar Kippardt, translated
by Ruth Speirs
Inquest— Stanley Freed
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been— Eric Bentley
1 Ib id ., pp. 62, 63.
152
A POISONED POLITICS
With the onset of the cold war more than a quarter-centur.y ago,
the American people and th e ir Government encountered an unexpected
and unfam iliar challenge. . . . On the foundations of wartime
in tellig en ce organizations, the United States developed the Central
In telligence Agency, Radio Free Europe, and various fronts which
subsidized magazines, student organizations, and p o litic a l groups
overseas to counter sim ilar groups financed by the Soviet Union.
The Watergate scandals represent the transposition of these
dangerous clandestine technigues from the more remote spheres of
foreign a ffa irs to this country's own p o litic s .
Habits of thought and devices of manipulation, evolved to
fig h t a cold war abroad, thus returned to these shores to poison
American p o litic s . No instant purgative is possible. In stitutio ns
so befouled and customary expectations so betrayed can only be
restored a fte r the truth is known, reforms are accomplished, and
time has passed. The United States is now in the painful f i r s t
stage of seeking the whole tru th . 1
--E d ito r ia l, New York Times, May 13, 1973.
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer--Heinar Kipphardt
translated by Ruth Speirs
Heinar Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer is
one of the e a rlie s t, best-known, most polished, and most co rd ially
received of a ll the documentaries. Yet not much about Oppenheimer can
be fu lly trusted— not the play, not the central character, not the play
wright. Trust must be withheld, not fo r Eric Bentley's reason that one
cannot be certain how much is fact and how much is Kipphardt, but
because protagonist and playwright betray th e ir own b e lie fs . This is a
stunning d e re lictio n , for Kipphardt's/Oppenheimer's dramatic c o n flic t
is the very issue of betrayed principles, and th e ir purported message
is the necessity for personal in te g rity .
^"The Week in Review" section, p. 14.
^"Oppenheimer Mon Amour," New York Times, March 16, 1969, "Arts
and Leisure" section, p. 5.
153
I n i t i a l l y , In the Hatter of J. Robert Oppenheimer is coolly
authoritative and in g ratia tin g . The t i t l e , crisp and o f f ic ia l, is that
given to the transcript of the s c ie n tis t's 1954 security hearing, pub
lished by the United States Government Printing O ffice the same year.
The "hero" and plot are, a t f i r s t , most appealing, for Oppenheimer, who
died in 1967, appears to be a martyred professorial Prometheus to his
thankless government's Zeus. Prior to the play's action, he helped his
sovereign defeat a riv a l power (Japan; the atom bomb was developed
under his direction starting in 1942 at Los Alamos). Later, he became
suspected of enabling another power to acquire a cosmic force (Russia;
the hydrogen bomb). The play it s e lf is his lo yalty hearing (April-May
1954). Colleagues and o ffic ia ls speak for and against him. After
years of having aided the government (1942-1954), he is stigmatized as
a "risk" and banished from service to the state. The banishment and
the play end with the announcement of ultim ate reconciliation (1963;
President Johnson presents Oppenheimer "WITH THE ENRICO FERMI PRIZE FOR
SERVICES RENDERED O N THE ATOMIC ENERGY PRO G RAM IN CRUCIAL YEARS. . . .
Curtain" ) . 1
Oppenheimer is a shortened version in two "Parts," ten scenes,
of the s c ie n tis t's 1954 security proceeding, taken prim arily from the
3000-page record, with additional material from le tte rs and speeches.
Part One concerns Oppenheimer and the A-bomb, Part Two, the physicist
and the H-bomb.
^Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 127.
154
The characters are actual people; monologs by committee
members and counsel occur between some of the interrogation scenes.
These monologs allow Kipphardt to escape the lim its of the r e a lis tic ,
transcript-controlled testimonial scenes, and to round out the charac
ters of the board members and counsel by verbalizing th e ir backgrounds,
motivations, and dilemmas. The dialog in both the monologs and hearing
scenes is an achievement. Translated from the German by the B ritish
Ruth Speirs, i t is nevertheless authentically American, r e a lis tic ,
stageworthy, and d ifferen tiated according to character: Oppenheimer's
urbanity; former Security O fficer John Lansdale's candor, humanity,
and impatience with judgements-by-formula; Atomic Energy Counsel Roger
Robb's dogged but mannerly interrogations; Edward T e lle r's bloodless
ness and envenomed testimonials to Oppenheimer' s lo yalty.
The set, too, is r e a lis tic ; i t is a small, ugly o ffic e , fu r
nished fo r the investigation with tables, chairs, and an old sofa.
Contrasting with this realism, and as i f to parallel the explanatory
inter-scene monologs, are background film -c lip s and expository captions
that are projected on hangings over the stage. Movies of American and .
Russian atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, and of prideful declarations
by Truman and Malenkov precede each of the two "Parts" of the play.
Thematic t it le s appear on the hangings as guides to the scenes they
introduce ("SHALL A M A N BE PERSECUTED FOR HIS OPINIONS?," and
"LOYALTY TO A GOVERNMENT. LOYALTY TO MANKIND.").1
Kipphardt, w riting about "The Play in Relation to the Docu-
^ Ib id ., pp. 32, 71.
155
merits and the Data," said Oppenheimer . . , is a play fo r the theatre,
not an assemblage of documentary m aterial. Even so, the author adheres'
s t r ic tly to the facts which emerge from the documents and reports con-
i
cerning this investigation." Kipphardt spelled out in some detail the
lib e rtie s he took. Accuracy of meaning replaced verbatim reproduction.
The number of witnesses and attorneys are reduced. Complementary depo
sitions were merged into one witness' testimony. The between-scene
monologues by the dramatis personae were invented. A fter the verdict
in the play, Oppenheimer delivers a long fin a l statement; at the real
hearing, he declined the opportunity to do so, making only a technical
point.
All this is permissible; none of i t violates the genre. In
deed, that Kipphardt has explained i t is to his c re d it. And did he not
re ite ra te that "a fter mature consideration, the author d eliberately
confined himself to drawing only upon histo rical data fo r a ll the facts
2
presented in the play"? W hy then question Kipphardt's c re d ib ility ?
The f i r s t doubts, small, inconclusive, are raised a t the sta rt
by the prestigious Center Theatre Group, who performed i t in Los
Angeles and New York. Where Kipphardt wrote "the author was guided by
the principle: as l i t t l e as possible, as much as is indispensable;
when the truth seemed jeopardized by an e ffe c t, he sacrificed the
q
e ffe c t," the Group's program Note says, "some scenes were created
s t r ic tly fo r dramatic e f f e c t . K i p p h a r d t :
ll b i d . , p. 5. ^Ibid. ^Ibid.
^Performing A rts, June 1968, Los Angeles ed itio n , p. 32.
156
. . . [though! 'there were no . . . monologues at the actual pro
ceedings. . . [the author] has trie d to evolve these monologues
from the attitudes adopted by these persons in the course of the
proceedings or on other occasions.!
Program: "These monologues are but dramatic devices and cannot accu-
2
rate ly describe the attitudes of real people."
Such preliminary discrepancies may be, at most, enough to
in d ic t, not to convict. That requires the play's own contradictory
answers to three questions: Is Kipphardt*s Oppenheimer true to his
government? Is he true to family and friends? Is he true to himself?
Is Kipphardt's Oppenheimer true to his government?
YES:
— In 1943 and 1947 he had been granted security clearances by high
investigative committees who knew a ll the facts of his former asso
cia tio n , long since repudiated, with the Communist movement.
--He had " te rrib le moral scruples" about the thousands of Japanese
c iv ilia n s that the A-bomb would k i l l , but he s t i l l helped select
the targets, because "I was doing my job . . . and we [nuclear
physicists] were asked which targets would be most suitab le." These
targets, he and his s ta ff decided, would be previously unbombed,
densely populated areas with people liv in g in wooden— flammable--
buildings.
— Pressed again by government counsel about his opposition to the
bombing of Hiroshima, he says he expressed his uneasiness, but went
^Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 6.
^Performing A rts, June 1968, Los Angeles ed itio n , p. 32.
157
along because "We, as experts, were doing a job we were asked to do."
—Asking to be ordered to do so, he exposed to authorities a close
friend who may have been an intermediary in a possible attempt to
get secret information to Russia.
— He confirms fo r the prosecution the names of his ex-pupils who were
Communists or fellow travelers.
--He—and most other physicists--resisted the development of the H-
bomb at the beginning for reasons of m orality, s c ie n tific infea
s ib ilit y , and in s u ffic ie n t f a c ilit ie s . When President Truman
ordered a crash program nevertheless, and when the technical obsta
cles were removed, Oppenheimer buried his moral objections and
became an "active supporter."
--D r. Isador Rabi, member of several government s c ie n tific boards,
committees, and laboratories, a friend and associate of Oppenheimer
since 1928, te s tifie s that in Oppenheimer' s heart and mind, loyalty
to country would take precedence over loyalty to an individual or
some other in s titu tio n .
--Nine years a fte r his hearing, he accepts an award from his govern
ment for his work on the bombs.^
NO:
--He did not report to security officers that his brother, also a
s c ie n tis t working on secret war projects, had once been a Communist
Party member.
1 Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, pp. 119;
15, 13, 14; 15; 48; 39; 71-78; 113; 127.
158
— A fter hearing the Board's unfavorable ve rd ict, he regrets having
done m ilita ry research and given unquestioned lo yalty to the govern
ment.^
Is he true to family and friends?
YES:
— He did not t e ll security authorities of his brother's erstw hile Com
munist Party membership.
—A fter the war, s t i l l with the government, he refused to sever connec
tions with Communists who were once his students and s t i l l his
friends.^
NO:
— He corroborates these young men's names fo r the prosecution.
— He id en tified to the government "one of the two or three friends one
has in a lifetim e" as the intermediary in an evanescent attempt to
get war secrets for Russia. He never told the friend that i t was he,
Oppenheimer, who had informed, because the friend "wouldn't have
understood."
— Dr. Hans Bethe, in charge of the Theoretical Physics Department at
Los Alamos, te s tify in g fo r Oppenheimer as his "good frie n d ," is asked
by defense counsel:
GARRISON. I f Dr. Oppenheimer had to face a c o n flic t o f lo yalties
in which he would have to choose between you and the United
S tates--to which lo ya lty, do you think, would he give prefer
ence?
BETHE. Loyalty to the United States. I hope-it w ill never come
th a t.3
11 b id ., pp. 37; 126-127. 2Ib id ., pp. 37; 41.
3 lb id ., pp. 39; 48, 58; 101.
159
Is he true to himself?
YES:
— He did not end some friendships with left-w ing individuals because
i t would not have been "exactly my idea of good manners."
— He did not volunteer information to the government about his broth
er's Communist past because “I disapprove of a person being destroyed
because of his past or present opinions."
— Prounounced a "ris k ," he repudiates his excessive lo yalty and war
research.^
NO:
— Asked a t the hearing i f he opposed dropping the Hiroshima bomb, his
consecutive answers change from "We set fo rth arguments against. . ."
to "I set forth arguments against . ... " to " . . . I did not press
the point" to " . . . I set fo rth arguments both fo r and against."
--Despite his " te rrib le moral scruples" about the bomb, he assisted
also in selecting c iv ilia n targets, because that was the "job we
were asked to do."
— Reacting to a government report by other physicists opposing use of
the bomb, Oppenheimer said to his Los Alamos s ta ff (in spite of his
te rr ib le scruples), " . . . we were in no position to decide."
—With his even greater objections to the H-bomb, as soon as President
Truman ordered its development and early technical obstacles were
overcome, Oppenheimer became "enthusiastic about the fascinating
ideas" and "encouraged and assisted" the program.
h b id ., pp. 41; 37; 126, 127.
160
— Nine years a fte r the Board's unfavorable recommendation and his vow
to them "never [to ] work on war projects again. W e have been doing
the work of the Devil . . . .," he accepts an award from the Presi
dent fo r that very work.^
Considering a ll this evidence, not as a member of a loyalty
board, but as one judging a drama in which its author meant "to make
. . . r e a lity 's d e c e itfu l, bloated visage . . . comprehensible and to
2
pave the way fo r correction," what c la r ity , remedy, and truth does
one find in Oppenheimer? How are the conflictin g lo yalties in the
play resolved? Which among the apparent antagonists, the government
or Oppenheimer, has in teg rity?
Clearly the government lacks the qu ality. Major Nicholas
Radzi, Security O ffic e r, te s tify in g for the United States, says, " If we
want to defend our freedom successfully, we must be prepared to forego
O
some of our personal lib e rty ." The Board finds, 2 to 1, that "there
was no indication of [Oppenheimer's] d is lo y alty ," but that he "could
no. longer claim the unreserved confidence of the government.1,4 The
Board Chairman, Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray, formally adds to the
m ajority decision that " . . . i t would have been possible for us to
reach a d iffe re n t conclusion i f we had been permitted to judge Dr.
c
Oppenheimer independently of the rig id rulings now enforced upon us.
1 Ib id ., pp. 14, 13, 15; 17; 77, 111; 127.
^Kipphardt, "Tribute to Piscator," World Theatre, p. 303.
^Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 58.
4Ib id ., p. 124. 5Ib id.
161
As fo r the in te g rity of Kipphardt's Oppenheimer, the Doctor
adheres to no code of values other than "too indiscriminate lo yalty to
our government,"^ which loyalty he renounces when the government has
no further use for him, and rediscovers when i t is again ready to honor
him. Just how principled the man is can be measured by what he sacri
fices for his indiscriminate lo yalty: the friends on whom he informs;
the " te rrib le moral scruples" he s tifle s ; the countless Japanese
c iv ilia n s dead, maimed, missing, and born grotesque.
Had the extraordinary lack of in te g rity of Kipphardt's Oppen
heimer been made this clear in the play, we would have had the c la r i
fying, corrective theater that Kipphardt described. W e would have seen
government o f fic ia ls , Oppenheimer chief among them, committing the
Eichmann crime: destroying human beings, whether th e ir careers or
th e ir lives--and giving the Eichmann excuse: orders. But having un
avoidably id e n tifie d the s c ien tis t with his in quisito rs, Kipphardt has
simultaneously taken pains to disguise Oppneheimer' s side of the loath
some equation.
The death and devastation caused by his bomb is cosmeticized
to one lin e of dialog giving the number k ille d (70,000), and one pro
jected photograph of a Hiroshima house wall bearing the radiation
shadows of three victim s. Oppenheimer is drawn as a quiet but
appealing fig u re — enormously accomplished, modest, lit e r a te , w itty .
Kipphardt has him saying g ra tify in g , nobly co ntrite things about
lib e rty .
1 Ib id ., p. 126.
162
[ I did n 't jo in the Communist Party] because I don't lik e to think
the thoughts of others. I t goes against my idea of independence.
There are people who are w illin g to protect freedom u n til there
is nothing le f t of i t .
[And from the long, fin a l mea culpa, admittedly fabricated by
Kipphardt]: When I think what might have become of the ideas of
Copernicus or Newton under present-day conditions, I begin to
wonder whether we were not perhaps tra ito rs to the s p ir it of sci
ence when we handed over the results of our research to the m ili
ta ry , without considering the consequences. . . . As I was
looking a t m y l i f e here I realized that the actions the Board
hold against m e were closer to the idea of science than were the
services which I have been praised f o r . 1
The playwright has thus slipped the Flawed-but-Admirable-
Victim mask on the character who betrayed friends and beliefs and
created the most destructive weapon ever used. Kipphardt has spread
equivocation and camouflage over whatever "comprehensibility" and
"correction" there is in his sc rip t. As the physicist "spent years
2
. . . developing ever sweeter means of destruction," the dramatist has
3
spent a play sweetening Oppenheimer' s "d eceitfu l, bloated visage."
The blurred truth in this play is that its b r illia n t s c ie n tis t is not
Prometheus, but Dr. Frankenstein. And the government is no Zeus,
eventually enlightened, but Saturn, devouring his children.
Inquest--Donald Freed
Russia exploded its atom bomb in 1949. The next year, Harry
Gold, David Greenglass, and Greenglass' sis ter and brother-in-law ,
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were arrested and charged with conspiracy
to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Gold and Greenglass
confessed and te s tifie d against the Rosenbergs, who insisted on th e ir
11bid., pp. 27, 37, 126. 2Ibid., p. 127. 3Above, p. 161.
163
innocence at th e ir t r ia l in 1951. Gold was sentenced to th irty years.
Greenglass got fifte e n years, served ten. The Rosenbergs were electro
cuted in 1953J The one-month t r ia l created a worldwide uproar that
w ill not die out— a new book about i t has been a top-ten b est-seller
fo r ten weeks. The case of the Rosenbergs is a malignant souvenir,
and Donald Freed's Inquest is a time-capsule media-mix in which the
Rosenbergs are retro a ctiv ely vindicated and the government condemned.
There is enough in Inquest that is convincing and moving and
th e a tric a lly exciting. "Enough" was not good enough for Freed, how
ever. Whatever was driving him--fury with American government, '50's
through '7 0 's; a clear-the-record evangelism ("As the years went by I
became expert and obsessed"), his discovery of a "coherent aesthetic
vocabulary":^ "Theatre of Cruelty" and "Theatre of Fact"^— he has
glutted the play with gimmicks and compromised i t with lawyer's
sophistry.
The play-experience is a composite of alienation and empathy,
quotation and "reconstruction," montage and lin e a rity . As described
in the te x t, the experience starts on the stre et outside the theater,
with photographs of 'f i f t i e s personalities, mass demonstrations, maps,
^Morton Sobel was another defendant who pleaded innocent but
was convicted. His story is excluded from the play, as explained in
the play's "Afterword," pp. 139-140.
2|_ouis Nizer, The Implosion Conspiracy (Garden C ity , N. Y.:
Doubleday & Co., In c ., 1973), so lis ted in "Best S eller L is t," New York
Times Book Review, May 13, 1973, p. 45.
^Freed, Inquest, p. 2. ^Ibid. 5Ib id ., pp. 4, 5.
164
and t r i a l exhibits projected onto the sidewalk from the marquee. In
side, foyer walls are covered with blow-ups of newspaper pages and head
shots "of the gods (Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx)."^ Lobby loudspeakers
d eliver a taped collage of twenty-year-old sounds: McCarthy, Eisen
hower, Truman, Dewey, Fibber McGee and Molly, Milton Berle, laugh-
tracks.^ Facing the auditorium, the main stage (A) is furnished as a
courtroom; i t is flanked on one side by a smaller, separate area (Stage
B). Behind and above them, a vast, curved grid of m ultiple movie
screens overlooks everything.
The Proloque begins. Felix Frankfurter and an eight-cent
Einstein stamp on the screens. Einstein's voice: "From the viewpoint
of resolving sanity to our p o litic a l clim ate, one must not le t this
o 2
case r e s t." 0 More images and sounds: E-MC . . . mushroom clouds. . .
Oppenheimer . . . Fermi . . . B-29's . . . Hiroshige prints . . .
smiling Japanese children . . . a red gel firestorm . . . black
diagonal X's . . . Hiroshima rubble . . . sirens, sobbing, screams . . .
typewriter c la tte r . . . electronic pulsing . . . Nietzsche, Freud,
Marx. . . . Silence. The Man in the Street appears on stage, asking
mercy of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, whose voices warn of nuclear
Nation-States, species self-exterm ination, and p o litic a l forces. The
^ Ib id ., p. 17.
^Ken Isaacs, "Design for the Sidewalk and Lobby," in Freed,
Inquest, pp. 17-18.
3
Freed, Inquest, p. 21.
165
atomb-bomb assemblage resumes: headlines, TV laugh-tracks, sports
heroes, Johnny Ray's "Cry," expensive cars, McCarthy, Winchell. The
images freeze. O n screen:
EVERY W O R D YO U WILL HEAR O R SEE O N THIS STAGE IS A DOCUMENTED
QUOTATION FRO M TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS AND ORIGINAL SOURCES O R A
RECONSTRUCTION FRO M ACTUAL EVENTS.1
The voices of Hoover, Nixon, and Joseph McCarthy inveigh against the
menace of foreign and domestic Communism. The "atom spies"— Gold,
Greenglass, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg--are apprehended. Darkness.
The so cio -p o litical climate is set. The ju ror-selection drum glows
and spins.
Act I is the t r i a l 's f i r s t phase: jury selection, reading the
charge, attorneys' opening statements (Roy Cohn and Irving Saypol for
the government, Emanuel Bloch for the Rosenbergs), and The Prosecu
tio n 's case— the testimonies and cross-examinations of Greenglass and
Gold. W e are especially urged by The Defense to ask ourselves whether
each of these two witnesses is "the kind of person who is te llin g the
p
truth? What motive has [he] . . . to say thus and so? In te r
spersing the t r ia l on Stage A are short a u x ilia ry scenes on Stage B—
flashbacks of F .B .I. conferences with Gold, Greenglass, and Green-
glass' wife Ruth, and of episodes in the lives of the Greenglass and
Rosenberg fam ilies; as well as several "Man in the Street" interviews
(Freed considers these the "Chorus."):
^ Ib id ., p. 22. The play is "Based in part on In v ita tio n to an
Inquest by Walter and Miriam Schneir [New York: Del 1 Publishing Co.,
1968] and The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by John Wexley
[New York: Cameron and Kahn, 1955]." Ib id ., p. v.
^Freed, Inquest, p. 30.
166
STAGE B
M AN IN THE STREET As a consumer, do you notice any decline in
service?
ANSW ER Well, i t ' s not so bad; I c a n 't complain.
ANSW ER Could you repeat the question, please?
ANSW ER Not bad.
ANSW ER No.
ANSW ER I d id n 't get the question.
Act I I is The Defense's; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg te s tify in g , being
cross-questioned, more Man in the Street surveys, the ju ry 's ve rd ict,
judge's sentence, electrocution, aftermath.
The band of conspirators allegedly consists of Dr. Klaus Fuchs,e
admitted spy fo r the Soviet Union, convicted in England; Harry Gold,
confessed American liaison fo r Fuchs; David Greenglass, former Army
machinist near the atomic research f a c ilit ie s at Los Alamos, arrested
as Gold's accomplice; and the Rosenbergs, arrested as co-conspirators
with Gold and Greenglass.
Freed's strategy in Act I fo r exonerating the Rosenbergs is a
persuasive but noisome mixture of evidence, bathos, and smear. As
with most scenes, the sources of fa cts, events, and quotations are
projected on screen. For certain portions, the file s of Greenglass'
and Gold's lawyers have provided the dialog for sessions with the
F .B .I. in which the Bureau invents, prompts, and rehearses testimony
with Greenglass, his w ife, and Gold.
STAGE B
FBI Let's have this again. You say you met Harry Gold where?
Let's look at the picture again. You know he was arrested
last month and confessed? There's no need to protect him.
llb id ., p. 38.
167
He came to see you in Albuquerque in 1945, d id n 't he?
DAVID GREENGLASS Albuquerque, New Mexico.
FBI Now, do you remember when?
Pause.
I said, do you remember when?
DAVID GREENGLASS Not too w ell.
FBI In June?
DAVID GREENGLASS O.K.
FBI Shall I put that in?
DAVID GREENGLASS Put i t in.
FBI So he came to your place in Albuquerque in June of '45. But
then you told him to come back la te r. Because you weren't
ready y e t, is n 't that right?
DAVID GREENGLASS A ll rig h t. Put that in. . . .
FBI What did Gold say about who sent him?
Pause.
"Julius sent me"--was i t something lik e that?
Pause.
Shall I put that in?
DAVID GREENGLASS Put i t in.
FBI . . . . All r ig h t, le t 's go over i t a ll again. You say you
met Gold where?3 -
Later, with Greenglass* wife:
STAGE B
FBI Mrs. Greenglass, your husband seems to have his stories mixed
up again.
RUTH GREENGLASS My husband lie s when there's no reason fo r i t .
Sometimes he acts lik e a character in the movies. Last year
he had— the doctor called i t - - a psychological heart attack.
And once, he had a fever; he ran up and down the h a lls, in
the nude, y e llin g "Lead pants, Elephant."
FBI (very slowly.) He says he wants to take back some of his con
fession . . You know t h a t 'll mean going back out West to New
Mexico on that uranium business . . those stealing charges
against him . . and th a t's what we want to . . avoid.
RUTH GREENGLASS You le t me ta lk to him.2
And, with Harry Gold:
STAGE B
FBI D idn't you have some recognition as between the two of you
[Gold and Greenglass]? Some sign?
HARRY GOLD Yes, we did. I believe that i t involved the name of
a man and was something on the order of Bob sent m e or Benny
■Ibid., p. 58. 2Ib id ., p. 71.
168
sent m e or John sent me or something lik e that.
FBI Then in this case you would've had to say "Julius sent me,"
huh? ,
HARRY GOLD Who's Julius?1
While only a small part of the play, these episodes v irtu a lly destroy
Greenglass' and Gold's testimony. Since the two are the only Prosecu
tion witnesses, l i t t l e case is l e f t aga,inst the Rosenbergs.
Freed could not le t a good thing alone, however. He has added
various "reconstructed" domestic vignettes, also on Stage B, showing
the Rosenbergs At Home: th e ir courtship; th e ir love-making, th e ir
patience with Ethel's stupid, unlovable mother; th e ir giving a job in
Julius' business to Ethel's maladjusted, otherwise unemployable
*
brother David. This ju s t-p la in -fo lk s banality is wholly irrelevant
to the g u ilt or innocence to be determined on Stage A. Not only is
the technique immaterial and ir r it a t in g , but i t and other in tercut
scenes on Stage B are often confusing. One must repeatedly turn back
and reread to retrieve the thread of the interrupted t r i a l .
Freed has further sullied a good case by his treatment of
Greenglass and Gold, whose psychoses are dramatized with repugnant
re lis h .
HARRY GOLD While riding a tro lle y car one day in Philadelphia I
met and f e ll in love with a beautiful g irl named Helen, who
had one brown eye and one blue eye. I trie d to court her but
a wealthy riv a l named Frank, whose uncle manufactured peanut-
chew candy, beat m e out.
I at one time considered marrying and the g irl in question
told m e at one time that she d id n 't think I was re a lly in love
with her. She f e l t th at I was too cold. What she d id n 't know
was that what made m e cold a ll over and especially down here
was the thought that i f we were married and this thing came
1 Ib id ., p. 74.
169
to lig h t, what then? But I lost her anyway to someone called
Nigger Nate. Later I lost my wife to an eld erly* rich real
estate broker. I actually had no wife and two twin children.
I was a bachelor and had always been one. (Screaming. ) I t
was my mother I lived with. My fath er's name was Sam and so
was my Soviet spy master.
( repeating . . . u n til the end of the Act.) W e [Gold and
Klaus Fuchs] were as close as any two men could be. Niager
Nate, Nigger Nate. W e were as close as any two men . . ‘
2
(The conclusion of Act I is a "lunatic chorus" of Hoover and McCarthy
mindlessly sloganizing; more on-screen montage; the F .B .I. pursuing a
nude, raving Greenglass; and Gold screaming and babbling.) Yes, Green
glass and Gold are psychotics. Gold, i t is leeringly implied, is even
a homosexual. None of this v ilific a tio n has anything to do with the
truth or untruth o f th e ir testimony. Freed's use of character defama
tion is no less unsavory than i t is when used by Senator McCarthy, a
recurrent object of scorn in Inquest.
The second act is much improved. There are fewer anecdotal
cameos on Stage B. What ones are there are longer and better incor
porated into the main narrative. Since Act I I is the Rosenberg's,
th e ir Stage B le tte rs and v is its to each other in j a i l , during and
a fte r the t r i a l , are integral rather than subsidiary and disruptive.
Freed has not reformed e n tire ly . He has used this act to imply that
the defendants' Jewishness is being used against them (th e ir lawyer,
priva tely to the Rosenbergs: "There are no Jews on this Ju ry!") 3
Anti-semitism may be at work, but i t remains only Freed's ugly insinu
ation, for he does not come close to proving i t . The greater part of
1 Ib id ., p. 76. 2Ib id ., p. 78. 3Ib id ., p. 92.
170
Act I I , nevertheless, is quite e ffe c tiv e . The sometimes overwrought
theatrics are subdued. The Rosenbergs' love for each other and th e ir
two l i t t l e boys, too young re a lly to understand; th e ir new friendships
among prison inmates and s ta ff; even th e ir execution--a!ternating with
spoken and filmed legal appeals, prominent persons' statements of
support, headlines, telegrams, and la te r ju rid ic a l misgivings about
the case— a ll are dramatized with compassion and re la tiv e re s tra in t.
Inquest does do what Freed wanted. I t is a sometimes moving
and stimulating drama that raises strong doubts about the Rosenberg
verdict and the government's handling of the investigation and the
t r i a l . But Freed has tarnished the play with some of the very dema-
goguery for which he attacks the government--!'rrelevant emotional
appeals and g u ilt by innuendo. I f , as Freed wrote, " . . . the twen
tie th century . . . [is ] to purge i t s e l f , " 1 the cleansing must be made
w ithin, as well as by, the Inquests.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been— Eric Bentley
C ritic s sometimes turn a playwright's words against him. They
quote from a disfavored play a single lin e which, had i t only been
heeded by the playwright, might have prevented him from w riting the
rest of the play, or at least led him to w rite i t better. C ritic Eric
Bentley has provided a rare chance to turn the tables, for in 1969 he
2
wrote disapprovingly of Kipphardt's Oppenheimer, then in 1972
attempted his own documentary play on a sim ilar subject, Are You Now
1 Freed, "The Case and the Myth," Inquest, p. 8.
^"Oppenheimer Mon Amour."
171
or Have .you Ever Been.
Are You Now is a highly condensed but lit e r a l version of the
1947-1958 House Un-American A c tiv itie s Committee investigations of
show business personalities. The play is separated into two "Parts,"
fo r no discernible purpose other than to provide an intermission some
where. There are no instructions about set or costume; one must
assume from the verisim ilitu de of the dialog that the setting is a
re a lis tic congressional hearing room, and the costumes ordinary
clothing. Eighteen Witnesses are heard, "a small m inority of those
actually investigated."^ Among the Witnesses are Sam W ood (producer-
d ire c to r), Larry Parks, Ring Lardner Jr. (screenw riter), Sterling
Hayden, Abe Burrows, Elia Kazan, Jerome Robbins, L illia n Heilman, Marc
Lawrence (movie a c to r), Lionel Stander, Zero Mostel, Arthur M ille r,
and Paul Robeson. Four--Parks, Burrows, Stander, and Robeson--testify
at length, ranging from Burrows' fourteen pages to Parks' th ir ty -fiv e .
With a few exceptions, the other Witnesses appear fo r as l i t t l e as a
paragraph and no more than a couple of pages. The individual t e s t i
monies are separate un its, and most are completely independent of each
other. Some of the appearances are not in person, but take the form
of le tte rs (L illia n Heilman's, and Parks' fourth and la s t contact with
the Committee).
Three years before Are You Now, Bentley wrote of Kipphardt:
The claim implied in Kipphardt!s published notes is th at,
while small facts are shifted around a b it , no damage is done to
the essential truth of history. I t is , however, Kipphardt who
^Bentley, "Preface," Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, p. x.
172
decides what the essential truth is , and, as fa r as his audiences
are concerned, he decides in secret: only the researcher who goes
over the same ground w ill ever know what he discarded as inessen
t i a l . . . J
Of course, this is true not only of Kipphardt, but of a ll documentary
dramatists, except, Bentley would have us believe, of Bentley.
While I have my own opinions and commitments, I have trie d to be
f a i r , and my aim in employing a high degree of s e le c tiv ity was not,
lawyer-fashion, to make an overwhelming case for a c lie n t. The
kind of c lie n t X represent would not be served by suppression of
any relevant fa c to rs .2
More important are Bentley's criticism s of Kipphardt's play:
. . . there is always a l i t t l e ginger in courtroom questions and
answers. . . . You could drop in on this show at any time . . .
and enjoy the parry and thrust of forensic cross-questions.
. . . the trouble [ is ] . . . that the play is but a series
of such flick e rin g s . . . . there is no play-as-a whole; there
are at best energetic dialogues laid end to end.3
This is , unhappily, truer of Bentley's work than of Kipphardt's.
Whatever Bentley's intentions and the actual record and chro
nology may have been, there is almost no apparent reason for the se
quence, duration, and number of separate testimonies. The major con
frontations, between the Committee and Parks, Burrows, Stander, and
Robeson, do v iv id ly reveal character: p a th e tic --fo r hours, Parks pleads
to be excused from informing, but eventually caves in; tru c k!in g --"THE
CHAIRMAN. You mean you participated in Communist a c tiv itie s with a
reservation in your heart? MR. BURROW S. Yes s ir . That is very well
^"Qppenheimer Mon Amour," p. 5.
2Bentley, "Preface," Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, p.
xvi i .
3"0ppenheimer Mon Amour," pp. 1, 5.
173
put";^ irrepressible— Stander toys with and thoroughly bewilders the
Committee; and majestic— Robeson, dignified and indomitable. But
these long episodes become tedious, for they eventually review and re-
explore ground already thoroughly covered. Between these segments,
Are You Now goes nowhere, for the shorter intervening portions are
truncated, unresolved, and redundant. Their brevity forces the audi
ence to do the playwright's work— i f the c e le b ritie s , le t alone the
unfam iliar names, have any personality, i t is often in our memories,
not in the s c rip t. The profusion and s im ila rity of these snippets
also blunt the Parks-Burrows-Stander-Robeson set-pieces.
The q u ality of the dialog depends on the p a rticu lar witness,
the length of his testimony, and Bentley's e d ito ria l s k i l l , which
often fa lte rs . Most of the shorter passages have l i t t l e or no in d i
vidual character. Parks' long depositions, tormented as they are, are
verbally banal and rep e titio u s . Stander is distinguished more for his'
tactics than his language. Robeson, perhaps because of a ll the
Witnesses he is the closest to a Renaissance man (actor, ath le te ,
lawyer, singer, world tra v e le r, p o ly -lin g u is t), is one of the few
whose dialog occasionally commands attention fo r its style as well as
its content:
INVESTIGATOR. Are you appearing today in response to a subpoena
served upon you by the House Committee on Un-American A c tiv i
ties?
MR. ROBESON. Do I have the p rivileg e of asking whom I am
addressing and who is addressing me?
C M [CONGRESSMAN] 1. The witness talks very loud when he makes a
speech, but when he invokes the F ifth Amendment I can't hear
^Bentley, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, p. 96.
174
him.
MR. ROBESON, q u ie tly . I have medals for diction. I can ta lk
plenty loud.
C M 1. W ill you ta lk a l i t t l e louder? - \
MR. ROBESON, loudly. I invoke the F ifth Amendment--loudly!
Though a period of eleven years is covered, there is no sense
of time passing or of forward movement. The stasis, sameness, and
disembodiment of most of the eighteen sections eventually reduce the
reader to l i t t l e more than a kind of pleased or rueful name-dropping.
So L illia n Heilman refused to id e n tify other people . . . so E lia
Kazan and Jerome Robbins informed. . . . Are You Now is hardly more
than an assortment of more-or-less in structive abstracts.
Bentley says he had adhered meticulously to the actual record,
except fo r minimal word transpositions, abridgement, editing, and
choice of materials to juxtapose. His hope was that
the reading o f this book holds you . . . the reader . . . from
beginning to end and leaves with you an impression of wholeness,
of a single ta le told at the proper pace in proper sequence, w ith
out waste motion, without loose ends.2
Not one of these things has been achieved. Decades of Bentley's dis
tinguished and innovative translations and critic ism did not help him
create a play, even a bad one, or to recognize his own botch. With
every good intention— Are You Now is dedicated to P hilip and Daniel
Berrigan— Bentley has fa ile d to do ju s tic e to those from whom i t was
denied in the fearful 'fo rtie s and 'f i f t i e s .
But the present is also a time of lib e rta ria n c ris is , and fo r
1 Ib id ., pp. 139, 144.
2lbid., "Preface," p. xvii.
175
i t , Bentley has ended this work with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
"What country can preserve its lib e rtie s i f its rulers are not warned
from time to time that this people preserve the s p ir it of resistance?"^
1 Bentley, Are You Now or Have you Ever Been, p. 158.
176
CHAPTER V
THE PLAYS— I I : O UR SOVEREIGNS, O UR W A R S
Our Sovereigns
Soldiers— Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Robert David MacDonald
Murderous Angels— Conor Cruise O'Brien
An Evening with Richard Nixon— Gore Vidal
WASHINGTON— Can we scientists meet in Washington and ignore the
fa c t th at our national administration is launching from this c ity
the most massive a ir attacks in history? I t is launching those
attacks against concentrated centers of c iv ilia n population, while
blandly announcing lis ts of m ilita ry targets. . . . North Vietnam
hardly contains m ilita ry targets; and a B-54 bombing pattern one
and one-half miles long by one-half mile broad, dropped from an
a ltitu d e of 30,000 fe e t, cannot pick out targets. Yet such bomb
ings are now crisscrossing some of the most densely populated
c itie s in the world, in an unprecedented orgy of k illin g and
destruction that h o rrifies people everywhere— as Guernica, Coventry
and Dresden once h o rrified them. And a ll in our name.
— From a statement prepared fo r the American Association
fo r the Advancement of Science, and signed by Dr. George
Wald, Nobel Laureate, Harvard University; Dr. Salvador
Luria, Nobel Laureate, M. I. T .; Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgi,
Nobel Laureate, Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole;
Dr. Everett Mendelsohn, Vice president A. A. A. S.; and
others.'
For the fourth consecutive year, President Richard Nixon heads
the l i s t of men the American people admire most in the world today
. . . . [and] fo r the fourth consecutive year, the Rev. B illy
Graham is in second place behind Mr. Nixon. Graham has been a
regular amonq the top 10 since he became nationally prominent in
the 1950's.
[The l i s t ] :
l"'We Must Tell the President,'" New York Times, December 12,
1972, p. 25.
1. Richard Nixon
2. B illy Graham
3. Harry Truman
4. Henry Kissinger
5. Edward Kennedy
6. George Wallace
7. Spiro Agnew
8. Pope Paul VI
9. George McGovern
10. W illy Brandt .
--George Gallup
ANDREA: (loudly) Unhappy the land that has no heroes!
GALILEO: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero. ?
--Brecht, Life of Galileo
Soldiers--R o lf Hochhuth
translated by
Robert David MacDonald
Soldiers rehearses four of Winston Churchill's war-making deci
sions: to saturate with incendiary bombs the populous poorer sections
of German c itie s ; to provoke H itle r into bombing London; to support a
strong a lly 's (Russia's) claims to a weak a lly 's (Poland's) te rrito ry ;
and, allegedly, to e ffe c t the murder of an A llied colleague, Prime
M inister Sikorski of Poland. Taking on these matters and those in his
3
e a rlie r The Deputy, Hochhuth has w ritten two monumental works, and
is the transcendent playwright of the documentary genre.
Soldiers is divided into a long expressionist prolog, "Every-
^"The Gallup P o ll: NIXON AND G RAHAM 'MOST ADMIRED'," Wash
ington Post, December 28, 1972, p. A5.
^trans. by Wolfgang Sauerlander and Ralph Manheim, in Brecht,
Collected Plays, eds. Manheim and John W ille t, assoc, ed. Sauerlander,
V (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1972), sc. 13, pp. 84, 85.
3Below, pp. 218-230.
178
man"; a three-act main section, "The L ittle London Theater of the
World"^ (The Ship, The Bed, and The Garden) ; and a b rie f "Epilogue."
In "Everyman," i t is
Autumn, 1964: one hundred years a fte r the signing of the f i r s t
Geneva convention, in the ninetieth year of the l i f e of Sir
Winston Churchill. . . . Bright moonlight on the steps of the
roofless ruin of St. Michael 1s~Cathedral in C o v e n t r y .^
O
Dorland is a fa ta lly i l l theater director who, twenty years before,
was an RAF Wing Commander-fire bomber of Dresden, forced to bail out
and assist in collecting and burning the dead. Dorland, dying, s t i l l
seeing and hearing the specters of Dresden, is f u l f i l l i n g a commission
arranged by the Sculptor of the Coventry Festival Committee by w riting
and rehearsing a play for the Geneva Centennial. The production is
his atonement; he hopes i t w ill help lead to a revision in the Geneva
conventions, banning such te rro r-raid s on c iv ilia n populations.
The image of . . . [the "Gomorrah" bombings] vanishes as the
curtain f a l l s , to ris e as quickly as possible, as i f a hand
snatched i t away, to reveal in a blinding white lig h t--th e
audience is dazzled--the f i r s t act . . . . The whole of the
piay-w ithin-the-play . . . [is set within "Everyman's" ruined
cathedral].4
1943. Aboard The Ship— the H M S "Duke of York"— are Winston
Churchill, Prime M inister and M inister of Defense; the physicist
^Derived from Calderon's m o ra lity -lik e play, El Gran Teatro
del Mundo (1645).
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p. 13.
3". . . . This vanished name has been given him since i t was
probably the name of the author of the f i r s t Everyman play. . . . "
(Hochhuth, Soldiers, n ., p. 14.)
^Hochhuth, S oldiers, pp. 57-58.
179
Viscount Cherwell, C hurchill’ s s c ie n tific adviser and intimate friend;
S ir Alan Brooke, C hurchill’ s C h ie f-o f-S ta ff; General Sikorski, Prime
Minister of Poland; Captain Kocjan, the Polish anti-Nazi secret agent;
and Second O fficer Helen MacDonald, Kocjan's lover and C hu rch ill’s
secretarial aide. S ir Alan urges Churchill to bomb Germany's weapon
sites and war plants; Cherwell advocates incineration of urban workings
class residential areas. Churchill decides:
Codeword Gomorrah
Hamburg or Cologne— depending on the weather.
to render a m illion Germans homeless— that is a victory:
to puncture h a lf a dozen o il tanks— th at is no t.'
Following this determination, there is an intense confrontation be
tween Churchill and Sikorski. Sikorski wants Churchill's help in pre
venting a postwar Soviet takeover of Polish land. Sikorski also in
tends to press fo r an immediate investigation of the just-discovered
graves of hundreds of executed Polish o ffice rs imprisoned by the
Russians at Katyn. Churchill w ill not support Sikorski against the
Russians, and admonishes him not to jeopardize the Alliance by antag
onizing S talin with an inquiry into the Katyn massacre.
P.M. [C h u rch ill]: I f you do not acquiesce, then Poland w ill
be no more--no. more than a bloody mire
on the tracks of the tanks of the armies of Russia.
SIKORSKI trie s to catch CHURCHILL'S eye, but without success: the
Englishman looks away. SIKORSKI salutes, goes out. Only then
does CHURCHILL look up, a fte r him. The fighters [RAF] roar very
low over the water, now almost as dark as the sky.
CURTAIN2
llb id ., pp. 77, 91. 2Ibid., p. 119.
180
Churchill continues to wage war from The Bed. Operation
Gomorrah has been carried out and Churchill is pleased with a ir photo
graphs of the damage. Word comes that Sikorski has ignored Churchill's
warnings, and that S talin has broken o ff relations with Poland. Cher
well and Churchill conclude that Sikorski must be k ille d to placate
Sta1i n.
In The Garden of his Chequers estate, Churchill receives
Bishop Bell of Chichester, an outspoken c r it ic of the c iv ilia n bombing
policy. Bell alone can match the P. M.'s eloquence and personal force,
but he cannot change C hurchill's b e lie f in the Operation's rightness.
Churchill and the others are informed of S ikorski's death in a B ritis h
plane crash. Kocjan, alone with Helen, who idolizes C hurchill, per
suades her that the P. M. sanctioned the fa ta l "accident." C hurchill,
hearing the news, and having to express his sympathy to Kocjan, is
shattered.
. . . [CHURCHILL] regains his balance, which he had nearly lost
. . . only by means of words. . . .
P.M.: General Sikorski--Captain,
. . . . were he at my side,
he would, I think . . have . . wished, th at—
I should say to you . .
soldiers must die,
but by th e ir death . . they nourish
the nation that gave them b irth .
KOCJAN (using his la s t reserves of energy to keep control of
him self):
— a t a ll events, that nation
whose guests we are,
S ir— and . . the A llie s .
He turns without saluting and hurries out. From the discomfiture
of the others, which makes them more motionless than ever, one may
181
see what has been going on inside KOCJAN more easily than from
his own behavior.
Silence.
CHERWELL's face alone remains smooth as a monument. BRO O KE
glances at CHERWELL. DORLAND avoids looking up. HELEN leans
back against the balustrade. No one dares look a t the PRIME
MINISTER.
For the "Epilogue,"
The curtain is drawn up again at once. All the actors have disap
peared and the stage is in a harsh working lig h t .
The STAGE MANAGER and two STAGEHANDS enter and begin to strik e
the scenery. 2
Dorland's son Peter, a Flight Lieutenant, rebukes his father for insul
ting the RAF and Churchill with his play.
SO N (q u ietly [to SCULPTOR]): My father has imputed an assassina
tion to him.
DORLAND (ic y ): . . . . I t is no coincidence that not you,
( he points at PETER, then a t the SCULPTOR, then at him self)
not him, not I — but Churchill
led the country to victory.
Greatness has its own dimensions.
How can you have the gall to condemn an action,
simply because you could not have performed it?3
Moments la t e r , a telegram is delivered to Dor!and.
SON: Anything special?
DORLAND (offhand): Only in a negative way: the play has been
The Deputy was the f i r s t play to be called "documentary thea-
CURTAIN
banned in England.
THE END4
te r," but Hochhuth has rejected the c la s s ific a tio n .
1 I b i d . , p. 248.
3 lb id -, p. 253.
2 lb id ., p. 257.
4Ib id ., p. 255.
182
I became the champion of "documentary theatre" quite unintention
a lly . I only noticed what had happened when Piscator wrote a
program note in which he used the term "documentary th eatre." I
am very unhappy about that catch phrase, for I believe i t means
very l i t t l e . Pure documentation can never be more than a bunch
of documents. Something must always be added to make a p la y .l
Despite Hochhuth's unhappiness with his directo r's phrase, he dedicated
Soldiers "To the memory of Erwin Piscator," who died suddenly a year
O
before he was to d irec t the play.
Hochhuth's personal objection to the genre-designation is
ju s tifie d . While the quoted materials in his plays are uniquely
abundant and scrupulously credited, Hochhuth goes beyond "a slavish
*
3
b e lie f in 'sources'." Soldiers--and The Deputy— abound in fa s c i
nating characterizations; exceptional dialog; s trik in g , revelatory
props, costumes, sets; and, suffusing the "facts" and the b r illia n t
d ia le c tic , a sense of the tragic and the relig ious.
What Hochhuth has said of The Deputy is equally true of
Soldiers.
I expressly wrote the play in such a way that i t is a ll very
understandable and can be played by it s e lf ; and neither historic
documents nor appendix has to be used. . . A
^Quoted by Martin Esslin, Essays in Modern Theatre (Garden
C ity, N. Y .: Doubleday and Co., In c ., 1969), p. 133. The chapter,
"'Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf Hochhuth," appears
also as "Playwright W ho Drops P o litic a l Blockbusters," New York Times
Magazine, November 19, 1967, pp. 49+.
^Hochhuth, S oldiers, pp. 5, 1.
^ Ib id ., stage directions, p. 124.
^Patricia Marx, excerpted "Interview with Rolf Hochhuth," in
Storm over THE DEPUTY, ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, In c .,
1964), p. 54. The interview was broadcast over station WNYC, New York,
and edited in Partisan Review 31 (Summer 1964).
The documentation in Soldiers is handled with supreme v e r s a tility . I t
is copious and often overt, so that one feels he is sharing the crea
tiv e process. In the forty-five-pag e prolog alone, there are twenty-
seven e x p lic it c ita tio n s , a ll a ttrib u te d , most of them d ire c tly in the
dialog. The documentation is diverse, including such items as a single
projected photograph; a voice-on-tape; s ta tis tic s ; data; a characteri
zation of Churchill by his doctor; excerpts from B ritis h , Russian,
German and Roman o ffic e rs ' journals; and quotes--on the subject of The
Garden setting--from Churchill, Bacon, Pascal, Maeterlinck, H itle r ,
and Hartlaub (w riting a diary in H itle r's Command Headquarters).
When this varied and voluminous material is incorporated
d ire c tly in dialog, i t is natural to both speaker and situation.
Hochhuth even styles the documentation to reveal character. Cherwell,
C hurchill's Mephistophelian "Gray Eminence," is marshalling his case
for the bombing technique which would be most devastating. Pacing
metronomically, he refers to the research of Zuckerman, who detonated
bombs among tethered goats and fire d high-velocity steel balls into
rabbits' legs.
CHERWELL: . . . . Zuckerman might have done better to examine
the bodies from Coventry for a change.
These bodies showed how many died d ire c tly :
A, mechanically, from fragmentation,
B, chemically, from smoke, lack of oxygen, etcetera,
C, physically from the heat with or without actual flames;
and how many in d ire c tly :
A, atmospherically, from a ir pressure and pulmonary collapse,
B, from d irec t h its , that is to say, fa llin g ruins,
dust, suffocation, and the lik e ,
C, from burning, carbonization, .first-degree burns,
monoxide poisoning, hyperoxygenation, etcetera.
Conclusion, S ir Alan: f ir e is the element of our
184
age, this war is to be won with f ir e .
Finished, Cherwell glances at his watch and begins peeling an apple.
Of course, i t is Cherwell's Faust, Churchill, whosd character
dominates Soldiers. In him, Hochhuth achieves something rare and ex
c itin g : the wholly convincing portrayal of a great and keenly remem
bered man.
Churchill is molten marble. He moves from apocalypse to
amenity without a breath.
P.M. [to Dorland]: For every rocket that f a lls on London,
I shall repay the Germans in poison gas.
Good-by, Group Captain, i f Harris is a ll rig h t
by Sunday evening, t e ll him to come to dinner, with his w ife,
there w ill be plovers' eggs-- . . . .
At one point, he coolly welcomes H itle r's persecution of the Jews as a
miraculous boon, since i t deprived H itle r of "the whole club, gentiles
3
and a ll . . . [o f] physicists of genius;" elsewhere, he reacts with
fury and tears at his wife Clemmie's telephoned news that a gardener's
negligence at Chequers allowed a fox to enter a swan pen and k il l the
bird.^ Churchill can outdrink, outquote, outquip—
BELL [c o n c iliato ry ]: . . . . A ir raids are hardly in the trad itio n
of the Royal Navy.
P.M.: Traditions? The Royal Navy has only three:
Rum, sodomy, and the la s h .5—
outthink, outspeak, overpower, and ou tlive most men of his time. Yet
1Hochhuth, Soldiers, pp. 87-88.
^ Ib id ., p. 101.
5Ib id ., p. 224.
2Ib id ., p. 155.
4Ib id . , pp. 155-56.
185
he can say to Bell:
. . . Whenever I am on top, glutted with victo ry, gorged with
flesh,
I ask myself quietly where is the hook, the snag,
which of the hostile corpses is the poisoned one,
the bait of H ell. The horoscope of history
is cast in the sign of the Hydra.1
Hochhuth's power of characterization humanizes even a c ity .
Bell is comparing the airm an -kille r with the criminal deviate:
P.M. ( laughs m aliciously): [S atisfactio n] . . . . in war! Are we
to call that perverted?
BELL: Not with dams, re fin e rie s , and bridges— no.
But c itie s are feminine:
I t is obscene . . . .
when the c ity is the bomber's target
and therefore the maternity hospital too,
then the man who aims must submit
to people estimating him
according to the results of his actions;
and those are photographically identical
with those of a sex murderer.2
As c itie s are fem inine-erotic, so, fo r Hochhuth, are a nation's
people. For as Churchill is England, Helen MacDonald is the English.
Thus, an already d is tin c tiv e minor character becomes s t i l l more special.
Helen is "a grave, beautiful woman in her t h ir t ie s ,w id o w e d by the
war, loyal to the P. M., and, because she is Kocjan's poignant lover,
the only real partner Poland has. (A s im ila rly named young woman in
The Deputy, Helga, also serves a sexual-symbolic national ro le , though
in d iffe re n t ways.)^
Hochhuth, having renounced too trusting or lit e r a l a reliance
1 Ib id ., p. 219. 2Ib id ., p. 236.
3 lb id ., p. 74. ^Below, p. 225.
186
on documents, is free to create dialog as varied and rewarding as his
characters, and each person's language is specific to him. Cherwell's
compartmented lis t s , c h illin g when applied to human beings, elsewhere
appear amusing.
SIKORSKI: And how does the sea a ir agree with you, Lord Cherwell?
CHERWELL: Excellency, oh . . . .
The sea A ir, A, brings out one's best ideas
and B, cheers one up.'
Despite individualized speech styles, the play's language is
rarely " re a lis tic " ; i t is usually heightened t i l l i t approaches, and
often is , free verse, as Churchill's "glutted with victory" passage
O
shows. And i t is Hochhuth's-Churchi11's jeweled rh eto ric, even in
conversation, that most radiates Soldiers. These words are "not . . .
O
[always C hurch ill's] own, but the style is based on his w ritings."
Churchill seldom refers to H itle r by name, more often in such
terms as "that haunted, morbid being," and "that l i t t l e Viennese cafe'
ra t.O nc e, Churchill's s ta rtlin g pragmatism and zest fo r his own
eloquence run b rie fly out of control. Sikorski, v ir tu a lly ordered by
Churchill to give up Poland's border lands to Russia, seeks some
saving act, and asks to help in an Ita lia n invasion.
P.M. ( unconsciously ta c tle s s ): Is i t wise—
to knock Ita ly rig h t out of the war? Only think
how much H itle r has invested in the boot.
Why should we amputate this leg completely?
Let him hobble on i t - - l e t i t ro t un til he dies
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p. 97. ^Above, p. 186.
^Esslin, "'Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf
Hochhuth," p. 131.
^Hochhuth, S oldiers, pp. 102, 211.
187
of blood poisoning. Let him learn how easy
i t is for a strong man to come to g rie f
through a weak a lly .
His delight in c lin ic a l metaphors has carried him awa.y--he is
suddenly appalled at what he has ju s t said to his weakest a l l y ,
who has taken the remark as a direct personal reference, which
was not at a ll the in ten tion. '
Not the intention, but only by a matter of minutes: Churchill w ill
shortly t e ll Sikorski openly that he is Churchill's sore appendage.
P. M. ([calc u la tin g ] . . . but sadly, warning):
S talin is w aiting, either for m e to drop you
or fo r you to break o ff relations with the Kremlin.
. . . . But H itle r hopes that I shall keep you—
to use against the Kremlin--
. . . be careful not to f ly around so much.2
Hochhuth is not infatuated with the elegant lin e , however. At
moments, the Churchill phrase-mechanism f a ils , as when Sikorski's
fa ta l plane crash has been reported.
HELEN: They've found the body of the Prime M in ister, horribly
mangled.
P. M. [te a r fu l, struggling for control]: Arrange for its convey
ance to London.
Tell the Foreign Secretary. We--
the King must be asked to allow
the ly in g -in -s ta te in the Abbey— the General is ,
with the honor of a Head of State, who
as our gu est--w ell, you . .
(He cannot speak.)3
Hochhuth does more than hear his play. A ll his painstaking
research, and his mind's eye fo r authentic, striking milieus and
1 ?
Ib id ., p. 105. ^ Ib id ., pp. 115, 116.
3 lb id ., p. 214.
188
physical details resu lt in provocative sets, costumes, and props. The
external play, and the p la y -w ith in -it, are acted out among the ruins
of a church— such ruins being a fa c t and vivid philosophic metaphor.
In Act I I of Shakespeare's Richard I I , England is "This other Eden,
d e m i-p a r a d is e " in Soldiers, Act I I I , England is the apple orchard at
Chequers, "where one would hardly guess that the f a ll of man has
2
already taken place." "In stin ct warns [Bishop] Bell not to come as
a c iv ilia n " into this Garden-stage which is "mainly f u ll of highly
3
decorated uniforms." So B e ll, relieved that Sunday provides a pre
te x t fo r vestments, "panders to his adversary's weakness fo r the
baroque and ornamental" by wearing, a fte r long disuse, his black,
white, and gray ceremonial robes. In one sequence in The Ship, Hoch
huth integrates props with set, character, action, dialog, documenta
tio n , and theme in a sustained tour de force that riva ls any Greek
messenger's description of offstage horror.
P. M .: . . . P ro f., how do we do it?
. . . CHERWELL, the nonsmoker, quickly pulls out a cigar case
containing Colored pencils, colored chalk, and a slide ru le .
CHERWELL: Bear with me a couple of minutes.
. . . . look, here
is Gomorrah. Here is the c ity —
On the gun tu rre t, or wherever the setting allows, he draws
quickly and with astonishing accuracy, in white chalk, two
concentric c irc le s . He speaks with composure . . . . In
the other hand he holds a piece of red chalk, which he wields
with increasing fervor. He continues:
1i .42.
3 Ib id ., p. 176.
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p .173.
4Ib id ., p. 175.
I propose at the outset one and a half m illio n small
caliber incendiaries, four-pounders; these,
dropped over the tig h te st possible area of the old
town, w ill cause localized firesV:.which in a
space of time, the duration of which w ill depend on
the atmospheric conditions . .
As he speaks he indicates the local fire s by crosses and shades in
the whole surface of the inner part of the town, i . e . , the whole
of the inner c ir c le .
CHERWELL: . . w ill coagulate into a single conflagration.
(He shades in the inner c ir c le . )
Here you have the burning inner c ity , in whose
center temperatures of up to eight hundred degrees
w ill soon consume not only a ll the normal
combustible m aterial, but also— and this is the
funny thing— the oxygen. Now, as you know,
a ll combustion is dependent upon a supply of
oxygen. Therefore: the rapidly increasing
need for oxygen in the center of the f ir e
results in a suction d ra ft on the perimeter,
which drives the a ir from the quarters contiguous
to the c ity center c e n trip e tally toward the
heart of the conflagration.
(He draws arrows, radiating from the outer c irc le to the
center> j
These a ir streams we describe, aptly enough, as
firestorms. They sweep through the stre ets , with
force and velocity reaching the highest speed on
our windscale.
P. M.: Force tw elve--in a town?
CHERWELL: Certainly— comparable to the typhoons
which rage in the tropic zones--
we may reckon with a force of more than
eighty miles an hour.
The Prof. is not yet aware how seriously he is underestimating.
Air Marshal Harris reprinted, in his memoirs, a secret German
report in which i t was stated that the firestorms in Gomorrah
reached a force of 160 m.p.h.
"Trees three feet thick were broken o ff or uprooted, human
beings were flung a liv e into the flames . . the panic-stricken
citizens knew not where to turn. Flames drove them from the
shelters, but high-explosive bombs sent them scurrying back again.
"Once inside, they were suffocated by carbon-monoxide poison
ing . . in a crematorium which was what each shelter proved to
190
be. The fortunate were those who jumped into the canals or
waterways and remained swimming or standing up to th e ir necks
in water fo r hours u n til the heat should die down. "
In the center, therefore, a windless furnace.
On the perimeter, hurricanes--which
w ill carry along a ll those objects . .
P. M.: Objects—what sort of objects?
CHERWELL: Animate and inanimate--men, animals,
trees, lo rrie s , balconies, roofs, chimneys,
and other architectural features.
P. M. (almost in awe): All this is — hurled a ll over the place?
CHERWELL: Not a ll over the place, drawn c e n trip e ta lly toward the
furnace.
A typhoon is not it s e lf a chaos; i t merely leaves one behind
i t . 1
This phantasmagoric depiction, necessary i f Soldiers were
merely documentary history, suggests the play is something more.
There is a tragic mythos underlying Hochhuth*s plays. About Soldiers,
he told Esslin:
I believe i f one wants to w rite a histo rical play one has to
fin d— I know i t sounds pompous— some metaphysical relevance to
i t . . . . There is [in the th ird ac t] something lik e a religious
viewpoint . . . i n the widest possible sense.2
Cherwell's description of a. firebombed c ity is that of Pandemonium,
H ell's c a p ita l, and Cherwell is Inferno's angel. Foil to Cherwell is
a messenger of l i f e , Bishop B ell, who, while forced to accept the
deaths of workers in bombed war plants, condemns this bombing, this
deliberate slaughter of innocents. Besides these testamental fig ures,
there is the prolog's m orality play t i t l e "Everyman," and the play's
1 Ib id ., pp. 93-95.
2
Esslin, '"Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf
Hochhuth," p. 134.
191
encompassing set, a demolished cathedral. Churchill is described as
possessing--having "spent nearly seventy years'1 ^ c u ltiv a tin g --th e
presence of a demi-god. The stage directions compare him physically
2
and m ilit a r ily to Neptune, Lord of the Seas. And i t is in The Garden
that Churchill acknowledges the toppling truth of B e ll's remark: that
as with Oedipus, "in the days of victory is thine end conceived."
Hochhuth's religious viewpoint is more complicated and ironic
than this Oedipal foreboding. While speaking to an interviewer about
The Deputy, Hochhuth asserted " it would be the end of drama i f one
[believed] . . . that man cannot be held responsible for his fa te ,"
yet he immediately contradicted this by adding?
Man is meant to act, to be responsible. He should be the
master of his fa te . He should be moral, and history continually
brings him into c o n flic t with powers which condemn him to defeat,
which are stronger than he and which destroy him.3
Hochhuth had not resolved this contradiction in his mind by the.
time he had w ritten Soldiers. Discussing the play, he said i t would be
"a histo rical in ju stice to pin the bombing war on Churchill or the
A llie s ," because Churchill had to compensate S talin for England's in
a b ilit y to mount the Second Front S talin was demanding, and the Prime
Minister also wanted to hasten victory by demoralizing the German popu
la tio n .^ Hence, the terror-bombing. Did Churchill have no choice? Is
he then relieved of resp onsibility for Gomorrah? I f so, what happens
to drama and to Soldiers?
iHochhuth, S oldiers, p. 165. ^Ibid.
3Marx, "Interview with Hochhuth," p. 58.
^Esslin, "'Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf
Hochhuth," p. 129.
192
I t is here that Soldiers must be defended against its play
wright. The play c le a rly gives Churchill other alternatives than the
mass bombing of c iv ilia n s . There were many strategic targets available
and under construction in Germany. Churchill's destruction of popu
lated areas was consistent with previous coldly pragmatic decisions,
and not uniquely forced by this situation. He had repeatedly bombed
prosperous, less populous sections of German c itie s for no other reason
than to provoke re ta lia tio n against London, so as to d ivert German a ir
attacks from B ritish docks, a ir fie ld s , and fig h te r factories.^ He was
w illin g to buy S ta lin 's goodwill by sa crificin g the Polish border lands
and th e ir inhabitants to Russia.
Despite th is , Hochhuth's Churchill is a tragic fig u re. The
tragedy is not, as Ess!in claims, that of having to choose one ju s t
cause (humanity) over others (Poland, and the women and children of
Dresden and Hamburg), for that is not C hurchill's dilemma. The tragedy
is that an immensely powerful and presumably moral man can see not the
good, but only the e v il, alternatives (e ith e r the triumph o f H itle r or
the decimation of German populations), and acts accordingly. On the
play's own terms, Churchill could have reassured Stalin by bombing
m ilita ry targets to smithereens; he elected human targets instead.
Moreover, Operation Gomorrah was a bloody fa ilu re in its c o lla te ra l
objective: the net saving of lives in a war shortened by homicidally
undermining the German people's support of i t .
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p. 231.
193
Churchill never quite sorts out means and ends.
BELL: Do you not shrink from actions
which we called murder when H itle r performs them?
P. M. (with honesty): No. The b a ttle fie ld is at the enemy's,
le v e l. How otherwise am I to th ro ttle him, stamp him out?1
His sense of transience, even of the mighty, is marred by vanity and
jingoism:
P. M.: The greatest victories in English h is to ry --re s u lt;
W e sink,
sink under m y leadership to a second-rate power.
The Empire— how long did i t last?
My father could s t i l l say, when in o ffic e , 2
W e Britons are not Europeans but A siatics. . . .
Yet one can feel p ity , fe a r, and release fo r the man, fo r oneself,
and fo r a l l , when Churchill says, near the end:
P. M.: They say, whom God w ill destroy—
and is there anyone whom He w ill not destroy?
What does divination in the bowels of the ages show
but thwarted men of action?
but when a deed for once does not miscarry—
then i t can be permitted to endure.
No. All that endures is the panorama
of ruined empires, te llin g us we are sand before the wind.^
Soldiers has its d iffic u ltie s and flaws. I t is long. For the
reader, this is a jo y, not a problem, but performed in its en tirety i t
would run six to seven hours. Whether this should be done is academic;
1 I b id ., p. 191. 2Ib id ., pp. 220, 222.
^ Ib id ., pp. 221 , 222.
194
today's audiences and theater cannot handle i t , Hochhuth has accepted
th is , and has hoped to avoid what happened to The Deputy, whose
American adaptor, Jerome Rothenberg,
confused the need to cut . . . with the license to butcher, fo r he
has hacked away its most interesting fe a tu re --its in te lle c tu a l
heart— . . . decimating characters . . . . cutting out ju s t about
every lite r a r y , h is to ric a l, p o litic a l, and religious reference in
the te x t, . . . [and has] methodically proceeded to soften the
horror of the work and weaken the accusation of the author, some
times by rewriting whole portions of the d ia lo g J
Burned once, Hochhuth worked with his translator and set in brackets
portions of Soldiers— amounting to about one-half the play— ranging
from single words to whole pages and more, as "minimal cuts . . . for
2
any performance." S t i l l , this leaves the s c rip t, more than most,
open to the ed ito ria l whims of others.
The choice of a bed as the locus fo r Act I I may have been a
r >
mistake, however "immeasurable a part" beds played in C hurchill's
l i f e — he had, Hochhuth te lls us, beds lik e royal catafalques installed
on tra in s , in the Houses of Parliament, and in the Savoy H o te l.4 All
this granted, a bed without sex is a sedentary place, and Act I I , until
its end when Churchill and Cherwell resolve to have Sikorski k ille d ,
is too much ta lk in place, too T it t le forward movement.
One of HochhuthVs highest s k ills is dramatic debate. All
sides, not ju s t Hochhuth's, are b r illia n t ly persuasive. Few of Hoch-
iRobert Brustein, "History as Drama," in Bentley, The Storm
Over The Deputy, pp. 23, 24, reprinted from The New Republic, March 14,
1964.
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p. 4. ^Ibid., p. 127.
4Ibid., pp. 127, 128.
195
huth's opponents could argue th e ir own beliefs as well as Hochhuth does
fo r them. For two acts of the main play? however, there is no real
challenge to Churchill. The man^s position, in te lle c t, eloquence, and
energy would overwhelm any who might disagree, and only a depleted
Brooke b rie fly does. Not t i l l Act I I I does a nearly equal adversary,
Bishop B e ll, fin a lly appear; by then i t is no use. Bell has a passion
ate, fearless nature; a sense of humor th a t, as required, amuses or
impales; is a prize-winning poet and "a very experienced orator."^
The two giants clash in the picture-book garden, but C hurchill's deci
sion and the damage done are irre v e rs ib le . Whatever chords they strike
in each other, th e ir meeting is a postlude.
The play begins twice; f i r s t , very e ffe c tiv e ly , in Dorland's
haunted mind and in the setting for his play; and then again, with
Churchill on board the H M S "Duke of York." Esslin suggests that Hoch
huth has used the frank a r t if ic e of a play-w ithin-a-play to make more
plausible to an audience the impersonation of real people s t i l l fresh
p
in th e ir minds. Possibly. Hochhuth is also te llin g the audience
not to think of "Churchill" as Churchi11, but as "the personification
3
of the war-drive" of this century. In any case, Hochhuth knew the
problems of the double s ta rt, and trie d to minimize them by deflecting
1 Ib id ., pp. 175, 176.
^Esslin, "'Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf
Hochhuth," p. 130.
^Hochhuth, Soldiers, p. 165.
196
in terest from the ghost-ridden Dorland, whose l i f e is behind him; by
flashing in stan tly from prolog to Act I and from Act I I I to epilog;
and by involving the young Dorland in Act I I I . S t i l l , one feels the
prolog and epilog are attached to , not merged w ith, the main play; and
that Dorland, who is quite appealing, is too summarily snatched away to
make room fo r Acts I and I I .
F in a lly , there is the charge that Sikorski's death was engi
neered by Churchill. Hochhuth has introduced this into the play for
two reasons. One, he "'knows' this to be so," having seen proof "now
locked in the vaults of a Swiss bank."^ Two, he
realized that i t is very d if f ic u lt to dramatize the war in the a ir ;
i t ' s too abstract. . . . but the Polish tragedy could be personal
ized in the character of Sikorski, a very picturesque and knightly
figure. . . .2 ■
Hochhuth was rig h t. The Sikorski matter is e ffe c tive on stage; i t , not
the bombings, grieves Churchill; i t constitutes an agonizing la s t dis
pute between Helen and Kocjan, and i t precipitates the clim actic debate
of the play. Kocjan-Hochhuth do make a fe a rfu lly convincing circum
stantial case against Churchill. But because the evidence can s t i l l be
only circum stantial, thus vulnerable, and because the question is so
dramatic, i t attracts disproportionate attention and u n fa irly distracts
from the other major concerns of the play. I f Brecht's Galileo or
Hochhuth's Churchill is rig h t, and the lives and works of our heroes
TEss!in, "'Truth' and Documentation: A Conversation with Rolf
Hochhuth," p. 132.
^Hochhuth, quoted, ib id ., p. 130.
197
amount to present burdens or eventual n u llitie s , then surely the
deaths of thousands of German c iv ilia n s are a t least as important as
that of one Polish leader.
Whatever its problems and defects, Soldiers is one of the
fin e s t and most challenging of a ll the plays associated with docu
mentary drama. Hochhuth has made m asterful, original use of every
resource of theater, and has raised perhaps the ultim ate question:
what do we make of human l i f e and human community? For i f our stron
gest and most illu s trio u s rulers, as well as the most abhorrent, are
almost equally ruthless and destructive, to whom can we turn? To our
selves, when i t is we— Germans, Russians, B ritis h , Americans, who
ever—who have chosen these leaders, supported or complied with th e ir
p o licies, rein s talled them when possible, and romanticized them when
they have died? Each person w ill answer in his own way. Hochhuth's
way has been to vio late our tabernacles, and cast out the sacred
re lic s .
Murderous Angels— Conor Cruise O'Brien
Conor Cruise O'Brien is currently a member of the Iris h
Republican Parliament. In 1961 he was United Nations Secretary-
General Hammarskjold1s representative in Katanga, A frica. O'Brien
resigned U. N. service that year, and in 1962 published an experi
mental account, To Katanga and BackJ Five years la te r, while working
7
on another book, The United Nations: Sacred Drama, he had a puzzling
^(New York: Grosset and Dunlap).
2(New York: Simon and Schuster, In c ., 1968).
dream about the related fates of Hammarskjold and Prime Minister
Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. Both men had died v io le n tly within
months of each other in 1961, Lumumba bayonetted by high-ranking
assassins, Hammarskjold in a plane crash. Partly because of the "in
herently dramatic nature of . . . [these two lea ders'] intertwined
fates . . . and . . . of the 'sacred drama' thesis,"^ and partly be
cause of O'Brien's dissatisfaction with an existing play on the sub-
2 3
je c t, he "had to w rite . . . [h is ] own play." O'Brien's choice of
dramatic form to t e ll this story is a trib u te to theater; the play i t
s e lf is not.
Murderous Angels begins with Belgium granting nominal indepen
dence to the Congo. Byzantine struggles fo r control begin among the
new rival black African p o litic ian s and the old international white
business interests. Hammarskjold flie s to E liz a b e th v ille , hoping to
heal the c iv il war in the Congo before i t leads to h o s tilitie s between
Russia and the United States. He bypasses the le g a lly constituted
Prime M inister, Lumumba, who is the most m ilita n t and powerful force
for black self-determ ination, and who had requested the U. N.'s help.
Hammarskjold contacts instead Moise Tshombe, a puppet of the whites and
self-proclaimed President of the rebel Congolese province of Katanga.
Lumumba, thus rebuffed, turns to the Soviets fo r aid. Hammarskjold,
^O'Brien, Murderous Angels [published version] (Boston:
A tlantic Monthly P re s s -L ittle , Brown and Company, 1968), p. x v iii.
^Une Saison au Congo, by the West Indian poet Aime Cesaire.
^O'Brien, Murderous Angels, published version, p. x v iii.
199
the U. S. government, and the white financiers decide fo r th e ir d i f
ferent reasons that Lumumba threatens th e ir designs. Lumumba is
arrested and put under U. N. custody in his residence. Lumumba leaves
his home, the only place the U. N. w ill provide him protection, to
attend his daughter's funeral. En route, he is captured and k ille d by
top Katangese o ffic e rs . The secessionist fighting in the Congo
worsens; the U. N. sends in troops and diplomats (O'Brien among them)
to end the disorders. The financial consortia now decide that Hammar
skjold is the remaining menace to th e ir dominion over Congolese affairs,'
and arrange fo r his death. Hammarskjold, seeking expiation fo r
Lumumba's death, which he d e lib erately allowed, boards a plane headed
for a meeting with Tshombe, knowing the c ra ft w ill be sabotaged in
f lig h t and that he w ill be k ille d .
The magazine-program for the play's world premiere by Los
Angeles' Center Theatre Group contains a "D irector's Note," an in tro
duction by O'Brien excerpted from the published play's Author's Pre
face, a "Background Sketch" of the f i r s t years of Congolese indepen
dence, and "A Chronology of Events."^ The published play is supple
mented by the twenty-two-page footnoted Author's Preface; an eight-
page Appendix of "Hammarskjold's Role in Relation to the Downfall and
Death of Lumumba," also footnoted; and nine and one-half pages of fin e -
printed itemized source-and-substance Notes to the play. Compared to
the trenchant, confident Author's Preface and Appendix, the scrip t is
1 Performing A rts, Los Angeles ed itio n , March 1970, pp. 23; 25,
34, 36; 41; 41-42.
2Pp. xv-xxxvi, 197-204, 207-216.
a desperate pastiche— gaseous, strained, patronizing, self-conscious,
t r it e .
Murderous Angels has a one-track mind which trie s to hide and
magnify it s e lf behind many clumsy masks. I t is composed of two acts,
the f i r s t leading to Lumumba's house arre st, the second ending with
Hammarskjold's fa ta l plane crash. Simulating epic-documentary s ty le ,
there are m ultiple (fourteen) scenes, which alternate between those
with re a lis tic action and dialog, and those with "alienation" devices—
choruses, songs, stichomythia, pantomime, p a tter, and placards. Both
the realism and the alienation are ersatz. The play's thematic sub-
t i t l e , A P o litic a l Tragedy and Comedy in Black and White, is A risto
te lia n mumbo-jumbo. Its plot (the deaths for noble purposes of two
id e a lis tic leaders) and it s r e lig io s ity (the main t i t l e , the Mephisto-
phelian Baron d'Auge; and Hammarskjold' s visions of himself as Pro
methean martyr and God's designate) are a ll half-baked Hochhuth. Its
idea of w it and comedy is th ird -ra te Shaw and labored d iale c t humor.
Its vast expository stretches are Socratic cutenesses, its staging
style fancy sham-Piscator. These and other cribbed techniques are
meant to give the illu s io n of stature and variety to O'Brien's lim ite d ,
unvarying aim: to explain the facts and surmises about this story and
to persist in explaining t i l l the fin a l curtain. The c lu tte r of bor
rowed devices, rather than enhancing, l i t t e r the way to audience
acceptance.
Specifics:
The s u b title , A P o litic a l Tragedy and Comedy in Black and White,
201
is a mongrelized falsehood, fo r i t is not tragedy or comedy, nor even
black and white. Its main t it u la r character, Hammarskjold, may be
tragedy's elevated figure who fa lls because of personality flaws, but
Hammarskjold arouses l i t t l e sympathy, fe a r, or any other emotion. He
is a messianic machine, methodical and cold. The other "angel,"
Lumumba, is largely a figure out of satyr-comedy--dancing, drinking,
swaggering, ru ttin g . The play, however, is not much of any kind of
comedy, classic or contemporary, hard as i t tr ie s . Two or three lines
approximately Shaw's forensic mischief, lik e
POLYCARPE [White Monsignor of E liz a b e th v ille ]: Godefroid Munongo
. . . .[is ]a disgusting bloodthirsty blackguard . . And not
even a Christian.
AUGE [Corporate manager]: Come, my Lord, i t should be consoling
to you to fin d one disgusting, blood-thirsty blackguard who
doesn't happen to be a C h ristian .'
Otherwise we must make do with such fake repartee as
POLYCARPE: He [Hammarskjold] makes me sick!
2
AUGE: One priest seldom thinks well of another,
and with what amusement there is in rib-nudging foreign accents:
ZYBRE [French sp ecialist in subversive warfare]: F irs t you b it
pipple.
TAM W ORTH [a Board Chairman]: B it Pipple?
AUGE: Beat people.
ZBYRE: You pay black pipple to b it other black pipple--any black
pipple beating other black pipple w ill do. . . . And you go
on b ittin g pipple and asking them where is order and b ittin g
harder. . . . Above a ll you gentlemen w ill not hesitate to
use pepper.
lO 'Brien, Murderous Angels, production s c rip t, 1-2-17.
2lbid.
202
LARGE-WHITE [a Managing D irector]: Pepper?
AUGE: Paper. He believes we have influence over media of public
opinion.
ZYBRE: Yes. Pepper and raddio. . . J
The rest of the s u b title , " . . . Black and White"--and the author's
appended commentaries--announce the goal of exposing whites' age-old
bigoted exploitation of blacks. Yet the play abandons this purpose
early in Act I for the sake of one smart scene-ending lin e . Auge, the
cartels' master s tra te g is t, forces the prejudiced, stru ttin g Polycarpe
to accept a menial part in the plan to discredit Lumumba by manipu
lating Hammarskjold.
POLYCARPE: You can s t i l l afford to be a ra c is t, I suppose.
AUGE (With d ig n ity ): You are mistaken. I have never been a
ra c is t. I have never despised black men more than I do
white ones.2
One wonders how blacks would feel to learn that white imperialism is
not racial discrimination a fte r a l l , but only a case of eg alitarian
misanthropy.
The play treats its audience as i f they were d u ll-w itte d and
easily impressed. Expository gimmicks that are already cliches are
repeated again and again, and others, less fa m ilia r, recur so often
they become new cliches.
Over and over, chummy ironies are confided to the audience.
BO NHAM [white specialist on A frica ]: W ell, of course, . . .
[Lumumba's independence] would be independence to be . .
w e ll, independence to be . .
^ Ib id ., II-5-30 . 2Ib id ., 1-2-22.
203
AUGE: Independent; which, of course, cannot be allowed.!
1ST REPRESENTATIVE [o f Hammarskjold, to audience]: . . . . Techni
c a lly , our mission is to extend m ilita ry assistance to the
Government o f the Congo at its in v ita tio n . For the moment . . .
this assistance must take the form of bringing down the govern
ment. 2
Opportune telegrams are received and read aloud. A radio pro
gram fo rtu ito u sly broadcasts needed information. Timely telephone caTTs
are answered by companions of the intended p a rties, so that the calls
may be relayed aloud.
Scene a fte r scene has one person asking another a festoon of
leading questions. One such sequence follows, with Hammarskjold1s
replies omitted; D iallo Diop, Hammarskjold's confidential assistant, is
the in terlocutor.
You w ill? Or the Americans w ill? . . . .
(Sardonically) And why use your freedom this way?
(Seriously) What has God got to do with it?
(Incredulously) God in the man you murdered?
(In revulsion) Your Isaac? Patrice Lumumba?
(Same tone) And you? . . . .
(Puzzled) To reunify the Congo?
The Church?
. . . then you're the Pope? g
Jesus.1 Dag, you're out of your mind!
Nor is i t a problem i f a character f a ils to draw out another by
not asking questions--speakers (usually Hammarskjold) simply monologize
lo f t ily .
HAMMARSKJOLD [to Diop, ju s t a fte r one of those convenient phone
c a lls ]: . . . . I cannot now turn back, because I would seem
to do so at his [Lumumba's] command. To turn back in these
1 I b id ., 1-1-3. 2Ib id ., 1-7-50. 3Ib id ., 11-4-17,18.
204
conditions would lower the prestige and authority of the Office
of the Secretary-General, and so weaken the defenses of peace.
The gate has closed behind m e and I must go forward. I do i t
with the darkest foreboding, but I can do nothing e ls e .1
LUM UM BA [to Madame Rose, his (fic tio n a l) white m istress]: . . . .
I t 's true, Rose, my closeness to the people is my strength: m y
only strength. But to keep i t I have to act as they expect a
leader to act. . . . When Hammarskjold humiliated me, I had to
do something big. . . . You're a gambler's m oll, Rose, whether
you lik e i t or not, and i t 's no use te llin g your gambler he
oughtn't to play cards or that he ought to get better ones
Perhaps the epic staging and scenic devices were meant to be
entertaining as well as enlightening; they are, instead, pretentious
and condescending. In act I , scene 1, amid a large map, a movie screen,,
a mottoed triumphal arch, and factional tables id e n tifie d with signs,
assembled seated characters ris e and form "the two hemicycles [semi
circ u la r groupings] of a chorus."
1ST HEMICYCLE: Are they [Hammarskjold and Lumumba] strong men?
AUGE: That is what we are about to see . . . .
1ST HEMICYCLE: Have they come from the ends of the earth?
BONHAM: One of them ce rtain ly has . . . .
1ST HEMICYCLE: W ill they come face to face?
AUGE: That is ce rtain ly the intention. . . .
1ST HEMICYCLE: Is there neither East nor West?^
This sort of thing goes on for three pages here and s im ila rly elsewhere.
I f Murderous Angels would appear to have had so much rig h t going
11b id ., 1-4-33. 2Ib id ., 1-5-44.
3Ib id . , 1-1-9, 10, 11.
205
fo r i t — a subject ideal fo r the genre, and a distinguished author-
critic-polem icist-diplo m at—why did i t go so wrong? I t could be said
that whatever else O'Brien is , he is not a playwright. But O'Brien's
fa ilu res in Murderous Angels have a special character.
I t would seem th at for a ll O'Brien's active involvement in
humane causes, he is an e l i t i s t . The unmistakable premise of this play
is that the destinies of two individual leaders are more "tragic" than
the fates of the humbler m illions fo r whom these leaders acted. This
lo rdly view of history carried over into the th eatrical situation , and
O'Brien would not or could not approach with respect the audience's
unseen numbers. Murderous Angels is not a tragedy or a comedy, but a
pomposity. Once again, human beings have been badly served by one who,
with righteous in te n t, held himself higher than his fellows.
An Evening with Richard Nixon— Gore Vidal
In An Evening with Richard Nixon, Gore Vidal is a flashy d irty
fig h te r who moves and punches nimbly, but fouls fo r laughs. Vidal vs.
Nixon is a nasty non-contest: Nixon, though humorless, is easily
Vidal's equal a t low blows, and is Mr. Statesman compared with the
hapless punching bag Vidal has strung up on stage.
The idea fo r the "new a rt form" that Vidal claimed in 1972 to
have invented^ is promising. "I have taken the l i f e of the 37th presi-|
dent— not l i t e r a l l y , of course— from his own words. . . ." 2 "and those
1 Vi d a l, quoted in "Best Bets," ed. Ellen Stock, New York
Magazine, May 1, 1972, p. 46.
2lbid.
206
of others [mother Hannah Milhous Nixon, high school date H arriet Palmer
Hudspeth, Congressman Jerry Voorhis, Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas,
adviser Murray Chotiner, Harry Truman, a Black Soldier, several Stu
dents, reporter Howard K. Smith, Gloria Steinem, and more] . . . .
from the beginning to a few months ago."^ The play is printed in two
typefaces, one for actual statements (unstressed UPPER CASE in th is
c ritiq u e ), and one fo r created dialog (unstressed lower case). Every
Nixon remark and its source are meticulously cited at the back of the
te x t, as is a bibliography of twenty-four books. Vidal wanted to docu
ment s im ila rly the actual statements of "Kennedy, Eisenhower, Agnew,
etcetera, but the cost was prohibitive; th e ir quotations, however, are
o
a matter of public record."
A fter this commendable premise, however, the s c rip t's troubles
soon begin because Vidal held his audience in contempt, apparently lost
fa ith in his original idea, and detested his protagonist. Of his audi
ence, Vidal wrote:
Over the years I have spoken about p o litic s to quite a few
audiences and I'm continually struck by th e ir co llec tive ignorance—
or perhaps lack of memory is a more ta c tfu l way of putting i t .
They don't know who did what la s t week much less ten years ago, and
they don't want to be to ld .3
As for the m aterial, Vidal partitioned i t into two acts, desig
nated a fte r Nixon's economic program as "Phase I" — his childhood to his
"You-won1t-have-Nixon-to-kick-around-any-more" press conference a fte r
being defeated fo r governor of C alifornia in 1962, and "Phase I I " — his
^Vidal, An Evening with Richard Nixon, p. x.
2Ib id . ^ Ib id ., p. ix .
207
move to New York in 1963 up to the American Bar Association's disap
proval of his two Supreme Court nominees in 1971. But Vidal seemingly
so doubted the sufficiency of the verbatim quotes that the passages
incorporating them are penetrated and interspersed with a roughly equal
amount of completely invented narration, commentary, and argument by a
pantheonic chorus of George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and John
Kennedy. The dialog devised for these liv e ly specters has a kind of
slick p la u s ib ility : Washington's— s tilte d , elegant; Eisenhower1 s --
hesitant, malpropic, cranky; Kennedy's— sophisticated, candid, s e lf-
serving. There is no deception in th is ; a ll manufactured lines are
id e n tifie d typographically, as noted, and in the dialog:
WASHINGTON (To the audience): I should remind you at this point
that everything these people say (Points to Nixon and Hannah) they
actually said . . . . Nothing is invented.
KENNEDY Except u s .1
Two of the ex-Presidents— Washington and Eisenhower— are ill-u s e d , how
ever, and the stage-Nixon, the play's nominal protagonist, is eclipsed
by his mock-predecessors.
Except when denouncing Eisenhower and Kennedy, Washington is
prim arily a characterless narrator, or "emcee" as the play puts i t .
The treatment of Eisenhower exemplifies a basic Vidal technique— i f a
public figure fa ils to respond s a tis fa c to rily to V idal's opinions, he
is reduced by Vidal in w riting to a figure of derision. So the shade
of Eisenhower is a mild retardate who can't remember anyone's name, is
peevishly vain, has no use fo r newspapers, reads h a ltin g ly , and clings
1 Ibid. , p. 8.
208
to his putter lik e a lo llip o p . This device may get Vidal a few
snickers, but i t hardly corrects the voters' "collective ignorance" by
which Vidal is "continually struck." Kennedy comes o ff somewhat bet
te r, perhaps because Vidal needs a spokesman, and perhaps because Ken
nedy's persona embodies V idal's own public image: a ris to c ra tic , fas
tid iou s, d ire c t, t a r t , ironic. Kennedy is occasionally given lines of
modest patrician w it:
JOHNSON'S VOICE OVER EVERY TIME I STOP THE BOMBING OF NORTH VIET
NAM, THEY RUN THOSE TRUCKS OF THEIRS U P M Y ASS.
KENNEDY A very tempting thing to do.
JOHNSON'S VOICE OVER I GOT EARPHONES IN M O SC O W AND MANILA, EAR
PHONES IN RANGOON, AND EARPHONES IN HANOI AND ALL I HEAR O N THEM
IS "FUCK YOU, LYNDON JOHNSON."
KENNEDY Much my own sentiment.
WASHINGTON Nixon attempts to inspire.
KENNEDY I'm a ll ears.1
A dditionally, Vidal's Nixon— both the trumped-up buffoon and the docu
mented Babbitt-Hyde--cannot quite hold the stage against the mythic f ig
ures that Eisenhower and Kennedy have become, even the caricatures of
them fobbed o ff by An Evening.
As i f this gratuitous reduction of Nixon were not enough, these
ostensibly background characters--Washington, Eisenhower, and Kennedy--
are the principals in a continuing focal debate from which Nixon is
wholly excluded. Washington charges that the United States, once.a
O
"unique people engaged in a unique p o litic a l experiment," has become
under Eisenhower and Kennedy a degenerate m ilit a r is t empire. Eisen-
^ b id ., p. 81. ^Ibid., p. 95.
209
hower protests that he and Kennedy were powerless in the face of events
not th e ir making, and that Washington had the advantage of starting
completely fresh. Kennedy talks about his desire fo r a ju s t society
and quotes Pericles on the danger of le ttin g empires go. Washington
loses patience with them and with what they have done in America's
name. At play's end, Kennedy traces America's f a ll to Nixon; Eisen
hower says they are a ll to blame, and
(Then, suddenly, ju b ila n t music: Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy
grab hands g aily as the cast runs onstage, and to a happy jazzy
version of the national anthem, they dance while on the screen "by
the rockets' red glare" we see bombs exploding in Asia, the flag
in shreds, as the curtain f a l l s ) *
The three former presidents return several times to Washington's
charges of " . . . a lost war. A declining economy. A b itte r
2
p o lity . ." Every one of these serious exchanges lasts for pages at
a time, and during each, Nixon vanishes from the play as completely as
i f he had never been in i t . I t is e n tire ly proper fo r a play to pre
sent the larger conflicts raised by its original situation. I t is
another thing to eliminate the protagonist e n tire ly from those con-
f li c t s .
What Vidal has actually done is to w rite and try to unite two
separate, individ ually d eficient plays. The g ra ft does not take, be
cause neither supplies what the other lacks. The Washington-Eisenhower-f
Kennedy play is not re a lly about them, but about America's destructive
decline, and Vidal uses th e ir names to speak his mind. The Nixon play
is about Nixon, whom Vidal portrays as a figure f i t fo r rid ic u le and
h b id ., p. 133. 2Ib id ., p. 135.
210
revulsion, but certainly not as one for the expression worthwhile of
ideas. Nixon's character cannot give personalities to his antecedents'
ventriloquized voices, and the Washington-Eisenhower-Kennedy debates
do not f i l l Nixon's in telle ctu a l void.
As i f to perversely compensate fo r the to tal non-existence of
his t i t l e character in pivotal areas of the play, Vidal has busied
Nixon with lots of servile and slapstick business while he is on stage.
These clownish bits further t r iv ia liz e the th eatric al character, and
rather than hurting the real Nixon, enhance him. Nixon sits at a desk
expertly mashing potatoes, watching in te n tly as various characters
recount his youth; he stops mashing g ra te fu lly only when Washington
permits him to. At college "(Nixon [dressed throughout the play in
blue business s u it and t i e ] begins to scamper about, throwing imaginary
b a lls , trying to catch— and missing them)" ; ^ " (Nixon charges about un-
coordinatedly) ," is tackled by a student, gets up, is tackled again—
3
"fa lls with a crash," gets up gamely, is tackled and fa lls again—
"COACH W E USED DICK FQR PURPOSES OF D U M M Y TACKLING . . . . (Nixon gets
4
up; is tackled again)." Nixon, having donned a naval cap in one
sequence, continues to wear i t inappropriately in la te r episodes; "Get
out of that uniform, schmuck!," he is told..5 He "jogs around the stage,
£
getting ready fo r the big game [his f i r s t Congressional campaign],1
1 Ib id ., p. 12. 2Ib id ., p. 13. 3Ibid.
4lbid.
5Ib id ., p. 38. "Schmuck" is a Yiddish vernacularism, fig u ra
tiv e ly meaning "fool," li t e r a l l y , "penis."
5V idal, An Evening with Richard Nixon, p. 21.
and carries a long-poled b u tte rfly net which he drops over Pat's and
Agnew's heads whenever they say something dumb. This humor, i f th at is
what i t is , is enough to make even an anti-N ixonite wince. I t is a
paler version of the character abuse fo r which Vidal deprecates Nixon.
Where documented derogatory material about a disapproved char
acter is not available, but rumor is , Vidal resorts to unsupported
insinuation: KENNEDY . . . . (To the audience) Eisenhower wanted to
run as early as 1948 but General Patton's widow scared him o ff. You
see, she had these le tte rs and . . (Eisenhower looks ready fo r a
stroke . . . . The question of V idal's tactics is no tangential
m atter, for he has correctly chosen to include Stevenson's comment
about Nixon's jobbery during the f i r s t Stevenson-Eisenhower campaign:
STEVENSON . . . . [ I ] MAKE THE POINT THAT THE MISTRUST, THE
INNUENDOS, THE ACCUSATIONS WHICH THIS "CRUSADE" IS EMPLOYING,
THREATEN NOT MERELY THEMSELVES, BUT THE INTEGRITY OF OUR INSTI
TUTIONS.2
Vidal stipulates a number of adroit epic-documentary technical
e ffe c ts — loudspeaker voice-overs (real and f ic t it io u s ) , and s t i l l and
moving pictures. At times, these projections merely duplicate or
illu s tr a te the spoken words: KENNEDY . . . . THE FORCES FIGHTING FOR
FREEDOM IN EXHILE AND IN THE MOUNTAINS OF CUBA SHOULD BE SUSTAINED AND
ASSISTED . . . . (Shots of Castro and Che on the screen. G uerillas
arming)"3 More often, the effects succinctly v iv ify and document the
play:
^ Ib id ., p. 19. 2Ib id ., p. 35.
3Ib id ., pp. 54, 55.
212
WASHINGTON . . . . [On] July 5, 1951 . . . Nixon signed a lease
. . . on a house in Washington . . . . (The house, then the deed,
appear on the screen) agreeing that he would never (Washington
squints at the deed and reads the actual te x t) "SELL, LEASE, O R
RENT THE PROPERTY TO ANYONE OF NEGRO BLOOD, O R ANY PERSON OF THE
SEMITIC RACE WHICH INCLUDES ARMENIANS, JEWS, HEBREWS, PERSIANS,
AND SYRIANS."!
V idal's original idea, however— using Nixon's actual words to
expose him— remains the best one; nothing Vidal has added is more
damaging to Nixon than Nixon's own statements. With these, V idal's
Nixon exposes himself as a morbid p o litic a l vampire who survives by
deceiving, destroying and contaminating others. Examples of recurring
strains in the Nixon pattern:
The lie :
When he f i r s t runs for Congress, his campaign lite ra tu re te lls how he
"FOUGHT IN DEFENSE OF HIS COUNTRY IN THE STINKING M UD AND JUNGLES OF
THE SOLOM ONS [while his opponent, "CONGRESSMAN VOORHIS, STAYED SAFELY
BEHIND THE FRONT IN WASHINGTON"]. . . ," and in his 1952 "Checkers"
speech, answering charges of accepting a slush fund, he coyly boasts
that " . . . . I W ENT TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC. I GUESS I'M ENTITLED TO
A COUPLE OF BATTLE STARS. I GOT A COUPLE OF LETTERS OF COMMENDATION
BUT I W A S JUST THERE W H EN THE BO M BS W ERE FALLING." Washington points
out, however, that Nixon was setting up cargo bases behind the lin es,
O
and was never in combat.
The se lf-p u ffery and fear-and-smear issues that avoid discussion
of real issues:
In his f i r s t senatorial campaign, Nixon (though "ADVISED NOT TO TALK
^ Ib id ., p. 31. ^ Ib id ., pp. 21-22, 38, 18.
213
ABOUT COMMUNISM"), accuses his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, of
appeasing Communism in Asia, labels her "The Pink Lady," and, when he
wins the election, says, "I NEVER SAID THAT HELEN DOUGLAS W A S A C O M
MUNIST. . . . FRANKLY, I HAD HOPED COMMUNISM W O ULD NOT BE AN ISSUE IN
THE CAMPAIGN."1
Perhaps the most ominous of the play's longer Nixon quotations
are his own account of his Vice-Presidential goodwill v is it to Caracas,
and news reports of his meeting with demonstrating students a fte r his
Cambodian invasion. These incidents reveal Nixon's frightening behav
io r under hostile pressure--almost out o f control when he believes him
s e lf in complete command, and most dangerous when he is trying hardest
to charm.
At Caracas:
NIXON'S VOICE OVER THIS W A S NOT M Y FIRST EXPERIENCE IN FACING A
COMMUNIST-LED GANG. (Pat and Dick move slowly, apprehensively, as
the mob shouts "Muera Nixon.'") TAKE THE OFFENSIVE. S H O W N O FEAR.
D O THE UNEXPECTED BUT D O NOTHING RASH. I FELT THE EXCITEMENT OF
BATTLE AS I SPOKE BUT I HAD FULL CONTROL OF M Y TEMPER AS I LASHED
OUT AT THE MOB.
NIXON (Shouts) YO U ARE COW ARDS, YO U ARE AFRAID OF THE TRUTH! YO U
ARE THE W ORST KIND OF COW ARDS!
NIXON'S VOICE OVER I S A W BEFORE M E A WEIRD-LOOKING CHARACTER W H O SE
BULGING EYES SEEMED TO M ERGE WITH HIS MOUTH AND NOSE IN O NE DISTOR
TED BLOB. HE LET FLY A W A D OF SPIT WHICH CAUGHT M E FULL IN THE
FACE. (Nixon wipes his face) I FELT AN ALMOST UNCONTROLLABLE
DESIRE, URGE, TO TEAR THE FACE IN FRONT OF M E TO PIECES. (The
guard has started to drag the man o f f ) AS I S A W HIS LEGS G O BY, I •
1 Vi dal, An Evening with Richard Nixon, p. 27, from William
Costello, The Facts About Nixon, an Unauthorized Biography (New York:
The Viking Press, 1960), p. 63, and V idal, An Evening with Richard
Nixon, p. 30, from Stewart Alsop, Nixon and Rockefeller: A Double
P o rtra it (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 196.
AT LEAST HAD THE SATISFACTION OF PLANTING A HEALTHY KICK O N HIS
SHINS. (Nixon kicks the man's shins) NOTHING I DID ALL DAY M ADE
M E FEEL BETTER.1
With the students, at the Lincoln Memorial:
NIXON [shaking the stunned young people's hands]. . . I K N O W YO U
THINK W E ARE A BUNCH OF SONS OF BITCHES . . ( Loud agreement) I
K N O W YO U W ANT TO GET THE W A R OVER. SURE YO U CAM E HERE TO DEM ON
STRATE AND SHOUT YOUR SLOGANS O N THE ELLIPSE. THAT'S ALL RIGHT.
HAVE A G O O D TIME IN WASHINGTON, AND DON'T G O A W A Y BITTER.
STUDENT MR. PRESIDENT, W E C O M E FRO M A VERY UPTIGHT UNIVERSITY.
NIXON WHICH ONE?
STUDENT SYRACUSE.
NIXON HOW'S THE FOOTBALL TEAM DOING THIS YEAR? (Nixon moves on.
Eyes down) W HERE ARE YOU FROM ?
STUDENT CALIFORNIA.
NIXON GET IN ANY SURFING THIS SPRING?
SECOND STUDENT (To the audience) W E REACTED AS IF HE W A S MAD, YO U
KNOW , LIKE HE NEEDED HELP. I M EAN I W A S IN JUST UTTER DISBELIEF.
I THINK HE JUST NEEDS A REST. YO U KNOW , MAYBE THAT'S THE NICEST
W A Y TO PUT IT. . . . HE'S JUST IN A FO G . . . .
THIRD STUDENT (To the audience) HE SEEMED VERY TIRED AND NERVOUS,
AND, YOU KNOW , HE W A S ALL LEANING OVER, AND HE W A S LOOKING AT THE
FLOOR . . . AND HE SEEMED VERY SCARED, REALLY . .
FIRST STUDENT (To the audience) HE JUST KEPT SAYING "HAVE A
REALLY NICE DAY, HAVE A REALLY NICE TIME," AND THEN H E SAID THERE
WOULDN'T BE ANY TROUBLE, WHICH W A S A BLATANT LIE, SINCE HE GASSED
ALL THE PEOPLE AT THE MONUMENT . . 2
^Vidal, An Evening with Richard Nixon, p. 49, from Nixon, Six
Crises (Garden C ity, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co.), pp. 201, 202, 204.
^Vidal, An Evening with Richard Nixon, pp. 118-119. "The
sources for the muddled meeting at the Memorial beginning with ' I K N O W
YOU THINK W E ARE A BUNCH OF SONS OF BITCHES' and ending with 'HE JUST
KEPT SAYING "HAVE A REALLY NICE DAY"' are: the New York Times, 5-10-70;
Time, 5-18-70; Hard Times, June 15-22, 1970." V idal, An Evening with
Richard Nixon, p. 155.
215
Vidal may be rig h t about the public's deliberate amnesia. They'
heard about Watergate before overwhelmingly reelecting Nixon, but fo r
whatever th e ir reasons, preferred not to think about i t . More recently,
public protest over the Senate Watergate telecasts forced two of three
networks a day to cancel th e ir liv e coverage and restore the regular
schedule of game shows and soap operas.
But w illfu l forgetfulness is not the only explanation. As An
Evening shows, of the fiv e cited major episodes, four— his f i r s t Con
gressional election, the Nixon-Douglas campaign, the "Checkers" speech,
and the Caracas confrontation--were Nixon triumphs. The public had not
forgotten; they liked what they saw.
Like its subject, the play has several schizoid problems. I t
is scholarly and sophomoric, methodical and sleazy. I t wants us to
take Nixon seriously and to shrug him o ff. An Evening with Richard
Nixon is done. The second four years are ju s t beginning.
Our Wars
The Deputy--R o lf Hochhuth, translated by Richard and Clara Winston
The Investigation— Peter Weiss, translated by Jon; Swan "and "UluV
Grosbard
Pueblo--Stanley Greenberg
The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine--Daniel Berrigan, text prepared for
production by Saul L e vitt
XA: A Vietnam Primer--Michael Monroe, in conjunction with the Pro-
Visional Theatre Collective^
■Gladys Carmichael, Marshall Clymer, Diana DeTar, Deborah
216
North Vietnamese doctors and o ffic ia ls report that . . . since
April . . . . U. S. planners have opted for . . . new bombs which
represent a culmination of anti-personnel technology developed over
the la s t decade.
The f i r s t is the Rockeye m issile, which, unlike any of its pre
decessors, is capable of penetrating underground shelters where
most of the population takes refuge . . . . Upon impact i t breaks
into thousands of tin y slivers of hot steel which, traveling at
high speeds, lodge deep in the body. Doctors in Hanoi say that
wounds caused by Rockeye splinters are extremely d if f ic u lt to
diagnose--and frequently resu lt in major infections that cause
limbs to be amputated and stomach wounds to require major opera-
tions.
Flechettes are small steel nails with protruding fins on one
end, designed to enlarge the wound as they enter the bod.y . . . .
Flechettes peel o ff the outer tissue, shred internal organs, lodge
in blood vessels deep in the body, and are more d if f ic u lt to
remove than any other anti-personnel device. Recently, a newer
flech ette with a bifurcated point was developed to increase
internal damage. 1
— Fred Branfman, "What Kinds of Weapons Do W e Drop on Hanoi?"
Bill.y Graham, the moral leader and friend of Presidents, was
asked by Newsweek's Jane Whitmore how he f e l t about Mr. Nixon's
resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam. His unpublished reply:
" . . . the whole world has a great deal of violence going on which
doesn't occupy the headlines. There are many people being k ille d
in th is country by drunken drivers and crime. Man is prone to
violence and there w ill be no cessation of th a t, not u n til the
Christ of our Kingdom comes." But what of the bombing? "I de
plore the suffering and the k illin g in the war and I pray i t can
be ended as soon as possible. But we also have to re a liz e that
there are hundreds of thousands of deaths attributed to smoking . . 1 1
— "Quote of the Week," New R e p u b lic ?
Dawson, Elinor Graham, Larry Hoffman, Joe Hudgins, B ill Hunt, Steven
Kent, Oleta Hale, Candace Laughlin, Michael Monroe, Barry Opper, Michael
Carlin Pierce, John Sefick, Richard Serpe, Norbert Weisser, F ritz i Win-
nick.
^The Washington Post, December 24, 1972, p. D4. Branfman "is
director of Project Air War, a research center on American bombing in
Indochina." New York Times, December 30, 1972, p. 21.
^January 6 and January 13 [combined issue], 1973, p. 11.
217
The Deputy--Ro1f Hochhuth
translated by
Richard and Clara Winston
On the surface, The Deputy's story is that of Pope Pius X111s
refusal ever to condemn openly the mass murder of the Jews by the
Germans. This play created "a storm . . . [th a t] is almost certainly
the largest ever raised by a play in the whole history of the drama.
The words and emphasis are Eric Bentley's, from his compilation of
O
th irty -fo u r commentaries chosen "out of thousands' w ritten in the
year following the 1963 world premiere in Germany. The specific sub
je c t of sixteen of those a rtic le s is the Pope. C ritic Tom Driver
wrote " . . . half the public shouts angry defenses of the Pope and
q
Church. . . .' This focus on the Pope, although understandable,
negates almost wholly the play's content and purpose; the contention
here is that "the deputy" is not solely, nor even c h ie fly , P ace lli.
I t is also believed here that The Deputy, the f i r s t work to be called
a "documentary play"— a term rejected by Hochhuth^— surpasses a ll
others of the genre, even Hochhuth's own subsequent Soldiers.
The Deputy's structure is an in tric a te panorama. Requiring
six to seven hours i f performed in f u l l , i t has fiv e separately named,
cumulative, yet in te rn a lly complete acts; ten d iffe re n t locales; and
fo rty -fiv e characters. Despite this epic abundance and complexity, the
^Bentley, The Storm over THE DEPUTY, p. 8. ^ Ib id ., p. 10.
^Driver, "The Meaning of Silence," in Bentley, The Storm over
THE DEPUTY, p. 28, reprinted from The Reporter Magazine.
^Above, pp. 182-183.
218
play is p ainfully lucid and inexorable.
The synopsis:
Act I: "The Mission": August 1942
Scene 1. B erlin. Afternoon. The Papal Legation.
Father Riccardo Fontana, S. J ., a promising young priest from
a wealthy fam ily, has been assigned to Berlin as aide to the Nuncio.
SS Obersturmfuhrer (Lieutenant) Kurt Gerstein bursts into the Nuncio's
chamber and pleads with him to t e ll the Pope of the horrors committed
by the Nazis against the Jews. Gerstein gives facts, fig u res, places,
names. The Nuncio is moved but alarmed. Unable to make Gerstein
leave, the Nuncio walks out, propelling Riccardo with him. Before the
door closes, Riccardo te lls Gerstein he w ill find him.
Scene 2. A Berlin suburb. Same evening. A spacious game c e lla r.
A cross-section o f German business e lite and m ilita ry , includ
ing Adolf Eichmann and the Doctor, are bowling and partying. The
Doctor
is extremely charming. . . . [but] has the stature of Absolute
E v il—fa r more unequivocally than H itle r, whom he no longer even
bothers to despise—which is his a ttitu d e toward a ll members of
the human ra c e .'
They are served by Helga, a ttra c tiv e , young, blonde, h alf waitress,
half hostess. As the bowlers get drunker and louder, Gerstein, who is
one of th e ir number on other occasions, enters. He convinces an
i n i t i a l l y suspicious Eichmann of the reasons for the fa ilu re of Ger-
stein's experiments to find lethal gases for prisoners. An A llie d a ir
raid sends everyone to cover and blows out the lig hts.
^Hochhuth, The Deputy, p. 31.
219
Scene 3. B erlin. Next morning. Gerstein's apartment.
Gerstein is repairing the damage done to his apartment by la s t
night's a ir attack. Jacobson, a Jew Gerstein is hiding, is sweeping up
the l i t t e r . Footsteps outside. Jacobson flees to an adjoining room.
The Doctor enters. A fter subtly testing and frightening Gerstein, but
apparently s a tis fie d , the Doctor leaves. The doorbell rings again. I t
is Riccardo. He and Gerstein discuss Gerstein's dangerous dual l i f e .
Gerstein cannot leave Germany and reveal what he knows fo r fear of the
consequences to his fam ily. Riccardo agrees to give his cassock and
passport to Jacobson, who may then escape Germany. For a moment, Ric
cardo holds Jacobson's yellow star against his cassock over his heart.
Act I I : "The Bells of St. Peters” :
Rome--The Fontana Palazzo:
February 1940
Count Fontana, Riccardo's fa ther, has been made an Apostolic
Privy Chamberlain to the Pope in honor of Fontana's many financial
services to the Vatican. Riccardo attacks, and Fontana defends the
Pope's silence about the Nazis' acts against the Jews. The Cardinal
enters, and the argument continues. Fontana moves with delicate tact
to Riccardo's view. The Cardinal is not only unpersuaded, he decides
to reassign Riccardo to Lisbon.
Act I I I : "The V is ita tio n "
Scene 1. Rome. Early evening. The Luccani family apartment, in
sight of the Papal Palace. October 1943.
A family of Ita lia n Jews--grandfather, husband, w ife, two
220
children, an infant--have packed to elude the Nazis' seizures of Jews,
which have spread to Rome. They are apprenhended before they can
escape.
Scene 2. Rome. Office of the Abbott of a religious order. Six months
la te r.
The Cardinal emerges from a large wardrobe, delighted with the
intrique of what is actually an entrance-exit to secret rooms which
shelter fugitives from the Nazis. Riccardo and Gerstein enter and beg
the Abbott and Cardinal to urge a public statement by the Pope, now
that Jewish arrests take place beneath his windows. The Cardinal
refuses and leaves. Gerstein suggests the Abbott issue a statement on
Vatican radio in the name of the Pope, who would then be prevented from
disavowing i t . The Abbott is appalled, taking "prevented" to mean
"murdered." Gerstein claims he meant only sabotaging the radio and
blaming the Gestapo. Gerstein departs; fo r a time, Riccardo, growing
more desperate, considers assassinating the Pope and accusing the
Gestapo. The Abbott orders Riccardo out. Riccardo gone, the Abbott
fa lls on his knees.
Scene 3 . Rome. Dawn of the next day. Gestapo headquarters.
Several apprehended Jews, the Luccanis among them, are being
shipped out to Auschwitz. Another is C arlotta, who had converted to
Catholicism for her soldier-fiance/; he had been k ille d before they
could marry, however, leaving her s t i l l a Jew under German law. Ger
stein enters and reports that the Pope himself has objected in w riting
to these arrests. Gerstein almost convinces Gestapo Chief Salzer to
221
release the prisoners on this account. Selzer, about to comply, re
verses himself when word comes that the protest was only a bishop's
le tte r .
Act IV: " II Gran R ifiuto" ["The Great
Refusal1 1 ]: Rome--A throne room in the
Papal Palace: Shortly a fte r Act I I I ,
Scene 3
Fontana has come with the Cardinal to present two large checks
to the Pope, who thanks him for this "Peter's pence." Riccardo arrives,
and now appeals d ire c tly to the Pope fo r an o ffic ia l denunciation of
H itle r's imprisonment and extermination of the Jews. The Pope d rily
refuses, citin g a possible schism among Catholics, and the need to
maintain Germany as a buffer against S talin and communism. Pressed
fu rther by both Riccardo and Fontana, Pius agrees to dictate a state
ment, but i t is so general and fig u rativ e that i t cannot be interpreted
as referring to the Jews. Riccardo abruptly e x its , saying "God shall
not destroy His Church/ only because a Pope shrinks from His summons."^
Act V: "Auschwitz, or Where Are You God?"
Scene 1. A darkened fre ig h t car.
Against the monotonous pounding of tra in wheels, three Jewish
deportees speak Monologues of th e ir thoughts and feelings as they come
to the death camp. They are The Old Man, The Woman, and The G irl.
Scene 2. Early morning. A guardroom at Auschwitz.
The lig h t throughout is never brig ht, obscured by "'the cloud'
h b id ., p. 220.
222
which hung continually over Auschwitz."1 the place is , even r e a li s t i
c a lly , dreamlike and ghostly. Outside, the smoke and glow of the
fire s is always v is ib le .
Helga, young and extremely good looking, wakes up wearing only
a gym o u tfit. She is now an SS telegraphy aide. She would lik e to
remain fa ith fu l to her fiance, a lieutenant serving as a crematorium
drudge here at Auschwitz. As much as she hates the Doctor, however,
she finds him ir r e s is tib le , and goes to his bed during lunch hours.
The Doctor enters the room; they arrange fo r th e ir lunchtime session.
The Luccani fam ily, accompanied by Riccardo, are deposited
with other deportees at the camp. Riccardo has chosen to become an
internee with the Jews. The Doctor separates him from the Luccanis
and assigns him to crematorium duty.
Scene 3 . Morning, a week la te r. The guardroom.
Gerstein comes to the camp with fake orders to release "the
priest" in his custody. Jacobson, the Jew who had been hidden in Ger-
s tein 's apartment and is now an Auschwitz inmate, recognizes his fo r
mer protector. Riccardo refuses to leave with Gerstein, and persuades
Jacobson to go instead. Riccardo's papers having been found on Jacob
son at his capture, Gerstein realizes that there is no hope for Jacob
son or Riccardo, and that he too is lo st i f he trie s to go through
with his plan. Nevertheless, he agrees to try to get out with Jacob
son. The Doctor discovers them, instantly sees through the ruse, and
has Gerstein arrested. Riccardo seizes Gerstein's pistol and trie s to
shoot the Doctor. Before he can, he is gunned down by guards.
1 Ib id ., p. 227.
223
Riccardo is not yet dead; the Doctor orders him taken to the ovens
a liv e .
The glow of the fire s sinks lower; an announcer on tape b rie fly
recounts the facts of the fin a l year of the gas chambers and of the
freeing of the la s t prisoners of Auschwitz by Russian soldiers.
Despite The Deputy*s prodigies of time, scene, and character,
i t is remarkably unified without seeming obtrusively so. Almost every
person, lin e , place, and prop touches the slaugher of the Jews, fro n t
a lly or in passing. Yet each exists for it s e lf as w ell.
There are four major characters: Riccardo, Gerstein, the
Doctor, and the Pope. The Pope, of course, and the'other three are a ll
based on real people. Riccardo Fontana's name alone is fic titio u s ; he
is "freely drawn a fte r the acts and aims of Provost Bernhardt Lichten-
berg of Berlin Cathedral"^ whose public prayers fo r the Jews sent him
to j a i l , and, at whose own request, was being brought to the Dachau
camp as a prisoner when he died in tra n s it, apparently of natural
causes. Kurt Gerstein actually led the double l i f e depicted in the
play, survived t i l l the A llie s recaptured Paris, and disappeared in a
Paris j a i l . The Doctor is patterned a fte r Dr. Josef Mengele, the
demonic Auschwitz "Angel of Death,"2 who has never been caught.
Since Hochhuth was not lim ited to a single dominant figure's
associates as in Soldiers, there is a vaster scale of subsidiary
^ Ib id ., p. 114.
2"SAYS TORTURE DOCTOR IS IN PARAGUAY," Associated Press dis
patch, Daily News [New York], November 27, 1972, p. 3. : ^ >
224
characters in The Deputy, ranging from upper to lower extremes of the
German m ilita ry and of the Ita lia n clergy and la it y . Hochhuth's vivid ,
and symbolic characterizations in The Deputy, down to the least of
them, are even more evident than in Soldiers. The Scribe, whose only
function is to record the Pope's statement, is
a t a l l , spidery monk with the gauntness of a Gothic painting, who
seems as marvelously servile as a fourth-generation bureaucrat,
and whose exquisite politeness would shame any normal man. He took
his doctorate in Germany with a thesis on the symbol of the l i l y in
the la te Pre-Raphaelite painters. While this aesthetic Benedictine
transforms the prescribed three genuflections into a ritu a l a ll his
own, and then sits down at the console table and takes his pen in
hand, the Deputy of Christ composes his thoughtsJ
An Ita lia n m ilitiam an, who, under German command is helping to round up
the Luccani fam ily, deliberately overlooks the baby he finds hidden in
the back room. The near-cliche of this character and episode is
averted when the same fellow la te r returns to steal the fam ily's coins
and a sculpture. Helga, lik e Soldiers' Helen, is her countrymen.
Helga embodies those average Germans who remained attached to th e ir
ordinary decencies, yet in v ite d , cursed, and clung to the evil that had
seduced them.
Where doubling, the playing of more than one role by a single
actor, is an expedient compromise in some plays, Hochhuth has converted!
i t in The Deputy to a thematic asset. T h irty -fiv e of the fo rty -fiv e
characters are grouped in the cast l i s t by twos, threes, and fours.
Each group is to be performed by the same actor,
fo r recent history has taught us th at in the age of universal m ili
tary conscription i t is not necessarily to anyone's cred it or blame
^Hochhuth, The Deputy, p. 212.
225
--o r even a question of character, which uniform one wears or
whether one stands on the side of the victims or the executioners.
So Jacobson, the German Jewish escapee, is , as w e ll, a "correct"
Ita lia n m ilitiam an, and a German o ffic e r of the day in Auschwitz. Ric
cardo, Gerstein, and the Doctor are the only parts fo r each of three
actors, but Pope Pius X II is also Baron Rutta, scion of the Ruhr a ris
tocracy and high o ffic ia l in the Reich's Armaments Cartel.
The Deputy's dialog, rendered by d iffe re n t translators than
Soldiers1, is both in fe rio r and superior to the second play's. No
character's speech in The Deputy s c in tilla te s lik e C hurchill's.
Richard and Clara Winston found no English equivalents fo r the several
German dialects specified in detail by Hochhuth. Colloquialisms are
consistently clumsy and false: a German o ffic e r orders one Jew to
O
"spit in this Jew's mug." The Doctor, who elsewhere speaks with
repellant flo urish of "piping the s is te r of Sigmund Freud up the
chimney"3 and of scooping out a pearl necklace from a "fa t Jewish
oyster,"4 can do no ' better than promise Helga he w ill not get her
"knocked up."^ On the other hand, the speech styles, as in Soldiers,
but this time fo r many more persons, are ta ilo red to each character.
And with four strong, eloquent men determining the action instead of
S oldiers1 one, powerful debates occur throughout the play. So numerous
are these clashes that The Deputy might have seemed merely a vehicle
1 I b id ., p. 11. 2Ib id ., p. 177. 3Ib id ., p. 72.
4Ib id ., p. 236. 5Ib id ., p. 237.
226
for them, had not Hochhuth created in trin s ic a lly dramatic characters
and situations from which these inform ative, no-quarter disputes spring
naturally. One excerpted example: Riccardo is alone with his fa th e r,
who minutes before was ceremonially honored by the Pope for services to
the Curia. Riccardo has ju s t c ritic iz e d Pius' silence about the Nazis.
Fontana, regarding his new Papal trappings as an a f flic t io n , neverthe
less trie s to defend Pacelli against Riccardo.
FONTANA: How you sim plify' Good God,
do you believe the Pope could suffer to see
even a single man hungry and in pain?
His heart is with the victims.
RICCARDO: But his voice? Where is his voice?
His heart, Father, is of no in terest.
Even Himmler, H itle r's police ch ief,
could not to lerate the sight of his victim s,
so I have been assured.
The orders s i f t down from bureau to bureau.
The Pope does not see the victims;
H itle r does not seem them . .
FONTANA (approaches RICCARDO threateningly) :
Enough— I ' l l cut this conversation short
i f you mention Pius X II and H itle r in the same breath.
RICCARDO: Confederates have to put up with th a t, Father.
Have they not made a pact with one another?!
More than in Soldiers, The Deputy's props, costumes, and sets
are s trik in g , based on fa c t, and as eloquent and ironic as the sharpest
dialog. The Doctor v is its Gerstein's apartment, and "instead of
flowers," presents him with a glass ja r containing the brains of two
Jewish children. The Pope, who w ill wish the best for H itle r's war
against Russia, receives the Fontanas wearing a cassock as white as
"the dove with the olive branch in his coat of arms."3 The Papal
^ Ib id ., p. 100. ^ Ib id ., pp. 69, 70.
3 lb id ,, p. 193.
227
i
reception room is draped in scar!et--symbolizing the readiness to shed
one's own blood for the faith --an d is furnished with gold hassocks and
a throne canopied by scarlet and gold^ — la te r the Pope w ill show less
concern fo r the salughtered Jews than fo r some Vatican investments
jeopardized by the war.
F in a lly , the intimation of high tragedy and of "religion in the
widest possible sense" begins and grows from Gerstein's shocking
entrance in the very f i r s t scene, and remains past the play's conclu
sion. This is so because the key to the play goes beyond the Pope.
Those numerous commentators and audiences, frien d ly or ho stile,
have misread and diminished the play who have concentrated on the Pon
t i f f , or who, lik e Albert Bermel (frie n d ly ), have decided that ''Hoch
huth owes his audiences a 'bigger* Pius, i f only as a worthy adversary
3
fo r Riccardo." Hochhuth could easily have provided that had he wished,
as shown by the sixty-five-page footnoted "Sidelights on History" which
subjoins the play. Moreover, the Pacelli fig ure, alone of the four pro
tagonists, is reduced by being played by an actor with a second role.
Hochhuth clearly intends a smal1er Pius, one that w ill disappoint audi
ence expectations. The audience w ill not be allowed the escapist
luxury of a scapegoat. Christ may have died for man's ancient sins;
Hochhuth w ill not o ffe r the Pope as the new vessel fo r our own un
acceptable urges and acts.
^Ibid. ^Above, p. 191.
^"Understudy fo r The Deputy," Bentley, Storm over THE DEPUTY,
p. 19.
228
The Deputy deliberately does not gather it s e lf to a . summit
confrontation between Riccardo and the Pope, ”11 Gran R ifiu to "— The
Great Refusal— is a grandiose t i t l e fo r the b rie f antic!im actic episode
in which they meet (the en tire act is no longer than several individual
scenes in other acts). The fu rther in fla tio n of the act's t i t l e by
casting i t into Ita lia n makes plain the calculated irony of its bathos.'
The play's true build is re a lly a descent, scene by scene, person by
person, from f i r s t to la s t, steadily taking characters and audience
from th e ir distant comforts of time and te rrito ry to as close as is
th e a tric a lly possible to the fre ig h t cars' windowless crush, the gas
chambers' panic, and the body-furnaces' heat.
Two opposing pairs of men, a p rie s t and a soldier in each, are
caught in this plunge to the p it: Riccardo and Gerstein (who are
central to many more crucial scenes than is the P o n tiff), and the Pope
and the Doctor. Here again translation has hurt the play. The German
t i t l e , Per S te lly e rtre te r, means not only The Deputy, one who acts on
behalf, or in the absence, of a higher power, but also The Representa
tiv e , one who is an example. Not ju s t the Pope, but the Doctor, Ric
cardo, and Gerstein are S te llv e rtre te r.
The Doctor, whose grin is "diabolical" and whose laughter is
"in fe rn a l," is called a "devil" by Helga and Riccardo.^ More com
pletely than Soldiers' Cherwell, the Doctor, who assists in presiding
over The Flames, is the S te llv e rtre te r of Satan. When, in Riccardo's
eyes, the Pope w ill not speak as God's vicar, but becomes instead an
^Hochhuth, The Deputy, pp. 236, 244.
229
example of a ll who remained s ile n t, Riccardo chooses to be S te llv e r
tre te r for Pope and God. Gerstein is S te llv e rtre te r for those good
Germans who accommodated themselves to the Nazi a tro c itie s .
Responding to a critic ism of the play by Albrecht von Kassel,
once a German embassy o ffic ia l in the Vatican,^ Hochhuth wrote, " . . .
no one, and above a ll no German, could expect his neighbor— even i f he
2
were the Pope him self--to become a martyr." Hochhuth said when in te r
viewed that to oppose in ju stice "one needn't be a moral man. I t is
3
enough to do nothing which damages others." Hochhuth is not calling
upon us to sa crific e or transcend ourselves. He is suggesting some
thing fa r more discomfiting. He asks that we do what we reasonably
can. For we are a ll S te llv e rtre te r.
The Investigation --Peter Weiss
translated by
John Swan and Ulu Grosbard
The Investigation is a condensation of the 1964-65 t r ia l in
Frankfurt of those who committed, observed, or survived the murder of
four m illion people between 1941 and 1945 at Auschwitz. I t is one of
^"The Pope and the Jews," in Bentley, Storm over THE DEPUTY, pp.
71-76; from Atlas, June 1963; o rig in a lly published in Die Welt, Ham
burg, April 6, 1963.
2"The Playwright Answers," in Bentley, Storm over THE DEPUTY,
p. 77; from A tlas, June 1963, translated by Herman E. W eller; o rig in
a lly published in Die W elt, Hamburg, April 6, 1963.
% arx, "Interview," in Bentley, Storm over THE DEPUTY, p. 44.
230
the purest documentary plays; "99 per cent"^ of its dialog and few,
terse stage directions are taken from the court records.
At the end of The Deputy's "Sidelights on H istory," Hochhuth
wrote:
But i f the individual can no longer be held responsible, either
because he is no longer in a position to decide or else does not
understand that he must decide, then we have an a lib i for a ll g u ilt.
And that would mean the end of drama. For "there can be no sus
pense without freedom of decision in each given c a s e . "2
Peter Weiss' The Investigation d iffe rs ra d ic ally in technique from The
Deputy. Yet i t is these same issues— the nature of drama, and the pos
s ib ilit y of personal, no-excuse acceptance of resp onsibility— on which
Weiss has staked everything. The Investigation is possibly unequalled
for the fixtures of drama i t lops o ff, and for how audiences are expec
ted to adjust to these losses.
There is no plot. There is only a catalog of the past, divided
into eleven nearly s e lf-s u ffic ie n t "Songs," or cantos. These segments
are made up of Judge's and Attorneys' questions and Witnesses' and
Accused's testimony about the handling of the fle e tin g , doomed
internees. The f i r s t canto te lls of the captives' a rriv al by box car
("The Song of the Platform"). Later sections chronicle th e ir in-camp,
often fa ta l treatment ("The Song of the Swing," "The Song of the Pos
s ib ilit y of Survival," "The Song of the Black W all"). The la s t "Songs"
detail the prisoners' extermination and cremation ("The Song of Phenol",
^Weiss, quoted in O liver Clausen, "Weiss/Propagandist and
Weiss/Playwright," New York Times Magazine, October 2, 1966, p. 132.
^P. 352. Quote attributed by Hochhuth to "Siegfried Melchinger,
Theater du Gegenwart. "
231
"The Song of Cyklon B," "The Song of the Fire Ovens").
There is almost no present action.. Most of the rare curt stage
directions are for defendants: "(The Accused laugh) , '1 "(Accused #17
nods to the witness agreeably)"? some are fo r Witnesses: "4TH WITNESS:
(Remains s ile n t)."^
There is no beginning, middle, and end; there is only middle.
This play-torso starts with the t r ia l underway and an interrogation
already begun. I t stops with the tr ia l s t i l l in progress and the out
come undetermined. There are no s tirrin g summations, no somber ver
dicts. There is ju s t a deliberate redundancy—a defendant re ite ra tin g
a t s lig h tly greater length what other defendants have previously said,
and the listening Accused responding as before.
ACCUSED #1: . . . A ll of us
I want to make that very clear
did nothing but our duty
even when that duty was hard
and even when i t grieved us to do i t
Today
when our nation has worked its way up
a fte r a devastating war
to a leading position in the world
we ought to concern ourselves
with other things
than blame and reproaches
that should be thought of
as long since atoned fo r ,
( Loud approbation from the Accused)
There are no builds, no suspense, no climaxes. The capricious,
penal degradations and slaughter in the f i r s t three quarters of the
play are no less fearful than the systematic wholesale exterminations
iWeiss, The Investigation, pp. 192, 227, 115.
2 lb id ., p. 270.
232
in the last portion. Examples.
"The Song of the
ACCUSED #2:
8TH WITNESS:
JUDGE:
8TH WITNESS:
JUDGE:
8TH WITNESS:
Swing" (the third of the eleven cantos):
In the interest of camp security
i t was essential
to take vigorous measures
against tra ito rs and other harmful elements
F irs t the prisoner had
to s it down on the flo o r
and draw up his knees
His hands were tied in front
and then pushed down over his knees
Then the pipe was raised
and set into the wood frame . . .
I hung with my head down
and the two special-duty prisoners
swung me back and forth . . .
Were you beaten during the questioning
Boger and Dylewski took turns
with the bullwhip
Where did they beat you
On the buttocks
back legs
hands feet
and the back of the head
But they concentrated on
the sexual organs
They especially aimed for them
I lost consciousness three times
and they poured water on me . . .
When they took me down from the swing . . .
I was taken to a cell in Barrack 11 . . .
I don't know
how many days I spent in there
The sores on my buttocks were festering
my te sticles were blue and green
and tremendously swollen
Most of the time I was unconscious
Then I was taken to the
washroom
with a number of prisoners
W e were told to strip . . .
I knew this meant the death sentence . . .
Somebody kicked m e . . .
I was to be taken back to"the cell . . .
Sometimes
one of us did survive
and I 1
am one of those few who did
"The Song of the Bunker Block" (ninth canto):
8TH WITNESS
[hot the same
as in "Song of
the Swing"]: I was sentenced
to 30 times in the standing cell
That meant
punitive hard labor during the day
nights in the standing cell . . .
JUDGE:
8TH WITNESS:
JUDGE:
8TH WITNESS:
How large was a cell
Three fe et square
and about six fe e t high
W as there a window
No
There was an a ir hole up in the corner
an inch and a h alf square . . .
At f i r s t I was alone
The la s t week
There were four of us standing there .
A prisoner sentenced to
the standing c e ll without food
could scream and swear
as much as he wanted
The door was never opened
For the f i r s t fiv e nights
he screamed
Then hunger stopped
and th ir s t took over
He begged
he prayed and he moaned
He drank his urine
and licked the walls . . .
I t took more than two weeks
for him to die
Corpses had to be scraped
out of the standing cells
with iron rods2
1 Ib id ., pp. 80, 85, 86, 88, 89. 2Ib id ., pp. 216, 217, 218.
234
"The Song of the Fire Ovens" (final canto):
JUDGE:
7TH WITNESS:
JUDGE:
7TH WITNESS:
JUDGE:
7TH WITNESS:
How many people were taken down at a time
From one to two thousand people . . .
How long did i t take the gas
to k ill
That depended on the amount used
For reasons of economy usually
a less than adequate amount was poured in
so that the k i11ing
could take as long as fiv e minutes . . .
Did you
see this room a fte r the door
had been opened
Yes
The corpses lay piled on top of each other
near the door and around the columns
Babies children and the sick at the bottom
W om en above them
And at the very top the strongest men
The reason for this
was that the people trampled
and climbed on each other
because the g a s 'in itia lly spread
most th ickly at flo o r level
The people clawing each other
were stuck together
Their skin was torn
Many were bleeding from nose and mouth
Their faces were swollen
and spotted
The heaps of people were befouled
with vomit ■ ,
excrement urine and menstrual blood
As the Witnesses1 numbers may suggest, there are no individu
alized characters. In the play's introductory Note, Weiss called the
nine Witnesses "mere speaking tubes," who "sum up what hundreds ex-
2
pressed." The Witnesses in The Investigation have no tangible
11bid., pp. 250, 255, 256. •Ibid., nofpage.
235
id e n titie s because each is both anonymous and p lu ral. The 1st Witness,,
for instance, is , variously, the stationmaster of the camp railroad
station ("Song of the Platform "), a doctor assigned to immunize camp
personnel against epidemics ("Song of the Camp"), a supervisor of a g ri
cultural operations and la te r a brigadier general ("Song of the Death
of Li 1i T o fle r"), and a magistrate called in to investigate thefts of
g o ld -fillin g s by guards ("Song of the Fire Ovens"). Inmate anonymity
is not only a th eatrical convention, but also a g ris ly fa c t. Because
most prisoners worked at hard labor on a starvation d ie t that provided
about one-fourth the necessary calories, they became drowsy, weak,
emaciated, completely disinterested in a ll external events, and
In this condition . . .
[A prisoner's] memory was so greatly weakened
that frequently he could not
even remember his own name'
"Speaking tubes" also describes others in the t r ia l- - t h e Judge, Prose
cuting Attorney, and Counsel for the Defense, who are, lik e the Witnes
ses, nameless composites. Even the eighteen Accused, said by Weiss to .
p
represent "single and distin ct"^ figures having th e ir actual names, are
separable c h ie fly in the particulars of th e ir pasts; in court, before
us, each acts in unison or interchangeably with the others. Weiss fur-!
ther depersonalizes the defendants by referring to them in the cast
l i s t by number and la s t name ("ACCUSED #7 KADUK"), and, in stage
directions and preceding th e ir lines of dialog, by number only.
^ Ib id ., pp. 46, 47. 2Ib id ., Note, no page.
236
Weiss has anticipated eager or misguided directors, designers,
and actors rushing in to repair a ll these omissions. Forestalling them;
he has stipulated:
In the presentation of this play, no attempt should be made to
reconstruct the courtroom before which the proceedings of the camp
t r ia l took place. . . . Personal experience and confrontation must
be steeped in anonymity. . . . The variety of experiences can, at
most, be indicated by a change of voice or bearing. . . . The
fa c t that they [the accused] bear th e ir own names is sig n ifican t.
. . . Yet the bearers of these names should not be accused once
again in this drama.1
In the very process of massive exclusion, however, Weiss has
added by subtracting. Because a ll the play's action, that is , events
in the th eatrical present, are pared to a minimum, what action that
does remain is more conspicuous. One such action is the Accused's and
Witnesses' lita n y of a lib is for complicity. "I wasn't informed on that
matter"; "W e had so much to do / There wasn't any time to worry about /
things lik e that"; "I only did my duty / Whatever I'm assigned to do /
I do my duty"; "Anyway what could I do / Orders are orders"; " i t [was]
none of our business"; "that was not within my ju ris d ic tio n "; " i t was
orders / There wasn't anything I could do about it ." ^
Another c la rifie d action is the defendants inadvertently con
demning themselves with th eir own denials. A Witness has te s tifie d
that the prisoners called Accused #7 "Professor" or "the Holy Doctor
Kaduck" because he selected hospitalized victims with the crook of his
walking s tick , made them s trip ; run past him, and vault his extended
1 Ib id .
2Ib id ., pp. 4, 5, 7, 18, 19, 59, 64, 92, 149, 192.
237
s tick. Those who touched the stick were taken o ff to be gassed; those
who cleared i t were beaten t i l l they collapsed, told to try again, and ,
were gassed when they fa ile d .
ACCUSED #7: Lies
Lies . . .
Mr Chairman
a ll I want is to liv e in peace . . .
I was a hospital attendant
and my patients loved m e
They can bear me out
Papa Kaduk
th at's what they called m e . . .
Why should I have to pay now
fo r what I had to do then
Everybody else did i t too
So why of a ll people
did they arrest m e^
Weiss also followed the less-is-more principle in his use of
the Witnesses. What might have seemed an unwieldy i f not hopeless
staging problem— 409 witnesses--is stylized into a ta c tic a l advantage
and a thematic metaphor.2 Because each actor-witness is expected to
suggest only barely many anonymous people, attention sh ifts from the
speaker to the substance. And, as in The Deputy's m ultiple casting,
each man and woman endures and in flic t s suffering, is a prisoner and
an agent of the in s titu tio n , is g u iltless and corrupt.
What has Weiss meant to avoid, and what has he hoped to accom-
3
plish with what he himself has called "an extremely d if f ic u lt play,";
one that is so devoid of what theater is understood to provide--plot,
d ttio n , characters, empathic performance, specified set, suspense,
climax, c o n flic t, resolution?
^ Ib id ., pp. 54, 55. 2Above, p. 225-226.
3
Quoted in Clausen, "Weiss/Propagandist/Playwright," p. 133,
^’ ‘ l--v
238
The answers are so apparent and unwelcome that they can be, and
have been, ignored. Weiss did not want us to judge the Nazi defen
dants, nor even to lavish much compassion on the victim s. Both the
evidence in the play, and Weiss' comments t e ll us so. " . . . The
bearers of these [actu al] names should not be accused once again in
this drama.And not only is the word "Jew" never mentioned in the
play, but Weiss has said:
I see Auschwitz as a s c ie n tific instrument that could have been
used by anyone to exterminate anyone. For that m atter, given a
d iffe re n t deal, the Jews could have been on the side of the Nazis.
They, too, could have been the exterminators. . . . Some [o f m y
friends] may have even obeyed orders at Auschwitz. Might I not,
too?
The conclusion seems clear: barred from involvement with the figures
on stage, the audience--and the cast, production personnel, and play-
w right--are turned back on themselves. They are neither to sympathize
with nor to condemn others, but are to equate themselves with the
victim s, and more, with the Accused. Weiss: "Americans le t them
selves be shipped to Vietnam to attack another race. This is what
'The Investigation' is also about.
Will an audience react as Weiss intended? Since there is so
l i t t l e that is "theatrical" about the s c rip t, and since the New York
production was directed by the co-translator of the published play,
Mbove, p. 237.
^Quoted in Clausen, "Weiss/Propagandist/Playwright," pp. 132.
128.
3lb id., p. 133.
2:39
perhaps the New York newspaper reviewers' reactions are admissible
here. I f so, Weiss' gamble— that his "new kind of theatre"^ could
lead to an acknowledgement of resp onsibility—was a fa ilu re .
Norman Nadel of the World-Journal Tribune (now defunct) was
typical of the New York d aily newspaper c r itic s :
Does i t [the play] accomplish its purpose-as theater, or even its
purpose as preachment. . . ? I think not. . . .
The mounting accumulation of agonies does not automatically
produce a mounting drama. Rather, the senses begin to re trea t
from this mass of evidence.
Just as guards and surviving prisoners a t Auschwitz deadened
th e ir s e n s itiv itie s to what was going on— perhaps a refle x action
to save th e ir sanity— the audience begins to build a shock
immunity. The catalogue of in iq u itie s has blunted the shock of
each single in iq u ity .
"The Investigation" doesn't consistently reach us that deeply,
much as we want to be reached.2
Wanting so much to be "reached," Nadel was blind to his own damning
confession— that he, the audience, and the Accused a ll became "just as"
unfeeling about the homicidal a tro c itie s .
Only one reviewer fo r a major New York paper, Robert Pasco!i o f
the weekly Village Voice, understood.
'THE INVESTIGATION' . . . doesn't h o rrify; i t doesn't appall
. . . . i t deadens . . . . [ I wasn't] moved, except occasionally
and b rie fly .
When I realized this I recognized what Weiss was a fte r. He
w ill ho rrify m e at myself, I said. He w ill lin k m e with the
murderers and I w ill be ju s tly indicted. . . . I w ill accuse
m yself.3
11b id ., p. 128.
2'" INVESTIGATION': M O RE HISTORY THAN PLAY," World Journal
Tribune, October 5, 1966, in The New York Theatre C ritic s ' Reviews
27 (1966):281.
3"Je M'Accuse," October 13, 1966, p. 22.
240
The Investigation puts us in a surreal landscape: f l a t , im
passive, yet strewn with disquieting things. W e can wake, and dis
miss the dream; or we can wake, and see the landscape s t i l l around us.
Pueblo--Stanley R. Greenberg
Pueblo, lik e The Investigation, is a staged tribu nal. Where
The Investigation immobilizes, Pueblo o s cillates . The Investigation
is stark; Pueblo is sensuous. The Investigation's Accused are alo o f,
once-villains; Pueblo1s defendant is an anguished near-hero. Green-
berg's Pueblo is precise and spectacular, a consummate expression!'Stic
fusion of form, content, and purpose.
The play relates the t r ia ls — in and out of hearing rooms— of
Lloyd Mark Bucher, commander of the USS Pueblo. In la te 1967, the
Pueblo is a twenty-two year-old in te rn a lly re-equipped Army cargo ship.
Early in January 1968, i t is assigned, ostensibly, "to conduct tech
nical research operations in an ocean environment to support oceano
graphic electromagnetic and related research programs."^ Its real
mission is espionage o ff the Korean cost. On January 23, 1968, the
ship is intercepted by North Korean sea and a ir forces. To save the
lives o f his men, Bucher surrenders his ship; he and the crew are
captured and imprisoned. While interned, the Commander and his men
are tortured and sign confessions. Their release is negotiated a fte r
a year, and the en tire sequence of events is investigated by a Naval
Court of Inquiry and a Congressional committee. The Court of Inquiry
^Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 10.
241
recommends that two of Bucher's ranking superiors be reprimanded, one
of his subordinate officers admonished, and Bucher himself court-
martialed. The Secretary of the Navy formalizes the findings, makes
"no judgement concerning the g u ilt or innocence of these o ffic e rs ,"
and, believing "that they have suffered enough," dismisses a ll charges
against them.1
When Greenberg began working on Pueblo, he believed "the great
mound of information"—
[the crew members' testimony] summarized in the daily press
releases issued by the Navy during the Pueblo Court of Inquiry
. . . . the d a ily , often verbatim news accounts . . . . the o f f i
cial Navy Chronology of the events on board the ship . . . .
transcripts of television interviews . . . . the voluminous
verbatim report of the Pueblo Hearings held by the House Armed
Services Committee . . . . clippings from overseas publications,
lik e the Pyong Yong Times, which reflected the North Korean point
of view . . . [and] other public material^
— could be assembled "in emotionally, p o litic a lly , humanly sig nifican t
ways which would become dramatically viable, truthfu l beyond any truth
possible in a documentary-chronological re c ita tio n , and aesthetically
pleasing, i . e . , beautifu l.^
On f i r s t impression, the events covered have the makings of a
contemporary Greek tragedy. Those involved seem to be doing what duty
and desire demand. When the two motives c o n flic t in the protagonist,
and he chooses desire, he apparently brings humiliation and suffering
^ Ib id . , p. 76.
^"Playwright's Notes," Arena Stage [Washington, D. C.] edition
of P la y b ill, March 1971, pp. 17, 20.
3Ib id ., p. 20.
242
down on himself and others. At the last minute, a live deus ex
machina appears to end the misfortune and impose ju s tic e , as only the
highest powers can.
But Greenberg has not seen or w ritten i t quite this way, as a
modern Aeschylean parable. Instead, Pueblo is a Euripi dean-
expressionist drama. For the d iv in itie s are also trie d , and i t is the
technology and fantasy of the theater that do i t .
The play begins:
High above the stage, lig h t glin ts from a web of horizontal and
vertical surfaces formed by catwalks connected to each other and
to the deck — the flo o r of the stage — by a network of ladders.
There is a sound, a steady throbbing, which could be a turbine or
the beating of a man's heart. I t is continuous.
CO M M ANDER LLOYD M ARK BUCHER enters and stands alone on the empty
deck beneath the web of s te el. He is correct in dress blue with
campaign ribbons and submariner's insignia coloring his chest. HE
has a characteristic stance, feet s lig h tly apart, head lowered.
HE is immobile, lo st in thought, lo st in space. Lost.
HE is illuminated from below, ruby-red lig h t from the engine room
which glows in his memory.
HE becomes aware that up above him, on the catwalks, the ADMIRALS
and the GENERALS are slowly moving into place, s ile n tly ringing
him lik e a halo of authority, looking down on him, preparing to
judge him.
The red glow in ten sifie s. The pulsations become louder and mix
with other sounds, echoes in BUCHER's mind, distorted nightmare
voices combined with sounds of the sea, waves, wind, ship's bells
and almost unidentifiable groans, moans, and a climaxing cry of
te rro r.
LIGHTS FLASH, they are suggestive of flashbulbs, blinding.
Silence.^
1 Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 1.
243
From the f i r s t in stant, then, we experience metaphors of sight
and sound that form the play. W e see the framework of authority that
by various names w ill support, envelop, betray, and brutalize Bucher.
The scaffolds, steps, and levels w ill be, separately and simulta
neously, the Pueblo, i l l - f i t t e d and ill-manned; the Korean prison camp,
torturing and questioning Bucher and crew; and the Naval Court of In
quiry and the House Committee, interrogating Bucher and forcing him to
re liv e his ignominy. The Pueblo's throbbing engine is indeed Bucher's
heartbeat, for next to his own men, the ship was Bucher's l i f e .
BUCHER
She was my f i r s t command!, She was a small ship but only someone
who has been given command can understand the intense pride that
an individual has in , in that ship. I t becomes a part of you, i t
becomes part of every sinew and every, every muscle and every
thought of your l i f e fo r the entire time that you have command.
The Piscatorean red glow from the "engine room," below stage, suggests
blood, l i f e , death, heat, danger--a furnace— crucible, a te rrib le te s t
ing place. The ADMIRALS and GENERALS, c irc lin g Bucher from on high
"lik e a halo," are the gods--creating, commanding, bungling, judging,
covering up. The melange of sounds, cut short by the blinding lights
followed by silence, is nothing less than what w ill be told of Bucher's
and the play's story: the calls of children at a Catholic orphanage
and Bucher's two hundred "brothers" at Boys' Town, where he spent
his youth; the roar of a Nebraska University football crowd— Bucher
loved being a blocker and idolized his coach; the Navy years; the
Pueblo's capture; the bafflement and ordeal of his imprisonment and
tr ia ls ; the shock of n e a r-c la rity ; and the s t i l l ambiguity a t the
"*Ibid., p. 9.
244
end.
The dazzling bulbs are l it e r a lly a "phantom press conference."^
But Bucher is elsewhere also:
[Bucher faces the press conference] . . . . in the fu ll rea liza tio n
that every word HE says is being weighed and judged by the ADMI
RALS and GENERALS above him, by the reporters questioning him,
and by the audience, the public, the w orld.2
Throughout the play, Bucher is simultaneously aboard ship, in
Court, at Committee, in prison camp, and on the theater stage.
Although the play generally moves forward chronologically, a ll places :
and times are being f e l t by Bucher in the present. The audience sees
;
O
everything "from inside the head of Mark Bucher,1 1 0 for whom the past
and present are inseparable and imminent.
And y e t, as in most expressionistic dramas, this is not a
depth study of the protagonist. W e learn a few facts of Bucher's
l i f e from boyhood to the play's present, and we see him in action, but'
he is an oddly insubstantial character. This may be a lim ita tio n of
the material available to Greenberg. More lik e ly , i t is because
Bucher generally allows events to sweep him along without ever re a lly
grappling with or comprehending them, much as he does and w ill con
tinue to follow his Navy's orders. Even Bucher's surrender of the
Pueblo, with its secret documents and m illions of dollars worth of
surveillance equipment, is not a departure from the rules. Navy
1 Ib id ., p. 2. 21bid.
3Dan Isaac, "Theatre of Fact," The Drama Review 15 (Summer
1971):110.
245
regulations A rtic le 0730 specifies that
The Commanding O fficer shall not permit his command to be searched
by any person representing a foreign state nor permit any of the :
personnel under his command to be removed from the command by such
person as long as he has the power to re s is t [emphasis added].!
Bucher is not advised before sailing by the Navy or Defense Department
of North Korean threats to attack invaders of its t e r r ito r ia l waters.
Most of the crew are even less prepared, for they know nothing about
the ship's real mission. Among the Pueblo's de ficien t and malfunc
tioning apparatus which the Navy has refused to replace or repair is a
fa u lty navigational system which can indicate the ship's position as
outside Korean waters while i t is actually within them. In the sub
zero weather at the time of in te rd ic tio n , most of the Pueblo's few
guns are inaccessible under th e ir ice-coated covers. The Pueblo is
fire d upon, Bucher and others are wounded; one man is k ille d . Radio
pleas by the Pueblo fo r help and instructions are received but un
answered from the time the ship
was f i r s t harassed about 1 P.M. . . [ t i l l i t ] docked at Wonsan. . .
8:30 P.M. that night . . .[even though] the en tire afternoon the
USS Enterprise, with Navy je ts on deck, was only 500 miles, or
one hour's flyin g time away.2
Bucher does not have, in the words of A rtic le 0730, "the power to
r e s is t."
Apart from the le g a litie s , Bucher can opt to shoot i t out and
^Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 50.
2W i 11 iam A. McWhirter, "The Pueblo Variously Remembered,"
L ife , August 21, 1970, p. 8.
246;
surely go down with his ship and crew, denying the Koreans the con
fid e n tia l papers and the chance to get confessions. Here Bucher's
sense-memories of Boys' Town and his football coach and team, and his
paternal love fo r his crew, win over his duty to the Navy. He prefers
surrender to seeing his boys die. So there is this one marvelously
personal and fa te fu l choice; otherwise, Bucher remains a strangely
in d istin c t fig ure, acted upon rather than acting. He is an Everyman,
a Mr. Zero, a W illy Loman with an in s tin c t for survival rather than
suicide.
Most of Bucher's "boys" are expressionistic characters, too,
silhouettes v irtu a lly indistinguishable from one another. Some have
names (LACY, SCHUMACHER, T. HARRIS, S. HARRIS), others only ranks'or
functions (OFFICER, RADIO OPERATOR, SEAMAN, SIGNALMAN). The Korean
captors are the stock oriental v illa in s of Hollywood film s. The
Korean commander, called "SUPER C," is s h r il l, barbarous, implacable,
and speaks that useful stereotype, English that is fa u lty enough to
stamp i t foreign, but implausibly good enough to allow the drama to
continue. As Isaac points out, however, "this description . . . is
based e n tire ly on the testimony that Bucher and his crew had given to
o f f ic ia lly appointed investigation committees immediately upon th e ir
return to the United States."^ The PRESIDING OFFICER of the Court of
Inquiry and the House investigation committee CHAIRMAN and CONGRESSMEN
are nameless composites, adding to the impersonalized forces which
1,1 Theatre of Fact," p. 118.
harass Bucher.
Vintage expressionist dialog, action, and effects occur natur
a lly in two situations rig h t out of dozens of war movies. Amid the
fa c tu a lity and fantasy of the play, both passages emerge fresh and
percussive. In the f i r s t , the Pueblo has been surrounded by MIG je t
fighters and "the whole damn North Korean navy."1
SIGNALMAN
They say, "Follow in my wake: I have a p ilo t aboard."
BUCHER
I ' l l be damned i f they're going to get away with that. Engine
room!
GOLDM AN
Engine room, Goldman speaking, s ir.
BUCHER
A ll engines ahead one th ird , make turns fo r six knots.
G O LDM AN
Six knots, aye, aye s ir.
BUCHER
Right f u ll rudder.
LACY
Right f u ll rudder.
BUCHER
Come to course zero eight zero.
LACY
Com e to course zero eight zero.
BUCHER
We're getting the hell out of here.
LACY
The rudder is rig h t f u l l , s ir. . . .
1Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 27.
248
BUCHER
Schumacher' Inform command of our situation. Detail the [Korean]
P.T. boat numbers and locations and our intention to depart the
area.
SCHUMACHER
Yes, s ir.
BUCHER
(To LACY)
Sound modified general quarters.
(Bells sound)
SIGNALMAN
Signal from the sub-chaser. "Heave to or I w ill f ir e on you."
BUCHER
Full speed ahead!
LACY
Full speed, s ir.
GOLDM AN
Full speed.
(The Pueblo motors throb with lif e .
The Korean ships sound th e ir alarms.
The Pueblo C R EW M EM BERS move smartly in pursuit of th e ir
duties.
Electronic sound envelops the ship and the CREW . The M EN
freeze, motionless, as the Court of Inquiry and the Congres
sional Hearing are illuminated and
The COURT COUNSEL crosses to the deck of the phantom ship to
interrogate. BUCHER))
In the second passage, a ll dialog, Bucher te lls Super C that
American troops are in South Korea at the South Korean government's
in v ita tio n . Super C explodes:
There is no South Korean government, there is only American impe
rialism . In 1950 we of the North worked to reunify our country
] Ib id ., pp. 28-29.
249
while in the South your fa scist puppet Rhee k ille d thousands of
patriots and ja ile d tens of thousands with American arms and
American money. There was an election and Rhee's party lost and
so, to preserve his ille g a l government, Rhee invaded us and you
fought by his side. You bombed us, invaded us, k ille d our c h il
dren, raped our women--yes, i t is well known the a tro c itie s . Where
was the Geneva convention then? Here are m y men, m y officers and
enlisted men, a ll of them - - to a man — lost a brother or parent
to the American bombs, the American guns. . . . Even today there
f i f t y thousand American troops in South Korea. Why? Are there
Korean troops in the United States? Even today you continue your
constant aggression. What gives you the right? Your ship . . . .
is a specialized armed spy ship. You cannot deny i t . W e have
your secret papers. You are spies sent here by our enemies. You
are en titled to nothing. . . . How do you wish to be shot —
in dividually or a ll together?
BUCHER
S ir. Release my crew and m y ship and ju s t shoot me.
SUPER C
You are a fucking id io t. W e w ill shoot you a ll in the morning.
The expressionistic character of Pueblo's scenic and technical
effec ts, form, action, characters, and dialog are important, not for
lite ra ry analysis, but fo r the absolute rightness of this style for the
story's materials and Greenberg's esthetic and thematic purposes.
The lig h tin g , sounds, and great skeletal cage of a set, and
the episodic overlaps transform past events from anchored exposition to'
mobile forces acting in the present. These e ffe c ts , set, and time-
place intercuts show the Pueblo, the Korean prison camp, and American
m ilita ry codes and practices to be one and the same.
The crisp counterpoint of courtroom question-and-answer and of
shipboard command-and-response, and the Korean's staccato English, are
ready-made expressionist dialog, appropriate because le g a l-m ilita ry -
^ Ib id ., p. 59.
250
p o litic a l language often drains it s e lf of r e a lity and human content.
Auschwitz and Dachau were not slave labor or death camps, but concen
tra tio n or protective-custody camps. American o ffic ia ls have not
spoken of bombing ra id s , but of actions and protective reaction
stikes. Soldiers have not fought along with or against Vietnamese or
people, but slopes, ARVN, dinks, and gooks. The m ilita ry does not,
cannot, see even its own combat personnel as individuals. They are
perishable, replaceable man-like machines.
Greenberg has conceived an expressionistic environment and
style that are indeed "truthful beyond any . . . documentary-
chronological recitatio n . . . Because of the nature of the Pueblo
a f f a ir , and the kind of play th at dramatizes i t , that truth is not
simple.
James Reston's a r tic le , "The Pueblo: W ho Is to Judge the
Judges?," misconceived one part of the truth and saw a fraction of the
rest:
Maybe he [Bucher] was u n fit for command. . . . But other men
chose him fo r command and pushed him into a situation beyond his
capacities--and they are in v is ib le , unidentified, and uncharged
. . . and only Commander Bucher was blamed in the end.
W ho "blamed Bucher in the end"? The Court of Inquiry and James Reston,
perhaps, but not the Secretary of the Navy, who dismissed a ll charges;
not the Congress, who were c r itic a l instead of the Navy's command net
work; not the Pueblo crew, who r a llie d almost to a man behind th e ir
1Above, p . . 242.
^New York Times, May 7, 1969, p. 46; reprinted in the Arena
Stage edition of P la y b ill, March 1971, p. 7.
251
Commander; and not the public, who "judging by his mail . . . clearly
considers him a hero."^ Reston's caption-question, " . W ho Is to ,
Judge the Judges?," is closer to the mark. And i t is on this point
th at Pueblo almost founders, for the play's hero is also its albatross.,,
Greenberg has created a wonderfully resourceful, inventive
theater work so subjectivized that everything is seen, f e l t , and heard
by the protagonist, and by the audience through him. This to tal focus
on Bucher is leading up to something important, one thinks. W ill
Bucher change; w ill he judge his judges? The answer, a fte r the play
is over and a fte r a ll the ordeals, is no. One Seaman, te s tify in g
about the Korean internment, says, "The beatings d id n 't hurt as much
as the fact that when we were pleading for help we got no assistance
7 }
from the largest navy in the world. This hurt me more than anything."
The closest Bucher ever comes to such heresy is
I believe in the United States of America with a ll of my might.
I t was an experience I ' l l have to think about fo r a long time
in order to come to a sensible conclusion. I ' l l never be able
to understand i t . 3
However much sympathy we may have developed for Bucher, we become dis
appointed with him and possibly, fo r the moment, with the play. Have
we gone through so much with Bucher, only to have him understand
nothing?
Not only is Bucher unable to see the m ilita ry system for what
^Richard Woodbury, "Parting Shots," L ife , December 10, 1971,
p. 97.
^Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 76. ^Ibid.
i t is , but neither he, nor perhaps Greenberg, sees Bucher for what
Bucher was and remains, a culpable perpetuator of this system that
f i r s t betrayed, then neglected, and la te r tormented him. Bucher is a
compassionate, lower-level version of his persecutors. Just as the
Navy did ndt inform Bucher of the real danger of his mission, i t was
Bucher alone who chose, for reasons of paternal solicitude only, to
keep his men ignorant, not ju s t of the hazards that could be a n ti
cipated, but of the en tire mission.^ Bucher's subsequent humanity
under inhumane circumstances makes less excusable, not more, his con
tinuing enthusiasm for the in s titu tio n that produced these inhumane
circumstances.
Bucher credits the attitu d e of the navy with helping him to regain
his emotional s ta b ility . "The navy has gone out of its way to
protect me. I t 's pretty amazing." . . . . Even during the worst
moments, he says, there were never serious thoughts about quitting
the navy.2
I t is decent men lik e Bucher . - who make possible the "in v is ib le , un-
id e n tifie d , and uncharged" commanders and judges, fo r i t is the
Buchers who carry out the commands, accept the judgments, and are
grateful for the charity.
There is s t i l l another part to the truth of Pueblo. W e are
not l e f t with an expressionist work about a blank hero. W e face also
a documentary drama about its audience. I t is here that Greenberg,
while keeping fa ith with his m aterial, has found a way to provide what
his hero cannot.
^ Ib id ., p. 30. ^Woodbury, "Parting Shots," p. 97.
3Reston, "W ho Is to Judge the Judges?," p. 46.
253
Pueblo concludes with Bucher, f i r s t hopefully, then desper
a te ly , reading out the names of his brave and beloved crew to the
almost oblivious Court, Congressional committee, and high-ranking w it
nesses. At intervals during Bucher's poignant ro ll c a ll, the admirals,
generals, members of the Court and committee walk out, until
(BUCHER is alone.
The lights dim except from the red glow from below.
W e hear the throbbing which could be engines or the sound
of BUCHER's heart.
All that remains are BUCHER, the r e a lity of the audience and
the re a lity of the names)
BUCHER (Continued)
Ramon Rosales, Edward S. Russell, William W . Scarborough, James A.
Shephard, Charles R. S terlin g , Angelo S. Strano, Larry E. S trick
land, Donnie Tuck, Harry Iredale . .
(BUCHER exits but
His voice continues calling out the names, the entire l i s t
from the beginning as
The lights go to black fo r a moment before
The HOUSELIGHTS come up.
The names continue, the re a lity of the men, of pain
Sounding in BUCHER's mind forever
Resonating intheminds of the members of the audience
Until they leave the th e a tre )J
the las t ones to walk out on Bucher and his crew.
This is the fin a l truth of Pueblo--not an answer, but ques
tions: Bucher w ill remember, but may never understand; the audience
^Greenberg, Pueblo, p. 77.
254
may understand, but, once out of theater, w ill i t remember? And what
then?
The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine--Danie1 Berrigan
Text prepared fo r production
by Saul L evitt
In 1954, Daniel Berrigan, who has published several books of
poetry, wrote
THE POET TO HIMSELF
Color i t not kind
with skies of love and amber:
make i t plain with death
and b itte r as remember.
You who set easel
to sigh by w illow s--
your lie w ill lie
tomorrow with mildews.
but yours is no shutterblink
transfer of view:
your paint be blood
your canvas, you.'
There is a striking harmony between the Daniel Berrigan who composed
this shared soliloquy, and the Daniel Berrigan, who, fourteen years
la te r, was one of nine Catholics who publicly burned a Selective
Service o ffic e 's records in Catonsville, Maryland.
0
Harmony does not characterize Berrigan's play The T rial of the
Catonsville Nine, w ritten "d ire ctly . . .[from ] the data"*- of the 1968
^D. Berrigan, Time Without Number (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1957), p. 4.
^D. Berrigan, "A Note," in P la y b ill, New York ed itio n , June
1971, p. 12.
255
t r ia l record of those clergy and la ity . There are Pirandellian dis
cords between l i f e , and the play and its protagonists; and between
the play— as "prepared" by Saul L e v itt—and it s e lf . None of these
conflicts are resolved in the s c rip t's or the defendants' favor, yet
this clumsy play works
. . . lik e flowers through ruins
lik e brides through deserts
lik e shore through murderous mist— - |
out of wreckage and rancor. Somehow!
The f i r s t c o n flic t, the one that impels everything, is the
Nine's struggle with th e ir Church and State.
THOMAS MELVILLE [37, former p rie s t, husband of M arjorie, 38].
Under one [Guatemalan] government, land that belonged to the
United F ru it Company was bought and distributed to peasants. But
a la te r President, C astillo Armas, took the land from the peasants
and gave i t back to the United Fruit Company. Eisenhower la te r
admitted our involvement. There were about three thousand people
who did not want to move o ff the land. They were k ille d or moved
fo rcibly.
JUDGE. W e are not trying the United F ruit Company.
THOMAS MELVILLE Myself, M arjorie, who was s t i l l a
nun at the time, John Hogan and fiv e others agreed to jo in the
revolutionaries, because we knew that i t would not look good fo r
the United States i f an American priest or nun were k ille d in
Guatemala by American Green Berets. .
MARJORIE MELVILLE. Our superiors got a l i t t l e nervous about
our desire to work with the peasants . . . . So we were asked to
leave . .
JOHN H O G A N [33, former monk, gentle man trained as a carpen
te r ]. (Overlap. ) W e were expelled . . . .2
DANIEL BERRIGAN ["49, . . . gaunt and ascetic with an impish
sense of humor" AT RISE]. On a June morning, I lay before the
a lta r in the chapel— to be ordained a p rie s t—and the voice of
Cardinal Cushing shook the house lik e a great war horse. His
hands lay on my head lik e a stone. . . . I [was] stretched lik e
^Daniel Berrigan, "Somehow," in False Gods, Real Men (London:
The Macmillan Company, Collier-Macmillan L td ., 1967), p. 32.
^D. Berrigan, The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine, pp. 22, 23-
24.
256
a corpse. . . . Would these bones live? . . . What would
i t mean to be a Catholic? W ho would be m y teacher? . . . the
priesthood was a p a llid , vacuumatic enclosure, a sheepfold for
sheep. . . . Priests? Why, priests kept th e ir peace, muttered
the Mass, sidestepped queasily the public horror, made Jesus
mild as m ilk, a temple eunuch.'
THOMAS LEWIS ["28 . . . a genial and boyish . . . former
star-halfback . . . taught (a rt in slum schools) . . . and
Catholic colleges"]....................A group of us began what we called
the In te rfa ith Peace Mission of Baltimore. W e began with a
peace v ig il. W e prayed for peace. W e followed this with a walk.
W e had v is its with Maryland congressmen and senators. W e wrote :
le tte rs to them. W e met with silence, with h o s tility and apathy.
One of the v ig ils in Washington was at the home of Dean Rusk.
Rusk said i t was not his job to deal with moral matters. He said
to the clergymen in the group that i t was th e ir responsibility to
deal with the m orality of the war. W ell, wedid'not need his
homilies. W e had been doing that for years. So we turned toward
the m ilita ry .
. . . . W e were proud to be Americans. . . . W e were saying to
the m ilita ry , "This is wrong. This is immoral. This is ille g a l."
And th e ir response to this was, they were only obeying orders.2
These and the four other co-defendants are real people. Except for
one, they are s t i l l a liv e (David Darst, "36, B r illia n t Harvard
scholar— taught as a Christian Brother,"3 was k ille d in an automobile
crash^). Mary Moylan went underground a fte r the t r ia l and is at
la rg e .5 All were m ortified by racism, Vietnam, poverty, American
colonialism, and a ll surely suffer them s t i l l .
Not only they, but those who feel as they do. This becomes
the second c o n flic t which saps the play. More than any other docu-
^ Ib id ., pp. 4, 5. ^ Ib id ., pp. 4, 26-27.
3Ib id ., p. 4.
4
Performing A rts, Los Angeles ed itio n , June 1971, p. 15.
3Ibid.
257
mentary drama, Catonsville1s staginess loses to r e a lity . For one
thing, the original burning of the conscription file s with homemade
napalm was it s e lf theater— a primal, symbolic action. The ensuing
t r ia l was also theater—once-removed--a dramatic contest with
performer-creators, c o n flic ts , conventions, settin g, and spectators.
The tr ia l- p la y , which came next, is the echo of an echo. Beyond th is ,
the f in it e , talked-about ev ils in the play seem academic compared to
the real evils which have grown more te rrib le and uncontrollable. And
the play's P h illip and Daniel Berrigan are passing substitutes fo r the
actual Berrigans, a live and fa m ilia r.
The fixed grip of the script created a third c o n flic t. There
are two published Catonsvi1les. The o rig in a l, Berrigan's alone, was
compartmented into episodic sections, almost devoid of stage direc
tions and punctuation, lik e The Investigation (which this f i r s t
Catonsville quotes). Similar to The Investigation's eleven "Songs,1 1
there are fiv e "days": "the day of a ju ry of peers," "the day of the
facts of the case," "the day of the nine defendants," "the day of
summation," "the day of ve rd ict." Whatever the thinking may have
been—th at these "days" were too bulky or in e rt, or that one succes
sive defendant's undivided testimony a fte r another seemed too much
lik e a long sermon^— the scrip t was "prepared"—cut and rearranged—
by Saul L e v itt. L e v itt's reworking is an a rb itra ry , inconsistent
hodge-podge.
^Dan Sullivan, " 'C a to n s v ille '—Once a Sermon, Now a Play," Los
Angeles Times, June 18, 1971, "View" section, p. 1.
258
Presumably to create narrative and physical "flow," the defen
dants' testimonies now intersperse and interrupt each other throughout
the play. The verbal e ffe c t produced is often, not collage, but confu
sion. The L e v itt version is also generously stocked with stage direc
tions (the original d irector's?) dispatching characters a ll over the
set. The visual impression of this would seem no less muddled than
the verbal. An actor w ill stride forward from the fa r reaches to
deliver one middling lin e . Frequently, fo r no purpose ju s tifie d by the
te x t, several characters suddenly criss-cross lik e a college band
changing formations. Housing this convulsively free-form , highly
stylized dialog and movement is an inappropriately " re a lis tic court
room" s e tJ I t is es th etica lly wrong for the Nine, who have specif
ic a lly fought the irre le v a n t and a rb itra ry decrees of Church, govern
ment, and court, to be switched on and o ff and pushed around at w ill
by a playwright's or d irector's pointless dictates.
F in ally , the crux of the story, the c o n flic t between the Nine
and the Court, s p e c ific a lly the Judge. I t is a' classic contest—
conscience versus law, rig h t versus rig h t.
Whenever the Judge, or the Defense or Prosecution, lead with
the law, the defendants counter with conscience-in-action.
[PROSECUTION]. Yes or no, were you aware--that has been the
question, the only question, to a ll the defendants, from the
beginning—were you aware that i t was against the law to take
records from the Selective Service and burn them?
GEORGE MISCHE ["32, massive, cocky, flamboyant. . .worked
^D. Berrigan, The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine, p. 7.
259
with delinquent youths, widely traveled . . . bellicose"]* * * •
I am trying to say that the style of one's actions must coincide
with the style of his l i f e . And that is a l l .
M ARY MOYLAN ["32 . . . a nurse . . . impeccably groomed and
the image of middle-class American wholesomeness"]. . . . you
act on what you say you believe. This is what i t means to be a
Christian.
PHILIP BERRIGAN ["47, Josephite p rie s t— t a l l , massive, hand
some . . . impatient, fearless . . . radiant and ir re s is tib le
good nature"]. The point at issue for us personally when we went
to Catonsville was not leniency or punishment, not being a danger
to the community or a benefit to i t , but what i t means to be a
democratic man and a Christian man.
DANIEL BERRIGAN. . . . I could not go on announcing the
Gospel from a pedestal. I was threatened with verbalizing my
moral substance out of existence.^
The Judge sees a less le g a lis tic opening, and asks: " I f these men
[whose records were burned] were not sent, other people would have
p
been sent, who would not otherwise have been sent, would they not?"
Thomas Lewis returns with:
But why, Your Honor? . . . W hy does i t have to be lik e this? You
are accepting the fact that i f these men are not sent other men
w ill be sent. You are not even asking what can be done to stop
the insane k illin g —You are accepting [ i t ] , . . . Your Honor, as
in Nazi Germany people accepted the massacre of other people.
This is insane and I protest t h is .3
The defendants introduce those matters which, from childhood
on, eventually brought them to c iv il disobedience. The Judge blocks
th is , lig h tly , persistently. "We are not trying the rac ia l situation
in the United States." "We are not trying the C .I.A ., Mr. Mische."
"We cannot try the last ten years in Guatemala." "W e are not trying
1 I b id ., pp. 29, 4, 30, 4, 31 , 4, 33, 37.
2Ib id ., p. 29.
3Ib id .v
260
the a ir war in North Vietnam." "Mr. Mischei (Pause. And then, as
i f surmounting the need to reprimand, to sa.y something more compel
lin g .) W e are not here to try the history of the world in the twen
tie th century."^
Near the end, while the ju ry is out, a fte r having been charged
by the Judge not to "decide this case on the basis of conscience. . . .
[but] solely on the basis of the facts presented . . . by both sides," 7
the Nine and the Judge try one la s t time to jo in with each other.
DANIEL BERRIGAN. Your Honor, you speak very movingly of your
understanding of what i t is to be a judge. I wish to ask whether
or not reverence for the law does not also require a judge to
in terp ret and adjust the law to the needs of the people here and
now. I believe that no tra d itio n can remain a mere dead in heri
tance. I t is a liv in g inheritance which we must continue to o ffer
to the liv in g . Is n 't i t possible then to include in the law cer
tain important questions of conscience, to include them nonethe
less, and thereby to bring the trad itio n to l i f e again for the
sake of the people?
JUDGE. W ell, I think there are two answers to th at. You
speak to me as a man and as a judge. As a man, I would be a very
funny sort i f I were not moved by your sincerity on the stand—
and by your views. I agree with you completely, as a person. W e
can never accomplish what we would lik e to accomplish, or give a
better l i f e to people, i f we are going to keep on spending so much
money for war. But i t is very unfortunate, the issue of the war
cannot be presented as sharply as you would lik e . The basic prin
ciple of our law is that we do things in an orderly fashion.
People cannot take the law into th e ir own hands.3
The accused in this contest are struggling fo r the Judge's
soul, and he fo r th e irs , yet each scarcely grazes the other. Catons-
v i l i e 's nine insurgents—with names, histories, plans— are contending
with a m orality play figure--no name, no outside l i f e , a personifica
tion of Procedure. The Nine are addressing phantoms. They are asking
11bid. , pp. 17, 18, 21 , 26, 25.
2Ib id ., p. 43. 3I b id ., p. 46.
261
a self-denying servant of an in s titu tio n they believe unreformable to
reform the in s titu tio n . The main bout of the play becomes verbal
shadow-boxing, and the shadow makes the rules.
Seriously weakened by these external and internal c o n flic ts ,
the play nevertheless comes through. Paradoxically, two weaknesses
are also strengths.
Catonsville is s t i l l , tra g ic a lly , so current that i t could be
printed on the "Editorial-Comment" pages of the New York Times as a
re fle c tio n on today's news. Too, one feels the surprise-pleasure--
here sustained--of seeing someone famous a few feet away; a compelling
public figure has put real people and himself, in jeopardy and undis
guised on stage. So the "true" re a lity of events and persons, while
in some ways dimming the play's r e a lity , also heightens i t .
Even the mismatch between the Nine and the Judge creates a
kind of forensic suspense. The defendants' rhetoric is so impressive,
and the Judge's so routine, that one feels the Judge may be won over.
He remains unwon, but Catonsvilie is not redebating him any more than
The Investigation is retrying its Accused.
One of the play's unalloyed attractions is its language. All
defendants are a rtic u la te ; three others beside Daniel Berrigan are
w riters.^ I t is Daniel's eloquence, however, that most excites the
^Marjorie and Thomas M e lv ille , of Guatemala: The P o litic s of
Land Ownership (New York: The Macmillan Company, The Free Press, 1971),
and Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, In c ., 1971);
and P hilip Berrigan, o f From Baltimore to Allenwood: Prison Journals
of P h ilip Berrigan, Vincent McGee, ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, In c ., 1970), No More Strangers (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1965), and Punishment fo r Peace (New York: Ballantine, 1971).
262
drama. He can play:
[Catonsvilie's early moments. A pantomime flashback— the defen-
dants burning the d raft f i l e s . ]
DANIEL BERRIGAN. . . . . Imagine nine felonious Catholics,
jerky , harried as Keystone Cops, running out of a building bearing
baskets heaped with trash, dumping them out, setting them a lig h t,
dancing lik e dervishes around the f ir e . The TV cameras ground i t
out, those four or fiv e minutes when our past went up in flames
. . . . As the flames died, we joined hands praying, "Our Father
who a rt in heaven." The film impounded rests in peace in FBI
archives.T
and he can galvanize:
[From a meditation, w ritten before the burning, read in court]:
DANIEL BERRIGAN. . . . Our apologies, good friends, for the
fracture of good order . . the burning of paper instead of c h il
dren . . the angering of orderlies in the fron t parlor of the
charnel house. . . . W e say: k illin g is disorder; l i f e and
gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we
recognize. . . , When . . at what point w ill you say no to this
war? W e have chosen to say with the g i f t of our lib e rty , i f
necessary our liv es: the violence stops here, the death stops
here, the suppression of the truth stops here, this war stops
here. . . . The times are inexpressibly e v il. And y e t— and ye t—
the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the courage and hope
of many. The truth rules. . . .2
Possibly even fo r many who would disagree with the Nine's
action— as did the play's producer, Leland Hayward^— the greatest
strength of Catonsvilie is its defendants. Most of us--moderates,
progressives, conservatives, re lig io n is ts , unbelievers—yearn for
absolution, fo r wholeness, fo r freedom, for joy. The Nine of Catons-
v il le have these, and why they do yields the play's meaning for us.
The f i r s t piece of Catonsville theater, the burning, was, in part, the
defendants' g if t to themselves. The la s t, the play, is th e ir offering
^D. Berrigan, The T rial of the Catonsville Nine, p. 6.
2Ib id . , pp. 38, 39.
^Gordon Davidson, "Is the 80/40 Speech In?," Performing A rts,
p. 23.
to us. I t is not a fa u lt that the play is "more convincing to the
1
already converted than to any possible doubters." The T rial of the ,
Catonsville Nine is meant for the already converted, those whose con
version is buried in silence, or voiced only among congenial friends.
How loving, and "how cruel these martyrs to make us suffer so!
Can prison subdue the Berrigans? Can a government bomb
another into submission, or banish by threat or neglect the grievances
of its own non-whites, non-affluent, and non-compliant?
Tom Driver, drama c r it ic , believes
there has always been something Hamlet-like about Daniel Berrigan--
the humor-within-melancholy, the mission to set rig h t a time out
of jo in t and to expose a certain rottenness in the state, a
scrupulous concern fo r the souls of his adversaries. . . . 3
One is almost delighted with the aptness of this comparison, when the
parallel turns ominous. At the end of Act IV, Hamlet says:
How stand I then,
That have . . .
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And le t a ll sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy or a tric k of fame
G o to th e ir graves lik e beds, fig h t fo r a plot
Wherein the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? 0, from this time fo rth ,
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!4
At the conclusion of Berrigan's introduction to the original^ datons-
1 Richard Watts, "The Case of the Berrigans," New York Post,
February 8, 1971, in the New York Theater C ritics Reviews 32 (1971):
358.
2
Francine du Plessix Gray, Performing A rts, June 1971, p. 28.
^Performing A rts, June 1971, p. 17. ^ iv .56-66.
264
v il le , he wrote:
Yet an ominous sense of the future weighs upon me, as these
words go to press. . . . The time of taking risks and submitting
before the ju d ic ia l system is drawing to a close. . . . The
courts, lik e the President (two, three Presidents) . . . . are
turning to stone. The "separation of powers" is proving a f i c
tion; ball and jo in t, the functions of power are fusing, lik e the
bones of an aged body.
Indeed i t cannot be thought that men and women lik e ourselves
w ill continue, as though we were automated heroes, to rush for
redress from the King of the Blind. The King w ill have to listen
to other voices, over which neither he nor we w ill in d e fin ite ly
have control; voices of public violence and chaos. For you can
not set up a court in the Kingdom of the Blind, to condemn those
who see; a court presided over by those who would pluck out the
eyes of men and ca ll i t re h a b ilita tio n . 1
Summer 1969
And then one remembers the fate of the King, and of Hamlet.
XA: A Vietnam Primer—Michael Monroe
in conjunction with
The Provisional Theatre Collective
The Provisional Theatre Collective's XA: A Vietnam Primer is
the most recent (copyright 1973) and most radical of the documentary
plays considered here.
As every one of several flo o r-s ittin g sub-audience groups is
told at the s ta rt by the performer who has formed the group, XA is a
"narrative history of Vietnam, focusing especially on that country's
2
relations with the United States." The play's radicalism is not its
opposition to the w ar--a fte r a l l , Nixon was elected twice on pledges
to end that. Rather, XA's extremity is its realness and humanity,
^D. Berrigan, the t r ia l of the catonsville nine (New York:
Bantam Books, In c ., 1971), pp. x - x i.
p
Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 1.
265
expressed as reasons for opposing the war, attitu d e toward the audi
ence, and theater techniques. With XA, the Provisional Theatre's
radicalism brings its members and audience near, but not quite into,
high-risk te rrito ry . They have gone fa r beyond the old house of
structured sham, and are scouting a new set-up for personal, not
proxy, experience.
The words and typography of XA could, with its "Text [fo o t]-
Notes" and bibliography at the end, be converted with few changes into
a scholarly i f compact tre a tis e . As the F irs t Performer-Narrator says,
however, "A country and a culture with roots that stretch back several
1
thousand years cannot be easily summarized." Summarizing this 72-
page summary, nevertheless, one learns that the Vietnamese as a people
have a 4000-year past. A national state was founded by the th ird
century B.C., the Vietnamese using the same methods then as now of
constructing houses, clearing swamps, building dikes, and raising
ric e . Vietnam was then annexed by the Chinese in the second century
B.C., ruled and acculturated by them for a millennium. During those
thousand years, there were fiv e major revolts against China, the las t
one in 937 A.D., a victorious peasant-aristocrat co alitio n .
For the next fiv e centuries, Vietnam fended o ff Mongolian
invasions and conquered neighboring Indian and Cambodian provinces,
while Vietnamese royal fam ilies battled among themselves. From the
seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, European nations, p a rtic
u la rly France, competed fo r commercial and religious privileges in
llb id ., p. 10.
266
Vietnam. I t was the French that woufd dominate Indochina, fin a lly
overcoming massive g u e rrilla resistance (peasants, scholars, even the
Emperor) in 1917. At this time, "100,000 soldiers and workers from
Indochina were sent to France to help fig h t Germany" during World War
Beginning in 1924, Ho Chi Minh ("He W ho Shines")^ began the
contemporary struggle fo r Vietnamese independence. In 1940, a fte r a
half-century of French exploitation of Indochina's resources and
attempts by France to remake Vietnam in its own image, the French sur
rendered to Germany. The German-controlled Vichy government gave
Indochina over to Japan, who retained the Vichy-French as administra
tors.
With the defeat of Japan in 1945, Ho Chi Minh, who had been
working with the U. S. O ffice of Strategic Services and had helped
return downed American f li e r s , announced the establishment of the
self-governing Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The A llie s , however,
temporarily partitioned Indochina into northern and southern zones.
Ho, fearing China, accepted the interim division and the pro tern
status of a Free State in the French Union— "'HO1 PERFORMER: 'As for
me, I prefer to smell French shit for five years rather than Chinese
sh it for the rest of m y lif e .'" '* France was not prepared to grant
independence, however, and Ho would not accept domination, so in 1946
France bombarded Haiphong— the Indochina War had begun.
^ Ib id ., p. 19. ^Ibid.
^ Ib id ., p. 26, quoting from Bernard B. F a ll, Last Reflections
on a War (New York: Schocken Books In c ., 1964), p. 85.
267
The United States, frightened by Soviet successes in Eastern
Europe and a triumphant Communist government in China, and panicked by
McCarthyism at home, heavily financed and equipped the French war
against Ho's Marxist but non-Soviet and anti-Chinese Vietminh. No
avail — in 1954 the battered French quit Indochina.
Ho again accepted a temporary p a rtitio n o f north and south, the
agreement being that elections would be held and Vietnam reunited. The
American-pieked, American-supported "President" of the southern zone,
Ngo Dinh Diem, refused, with U. S. complicity, to hold those elec
tions— EISENHOWER' PERFORMER: " . . possibly 80% of the people would
have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh . . Civil war began.
A fter ten more years of coups, American-backed puppets, an a ll-o u t
American war, one m illio n c iv ilia n casualties, six m illion refugees,
and a "peace with honor," Vietnam is s t i l l divided, s t i l l fighting.
Its neighbors— Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand— have been pulled in , with
th e ir own c iv il wars, th e ir government armies aided by America, th e ir
lands bombed by U. S. planes.
Again, that the Provisional Theatre opposes the war is not
special. According to a Harris p o ll, by February 1970 over sixty per
cent of Americans questioned already did so. This sixty percent, how
ever, "were saying in e ffe c t that we got . . . in a c o n flic t which may
2
have looked rig h t in principle but simply has not worked out." XA's
opposition, unlike the m ajo rity 's, did not grow out of a dashed mythic
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 39. "Eisenhower quoted from
his Mandate for Change (New York: T963), p. 372." Monroe, XA, p. 68.
^Louis Harris Associates, New York City.
268
fa ith in America the Undefeated Champ of Everything. XA is saying
that the barbarians have not been those prim itive peasants, but our
selves. W e are the Huns.
This non-competitive pacifism is the least radical feature of
XA and the Provisional Theatre. More unusual are the personal commit
ment of the performers, the process by which XA was created, its verbal
style, the variations in vocal presentation, the performer's physical-
it y , and the relationship with the audience. All these spring from
the idea expressed by Barry Opper: " . . . Our people are part of their
community and not separate from and better than i t (stars)."^ Pro
visional Theatre has an impelling b e lie f in commune.
XA was provoked by a lecture-slid e program given by anti-war
a c tiv is t Tom Hayden. Until attending i t , the members of the newly
formed Provisional Theatre Foundation, lik e so many in the anti-war
movement, had given up. Perhaps out of g u ilt,^ the Collective began
to fashion XA. Momentum gathered. The performers and s ta ff did exten
sive research and fed the results to Michael Monroe, the w rite r. Pre
paratory work having been finished, the play was composed, rehearsed,
and ready in three weeks.
"XA" is it s e lf the Vietnamese ideogram fo r "v illag e ," as well
as "earth" and " s p irit of the earth." Each Vietnamese v illa g e has an
honored guardian s p ir it. The villagers liv e in harmony--or did before
the war—with this patron s p ir it , th e ir ancestors buried near them,
^Opper (administrative d ire c to r), Provisional Theatre Founda
tion fund s o lic ita tio n le t t e r , "early May '73."
^Statement by Elinor Graham (administrative associate), per
sonal conversation, May 1973.
the land, and each other. There has been a v illa g e hierarchy— at the
top were the e ld e rly , the land owners, the educated, the personally
respected. Everyone, however, i f only when he grew old, could become
a member of the villag e ruling council. Everyone, that is , but a
woman— a Vietnamese saying has i t that "a hundred g irls a re n 't worth a
single te stic le ."^
Such d e ta ils , and the rest of the approximately two uninter
rupted hours of fa cts , are verbalized in a fo rth rig h t style unlike any
thing in trad itio n al theater or even other documentary plays. Except
fo r a few songs (the M arseillaise, America the B eautiful, My Country
'Tis of Thee), the play has none of the metrical razzle-dazzle of its
2
nearest re la tiv e , Song of the Lusitanian Bogey. XA is frankly in
stru ctio n al, a n ti-th e a tric a l, expository prose— nearly every word is
in the past, and with minimum typographical revisions, the script
could be a research paper.
Since not everything in this voluminous primer is as charming
as Vietnam's villag e structure and its fo lk sayings, what does XA do
to hold its audience for an evening? How does a script in which
3
" 'A r tis tic ' decisions must not take precedence over historic fact"
become "as l i t t l e lik e a lecture as possible"?^
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, pp. i i , 13, 14, 15.
2Above, pp.140-152.
^Steven Kent (d ire c to r), "More Notes on XA/' in Monroe, XA:
A Vietnam Primer, p. iv .
^Statement by Barry Opper, personal conversation, May 1973.
270
F irs t, i t works several variations on what is basically total
narration. Three d iffe re n t performers, one for each of three portions
of the s c rip t, deliver the straight narrative passages in those por
tions. Authoritative and public figures are quoted/performed in ver
batim units:
THIRD PERFORMER-NARRATOR: Gerard Chaliand, a French history
teacher who visited North Vietnam in 1967, writes this account
of a "m ilitary targ et," in this case a v illa g e .
"CHALIAND" PERFORMER: . . . . "At 12:45 on 26 October 1967 several
American F 105’ s appeared over Kim Bai, the main community center
in the d is tr ic t of Thanh Oai. One wave of a ir c r a ft approached
from the south-west, the other from the north-west . . The planes
dived down over the central hamlet and dropped th e ir bombs. Seven
teen people were k ille d , including fiv e women and three children.
There were twenty-two other casualties— ten of them women. The
hamlet had 300 inhabitants. Material damage was extensive. Among
the buildings destroyed were a children's nursery, a dispensary,
a restaurant, a rice warehouse, fiv e workshops manufacturing fu r
niture and farm tools, and the post o ffic e . Twenty-nine houses,
were badly battered . . I drove to this v illag e on 29 October."
Single, clipped fragments are injected:
SECOND PERFORMER-NARRATOR: . . . the U S [s ic ] backed . . . Ngo
Dinh Diem . . . who in 1955 became President . . . of the "State
of Vietnam" . . . . a fte r winning an election in which more votes
were cast than there were voters. A victory which the Pentagon
Papers called . .
ALL PERFORMERS: " . . too resounding."2
Factual assertions and s ta tis tic s may be serialized :
"PAUL MUS" PERFORMER: "Vietnam is a certain way of growing ric e ,
liv in g in common on a rice d ie t, and of asking heaven to protect
your harvest ju s t as i t did your ancestors'. This rice is per
meated— as the earth is —with the souls of the ancestors who lie
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 55. Quoted from Gerard
Chaliand, The Peasants of North Vietnam (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
In c ., 1969), p. 207.
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 34 & 35 [s ic ]. From The
Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam Books In c ., 1971), p. 21.
271
buried near the fie ld s where i t was produced."
PERFORMER A
PERFORMER B
PERFORMER C
'stalk . .
PERFORMER D
PERFORMER E
PERFORMER F
buffaloes.
PERFORMER G
PERFORMER H
PERFORMER I
Rice is an annual grass about 4 fe et t a l l .
Rice is sown broadcast on small, well-prepared beds.
One or two months la te r i t is replanted stalk by
. . i n fie ld s that are enclosed by levees . .
. . and then submerged in a few inches of water . .
. . and then thoroughly plowed with the help of water
When the plants bloom they are erect.
When they mature they begin to nod.
Then they are harvested . .
PERFORMER A -I: (together and repeating the rice planting gesture)
. . by hand.1
Information is recast as dialog:
"FRENCH ADMINISTRATOR": W e taught them of lib e rty , equality,
fra te rn ity .
"VIET REVOLUTIONARY": And what happened when we trie d to re alize
these noble ideals? ("French Administrator" shrugs.) W e took our
post-graduate degrees in your prisons.2
These devices are applied with unfailing aptness; they generate
surprising speed up-and-brake cadences and illum inate the te xt. All
these measures, however, even the en tire verbal content, resourceful
and impressive as they are, matter less than this play's non-verbal
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, pp. 12-13. Paul Mus quoted
from John T. McAlister, J r ., and Paul Mus, The Vietnamese and Their
Revolution (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Row, 1970), p. 78.
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 16.
272
techniques and, a llie d with them, the performers-audience communal
relationship. Among the documentaries, these are XA's most radical and
valuable a c ts J
The script requires and suggests ways, beginning in rehearsals,
of establishing c o lle c tiv ity among performers, play, and audience. The
performers may be "people with theatre s k ills . . . and/or people with
2
p o litic a l s k ills . . or people with both, but a ll are expected to
do private research, to divide specific topics among them, and to pool
information. Because "There are long stretches of in a c tiv ity or immo-
3
b i lit y [in the play] followed by sudden spurts of high energy," the
script recommends ball games to prepare for these demands and "to cre-
4
ate a sense of community and group e ffo rt within the ensemble." Cos
tumes, props, and scenery are to be as plain as they can: workshirts,
bluejeans, bare feet i f possible, a masking tape outline-map of Indo
china on the playing-floor (la id out during performance), stick-mounted
signs for countries, and stenciled posterboards for characters' names.
5
There is not to be "the usual theatre trash" to cushion the performers
or get between them and the audience.
Once the audience is assembled, and, the scrip t advises, s i t
ting on the flo o r, the performers enter. Smaller audience-groups are
^Only Lusitanian Bogey makes a sim ilar but comparatively
ordinary and only p a rtial attempt. Above, pp. 142-143.
^Monroe, "Notes on XA," XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. i i i .
3Kent, "More Notes on XA," p. iv.
^Ibid. 5Ib id ., p. v.
273
gently drawn together, each by a single performer, who greets them,
introduces himself, and explains in his own words what XA is. What
the script says is "a piece of information theatre . . . based on
facts . . . which we can document. Later, i f you lik e , w e 'll give you
a l i s t o f sources."'* These performers continue in paraphrase that
. . . we [d o n 't] pretend i t ' s the absolute truth or that we're
to ta lly im partial. W e are strongly opposed to the war in V ie t
nam; and though we don't know what you think or what you are doing
about the war, we hope that the information we're going to share
with you might bring you closer to some personal decisions. Every
one has the rig h t to be apathetic or inactive; we only ask that
people a t least make a choice, and we think that before they can
make such a choice they need to inform themselves. W e hope our
presentation w ill help that process along, (small pause) Are
there any questions? Okay, I ' l l see you in a few minutes.2
The performers regather; some help tape out the Indochina map, others
bring in sign cards and possibly a flu te and small oriental bells. The
histo rical narrative begins.
Throughout the play, the company performs an extraordinary
variety of movements and gestures that act out, comment on, heighten,
or go beyond the spoken lin es. Some of these actions are s u ffic ie n tly
important and recurrent as to require detailed instructions in a pre
fatory note: ric e -p la n tin q --choreoqraphing arm, hand, w ris t, w aist,
leg, foot; sun screen--shieldinq one's eyes with one overhead hand, as
bombers f ly by; death— covering one's face sharply with both hands;
s o lid a rity and optimism--placing one's thumb firm ly on the ground.
Dozens of others are repeated a few times or occur only once.
--Ho has gone to China in 1924 to organize Vietnamese exiles who would
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 1. 2Ib id ., p. 2.
274
secretely return to Vietnam and organize strikes:
SECOND PERFORMER-NARRATOR: . . . . At this time the major a n ti-
colonial organization in Vietnam was the Vietnam N ationalist Party,'
but by 1930 an uprising planned by this group had fa ile d to materi-
a liz e . (Two "leader1 1 performers have entered; one of them has
raised his arm as i f to lead a group of people, but nothing has
happenedTJ
PERFORMER A: Pursuing the leaders of this revolutionary organiza
tion the French called in the f i r s t a ir strik e in Indochina. (The
"leaders" look up; th e ir raised arms become sun screens at the
mention of "a ir s trik e ." Then both raise th e ir arms as i f cap
tu re d .)
SECOND PERFORMER-NARRATOR: Later they were caught and executed.
(The "leaders" cover th e ir faces in the death gesture and with
draw. ) [it a lic s added ]'1 ~~
— In the "Chaliand" passage describing the U. S. a ir attack on a small
hamlet,
(A v illa g e has formed around "Chaliand". The "peasants" continue
th e ir rice planting in place. As he reads "Chaliand" touches them
one by one and they slowly sink to the flo o r assuming grotesque
death postures. Performers hold these f i r s t postures until "Chali
and" Performer snaps his fingers and they a ll relax completely and
crumple to the f lo o r .) [ita lic s added]^
--A t times, the physicality is amusing. To suggest the jockeying fo r
power among several South Vietnamese interests a fte r the assassination
of Diem,
(. . . four performers representing factions of the South V ie t
namese government attempt to form acrobatic "pyramids", punctuating,
th e ir completion with mock orchestral fanfares: "Ta dum!" These
structures should always be amateurish and unstable in appearance
and the faces of the performers set in sick smiles.) [ita lic s
added]3
The movements and gestures with which the script is studded are
l l b id ., p. 20. ^ Ib id ., p. 55.
3 lb id ., p. 47.
275
rarely those of "natural" behavior. They are d is tilla tio n s , concen
trates with both immediate and resonant power. They lib erate the mass
of data from p rin t and sound, and give i t v is ib le human form. They
rescue the material from the past and put i t into the present. They
show the audience a group of people working hard to help them feel and
understand. This last non-verbal message may be more important than
a ll of XA's spoken facts. XA is about community among human beings,
the destruction of i t in Vietnam, the creation of i t between XA's per
formers and audience. And i t is "non-verbal communication [th a t] u l t i
mately defines an interpersonal relationship."^
XA has one more way of physically uniting the performers, the
audience, and the people of Vietnam. I t is XA's fin e s t thematic and
theatrical idea, possessed by no other documentary. I t is the e ffo rt
to have the audience collaborate d ire c tly with the actor-creators in
the performing/teaching/learning process. The performers who have
divided the audience into smaller groups a t the beginning of XA return
to th e ir sub-audiences three more times, twice during the play and once
a fte r its conclusion. At the second meeting, each performer asks the
group to pretend i t is a Vietnamese v illa g e . The performer describes
the sacredness of the v illa g e and the importance of every person in i t .
Each audience-village and performer become "we". "When there's work
9
to be done, we must do i t together." The performer designates some
^Kim G iffin and Bobby R. Patton, Fundamentals of Interpersonal
Communication, advisory ed. J. Jeffrey Auer (New York: Harper and Row,
1971), p. 10.
^Monroe, XA: A Vietnam Primer, p. 14.
276
members of his v illa g e as elders, land-owners, educated persons, and
elected o ffic ia ls , but nothing further is made of these assigned
[
id e n titie s . The next time the performer rejoins what was his v illa g e ,
he merely deli vers a long impersonal expository passage, exactly lik e a
Performer-Narrator. A fter the play's fin a l lin e , the performers return
once more to th eir groups to discuss what actions they may take, as
Americans, to help end the war. So what began as a marvelously power
ful and unique concept, the audience-villages, which could accomplish
everything the rest of the play says and does, but b e tter, is dropped
a fte r a single tr y , revived only in semblance fo r other purposes.
S t i l l , XA and the Provisional Theatre have done what some
documentaries avoid and others never attempt. Though they are a pro
fessional scrip t and a professional company, they have gone outside
commercial theater to wherever they have been invited. XA has been
performed fre e --a donation has been asked without "[working] on your
g u ilt to provide i t . . . . i n f i f t y d ifferen t locations from San Fran
cisco to San Diego (at churches, colleges, high schools, r a llie s , bene
f i t s , community organizations). 1 1 ^ Sacrificing no fa c tu a lity (indeed,
perhaps oversupplying i t ) , XA tr ie s , with considerable success, to
allow its performers and audiences not to act a t, but to act upon; not
to see, but to be.
^Opper, s o lic ita tio n le tte r .
277
CHAPTER VI
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR FURTHER STUDIES
Summary
In the la s t decade, theater has spilled into the streets and
in filtr a te d our in s titu tio n s , while liv in g action has barged into the
auditoriums and leaped onto the stages. Documentary theater, also
called theater of fa c t, is part of this cross-flux.
F .B .I. men, for example, have te s tifie d in court to finding
places with instant audiences (a prison, a campus), impersonating rad i
cals, and conceiving, financing, directing, stage-managing, and pro
viding the props for criminal happenings which, without these talented
men, might never have occurred. One such alleged production led to the
Harrisburg t r ia l of Father P h illip Berrigan and six others, accused and
la te r acquitted of conspiring while in j a i l to kidnap Henry Kissinger
and bomb Washington heating tunnels. This t r ia l seemed like the natu
ral sequel to the play by P h illip 's brother Daniel, The T rial of the
Catonsville Nine, about the Berrigans and other Catholics who publicly
burned d ra ft records. This play, which had successful runs in Los
Angeles and New York and was made into a film , may have seemed more
real to its public than the actual court proceeding from which i t was
derived.
278
Documentary theater exposes re la tiv e ly recent signal cases of
alleged evils committed by in stitu tio ns and representatives of the
state. The plays' subjects are noteworthy real people and situations,
and the contents are the special, usually primary documents these
persons and events have generated.
The documents are often incorporated d ire c tly into the plays,
verbatim, paraphrased, edited, rearranged, condensed, combined, excerp
ted. The presence of documentation--and deviations from it- -a r e
almost always specified in any of several places—commentary accompany
ing the published sc rip ts, dialog, stage directions, program notes,
screened projections during performance. In one case, Weiss' Song of
the Lusitanian Bogey, the documentation is unattributed but im p lic it
in the facts, figures, and o ffic ia l rhetoric that constitute much of
the dialog.
Other elements than v e rifia b le documentation may be included:
mime, music, song, material consistent with fact but not fa ct. What
ever non-documentary matter is added, and whatever the transformations
of the factual substance, much of the content of documentary plays is
assertively uninvented.
Documentary plays tend to take one of three forms— story, chron
ic le , and anthology. Six of the thirteen plays in this study are
various kinds of tribunals, though most of those depart from lit e r a l
ju rid ic a l procedure.
The term "documentary theater," and the more fa m ilia r "theater
of fa c t," are misleading and misrepresentative. The catch-phrases
279
falsely suggest detached reportage, put on stage. Documentary plays
are partisan propaganda, ju s t as most theater has been from the begin
ning. For this reason, "documentary theater" is the misnomer of '
choice, for i t is the one with more of a propagandists connotation.
Documentary theater comes at a time when our heroes, myths, and
in s titu tio n s --th e sources of drama— are tran sient, discredited, or
dead. A popular President is assassinated. His Vice-President abdi
cates the highest o ffic e under pressure a fte r one elective term. His
successor faces impeachment ta lk a fte r being reelected by a nearly
record margin.
Documentary theater's social purpose is the exposure and
destruction of tarnished or pernicious idols and b e lie fs , and, occa
sio nally, the provision of alternatives. Documentary drama is also one
of theater's responses to the spectacular real events of contemporary
l i f e , and to the increasingly vivid and readily available other media
of information and performance, especially television.
The plays discussed are those translated or indigenous dramas
which have been professionally presented in the United States and for
which published or production scripts are available. The plays are,
*
in chronological order of publication, or i f unpublished, of f i r s t pro
duction;
In White America—Martin Duberman: 1964
The Deputy— Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Richard and Clara
Winston: 1964
The Investigation--Peter Weiss, English version by Jon Swan
and Ulu Grosbard: 1966
280
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer— Heinar Kipphardt,
translated by Ruth Speirs: 1968
Soldiers— Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Robert David MacDonald:
1968
Inquest— Donald Freed: 1970
Murderous Angels— Conor Cruise O'Brien: 1970
Song of the Lusitanian Bogey— Peter Weiss, translated by Lee
Baxendall: 1970
Pueblo--Stanley Greenberg
The T ria l of the Catonsville Nine— Daniel Berrigan, te xt pre
pared for production by Saul L e vitt: 1971
An Evening with Richard Nixon— Gore Vidal: 1972
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been— Eric Bentley: 1972
XA: A Vietnam Primer— Michael Monroe and the Provisional
Theatre Collective: 1973
As immediately current as documentary theater seems, its pre
cursors go back seven hundred years to aspects of society and theater
in Germany.
The thirteenth through fifte e n th centuries in Germany were a
period in many ways lik e our own—a questioning of tra d itio n , a rise in
materialism, even the defeats of knightly armies by peasant-bands. In
the theater there were the hortatory Passion and Easter plays with
th e ir huge casts; the rebellious, carnal Shrovetide plays, and the as
yet esoteric, academic, lib e rta ria n Humanist plays.
In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation produced
281
anti-C atholic drama. The Catholic school plays began using elaborate
scenic effects.
The Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century weakened every
one. There were no new developments prefiguring documentary drama.
The wealth of the Court and the Church allowed them to maintain theater
with spectacular effects for th e ir purposes: baroque diversion at
Court; indoctrination in Church. Humanist rationalism continued to grow.
The eighteenth century saw Germany's recovery and Golden Age.
A confident people permitted greater a r tis tic diversity and la titu d e ,
though individual a rtis ts might be suppressed. Gotthold Lessing wrote ,
plays and philosophic and esthetic essays intended to reform society
and theater. Sturm und Drang, a tumultuous and rebellious movement,
produced Johann Goethe and Friedrich S ch ille r. Sturm und Drang was a
meteoric mode that has le f t some mark on v irtu a lly a ll subsequent
serious drama. Goethe and S chiller eventually wrote Classic and Roman
tic dramas, but th e ir heroes and heroines were to remain Sturm und
Drang1s revolutionaries and lawbreakers.
The sciences overtook humanism in the nineteenth century.
In du strializatio n and urbanization, and the problems associated with
them, spread. The changes were reflected in theater; plays became
more factu al, theaters more widespread. Socialism appeared in p o li
tic s , naturalism in theater.
Expressionism m aterialized in the twentieth century even before
the catastrophes of two world wars and a genocidal d ictato r. I t was a
genre that abominated the machine and its effects but depended on both
for its staging and performance style. The human individual retreated;
282
the Systems he struggled against grew. Ernst To ller was an exception;
his central characters were d istin ct personalities, but a fte r two im
prisonments for insurrectionary a c tiv ity , T o lle r's heroes were always
doomed. "New Realism's" plays were produced a fte r World War I: home
coming soldiers, topical dramas, rebellious students, currently per
tinent history plays, and a n ti-ju d ic ia l plays. Producer-director
Erwin Piscator developed an a n ti-illu s io n a ry , mechanized, p o litic a lly
radical production style arid play called epic, of which Bertold Brecht
was a foremost playwright-chronicler. World War I I sent many o f Ger
many's best theater people into e x ile ; most returned a fte r the Armi
stice. In 1963, Piscator directed the world premiere in Germany of
Hochhuth's The Deputy, the f i r s t of the documentary plays, so named by
Piscator.
In the United States, theater was mainly a B ritish-derived,
commercial entertainment for most of its pre- and post-Revolutionary
years. Two of the most trag ic issues in American history, the tr e a t
ment of the red and black man, were dealt with in bogus-heroics, or
sentimental or insulting stereotypes.
Once into the‘ 1920's, things changed. American prosperity
brought European dramas, including the serious and once avant-garde
plays, to Broadway. Workers', community, and collegiate theaters
sprang up, sometimes offering p o litic a lly radical works. The Depres
sion produced a number of social protest plays. Between 1931 and 1951,
Time Inc. created dramatized reportorial radio and film --"The March of
Time," and the United States government produced re p o rto ria l, so cially
conscious th e a te r--The Living Newspaper of the Federal Theatre Project
283
(1935-1939).
i
The 1940's were generally p a trio tic war years and the 1950's
I
were a post-war period of conservative complacency, except fo r Congres
sional committee loyalty and security hearings. The only major theat
ric a l social criticism of the time were the plays of Arthur M ille r.
Once into the 1960's, American was shaken by the assassination
of a President and other national leaders, race rio ts , the Indochina
War, and nationwide campus protest. Imported and indigenous documen
tary plays appeared in the United States, premiering prim arily in the
off-Broadway, regional, and collegiate theaters that had arisen decades
before.
Conclusions
The thirteen documentaries covered in this study can be placed
into four topic-categories: O UR RACISM (White America, Bogey) , O UR
SECURITY (Oppenheimer, Inquest, Are You Now) , OUR SOVEREIGNS (Soldiers,,
Murderous Angels, Nixon), and O UR W A R S (Deputy, Investigation, Pueblo,
Catonsville, and XA).
O U R RACISM
White America (Duberman) is the purest of the documentaries,
containing almost no invented m aterial. I t is an anthology of twenty-
eight separate documentary segments, fu lly id e n tifie d , recounting what
i t has been lik e fo r black people to liv e in this country from the
time of the slave ships t i l l the early 1960's. Duberman's hope was
that the triumphs of black people in the face o f inhumane treatment,
dramatized fo r emotional e ffe c t, would be a positive example to con
284
temporary blacks and whites. Later, Duberman would reject the idea of
history-as-guide.
Bogey (Weiss) chronicles fiv e centuries of Portuguese exploita
tion of African Angola, concentrating on the black Angolans' defeated
rebellion in 1961. I t is distinguished by a style composed of improvi
sation, documentary, oratorio, and r itu a l. As translated, the simplis
tic alienation devices and pervasively clumsy verse cripple the play.
O UR SECURITY
Oppenheimer (Kipphardt) is the restaged security hearing, from
the record, of "the father of the A-Bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer, which
resulted in his being cleared of disloyalty but s t i l l declared a
"risk." The play is f a ir ly r e a lis tic , though i t employs some epic
devices. Though Oppenheimer has done incalculably more human damage
and has less in te g rity than any of his governmental antagonists, the
playwright has taken some pains to make Oppenheimer a sympathetic char
acter.
Inquest (Freed) reenacts the domestic l i f e , t r i a l , imprison
ment, and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of con
spiring to deliver A-Bomb secrets to Russia. The play is both enhanced
and confused by its mixed-media, collage effects and scenes. While i t
is convincing, i t stoops to irre le v a n t, objectionable, positive and
negative ad hominem argument.
Are You Now (Bentley) condenses the eleven years of House Un-
American A ctivitie s Committee investigations of show business person
a litie s into the appearances and le tte rs of eighteen Witnesses. I t is
285,
less a play than a collection of abstracts, lacking wholeness, unity,
pace, sequence, economy, and resolution.
O U R SOVEREIGNS
Soldiers (Hochhuth) is a classically styled, more than classi
cally long work that rehearses four of Churchill's wartime decisions—
deliberately provoking H itle r into bombing London; supporting a strong
a lly , Russia, against a weak one, Poland; raiding German population
Centers with typhoon-producing saturation f ir e bombs; and having a
troublesome a lly , the Polish Prime M inister, assassinated. Soldiers is
a monumental, flawed, but major work of th e a tric a l—as opposed to
p o litic a l—a rt.
Murderous Angels (O'Brien) is the story of the allegedly in te r
related lives and violent deaths of Prime M inister Patrice Lumumba of
the Congo and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold of the United Nations.
The play is an in flated patchwork of cliches, techniques, and devices
cribbed from such sources as A ris to tle , Piscator, Hochhuth, and Shaw.
Nixon (Vidal) is the serio-comic saga of Richard Nixon's l i f e
and career, in his own and others' exact words, enlarged one f u l l -
length with invented commentary spoken by Washington, Eisenhower, and
John Kennedy. Nixon's words are the most effec tive part of the play;
much of the rest of i t , Vidal's words, is nasty and foolish.
OUR W A R S
Deputy (Hochhuth) is the second preeminent theatrical work.
Sim ilar in style and length to Soldiers, but better than i t , i t drama
tizes somewhat p ara llel accounts of what four prominent real persons
286
and those they represent do about H itle r's annihilation of the Jews.
The men are Pope Pius X II, Father Riccardo Fontana, the Doctor, and
Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein. This was the f i r s t of the documentary plays,
and caused an international furor fo r the wrong reasons (attack and
defense of the Pope).
Investigation (Weiss) is the eerie, emotionally barren abridge
ment of the t r ia l of those who operated or survived the Auschwitz
death-camp. I t is possibly the most misunderstood of the documenta
rie s , and yet is one of the two fin e s t p o litic a lly a r tis tic works (XA
is the other).
Pueblo (Greenberg) recounts with enormous s k ill and style
(expressionism) Commander Lloyd Bucher's several t r ia ls : an i l l -
equipped, ill-manned spy ship; ca p tiv ity in a Korean prison-camp; a
Naval inquiry; a Congressional investigation; and exposure to the
national and theater-attending public. The main character disappoints,
but Greenberg ingeniously retrieves the play.
Catonsvllle (B errigan-Levitt) is a recasting by L e v itt of a
recasting by Berrigan of the t r ia l of nine Catholics, including the
two ordained Berrigan brothers, fo r publicly burning selective service
file s . The eloquence and uncompromising in te g rity of the defendants,
especially Daniel Berrigan, survive L e v itt's mangling of Berrigan's
o rig in a l, rather s ta tic dramatization of the t r ia l record.
XA (Monroe and the Provisional Theatre C ollective) is a mixture
of in te lle c tu a lity and in tu itio n , the most radical of the documentaries.
I t relates the 4000-year history of Vietnam, with p articu lar emphasis
on its relations with the United States. Its opposition to the war is
287
not what is radical. Rather, its singular innovation is the remarkably
inyentive physicality and harmonious communal ism by which the play was
w ritte n , rehearsed, and performed with— not fo r—any audiences that
requested i t and could be accommodated.
Documentary theater is one of many contemporary examples of the
arts and some sciences that challenge established beliefs and modes,
reproduce existing m aterials, and involve themselves with re la tiv e ly
immediate experience. The "New" or "Advocacy" Journalists, for example,:
have abandoned conventional, detached reportage, and participate ideo
lo g ic a lly and a c tiv is tic a lly in th e ir stories. Geneticists now know
how to produce exact genetic liv in g duplicates of human beings.
Documentary plays show more d iversity than uniform ity, to be
expected in works that are, fo r the most p art, anti-heroic and a n ti-
authoritarian.
Their consistent features are theme and purpose, documentation,
and p lo t. Their theme is the evil of in stitutio ns or representatives
of the state; th e ir purpose is to induce the audience-members to re
solve the plays by coming to some decision: action, further study, or
even indifference. Documentation is only partly uniform. I t is
always p le n tifu lly present, but i t d iffe rs in how sp ecifica lly the
sources are c ite d , how many and how varied are the sources, and what
modifications are made in the raw documentary m aterial. The p lo t,
lik e the theme, is the evils of the state's in stitutions or agents.
In everything e ls e --s ty le , form and structure, characters,
language, and stage e ffe c ts , the plays d iffe r widely. In form and
288
structure, the plays are uninterrupted, sub-divided, and sub-sub-
divided; they are stories, chronicles, or anthology. The characters
are real and invented, specific and symbolic, famous and obscure,
individuals and composites, lim ited and countless. Language is poetic,
prosaic, or combinations. Stage effects are v irtu a lly n i l, extremely
elaborate, and anything in-between.
Documentary theater, Tike a ll theater, is bound to p o litic s
and mythology, and, uniquely in its own time, to te le v is io n .
Scriptw riters, stage managers, and make-up men shape the public
performances of p o litic a l personalities. A head of state speaks of
his nation as a " fu lly mature actor on the world scene. . . . Docu
mentary plays share with p o litic s the paraphernalia and personnel of
theater, and deal d ire c tly with p o litic a l matters. These plays, there
fore, are not merely the l e f t side of the theater = p o litic s equation,
but the equal sign it s e lf .
Television— electronic theater— involves it s e lf with p o litic s
even more than most liv e theater, both in the narrow "governmental
affa irs" sense of "po litics" and in the broad "human interrelatedness"
sense of the word. Television attacks this interrelatedness in four
ways: i t separates people from sources, from the past, from one
another, and from r e a lity . Documentary theater responds to each of
television 's divisive effects.
^Above, chapter I I , pp. 31-32.
289
P o litic a l leaders use television to influence while simulta
neously keeping th e ir distance from m illion s, who themselves have no
equivalent medium. Documentary theater provides alternate access to
offending o ffic ia ls and in s titu tio n s , and by its liv e example, hopes
to induce people to take counteraction.
Television's program-changes are so constant and overwhelming
that one is aware only of the stimulant-present. Documentary theater
revives the (recent) past, but this could well be a weakness. The
past may be simultaneously a useful c la rific a tio n and a seductive
distraction.
Television has isolated us into "island-audiences," watching
in conformity, but not in community. Theater is communal, and docu
mentary theater aims to rebuild radical human s o lid a rity .
For the benefits of its sponsors, television converts much of
r e a lity , regardless of how o rig in a lly sig nifican t or serious, into
entertainment or theater, making i t agreeable and illu so ry. For the
benefit of its audiences, documentary dramas also transform l i f e into
theater, but are much more selective, and do so in order to make its
subjects more awful and inescapable.
Documentary theater not only works to undo television's d iv i
sive effects, but to counteract the breakdowns in the American mytho
logy which television propagates. A mythology operating properly has'
four functions: i t guides through crises; i t supports the social
order by molding the young; i t wakens awe, gratitude, and rapture; and
i t offers a veiled, s c ie n tific a lly knowledgeable, comprehensible view
290
of the world. The American mythology, operating improperly, has per
verted these functions.
American myths are contradictory, and instead of guiding us
through crises, drive us into them. Documentary theater aims to
destroy the mythology by exposing the system that perpetuates i t .
Documentary plays oppose parts or a ll of a repressive, d e b ili
tating social order, and would free everyone, not ju st the young, from
i t . Most documentary playwrights would also probably oppose the
entire notion of "molding."
American myths have generated less awe than fear; less g ra ti
tude than hero worship and reverence; less rapture than in s a tia b ility .
W e fear our technology, our neighbors, and our thoughts; being fearful
and unrealized, we crave heroes and more of the things we already have.
Documentary theater would have us grow up— to find and understand the
hero and criminal in ourselves; having found and understood, to act;
and having acted, to be awed, g ra te fu l, and rapturous about ourselves.
Americans p a rtic u la rly have made a mythology of fa c ts , which
are more accessible and understandable than tru th . But the manipula
tion of "facts" has also made them suspect; th e ir occasional disagree-
a b ility has made them sometimes unwelcome; and th e ir use to maintain
appearance has made appearance as important as facts. S t i l l , facts
are powerful, and documentary theater hopes to harness th e ir almost
mythic power. But in the process of using facts and transforming them
into a r t, some documentary plays may doubly betray th e ir audiences.
Facts attach to reason, and most documentaries appeal to the mind
291
above a ll . But ir ra tio n a lity w ill not go away because i t is ignored,
and with our ra tio n a lity being invoked prim arily, we may well be un
prepared to deal with our own or others' ir ra tio n a lity . Further,
since most documentary plays, being about the past, are "veiled" ex
planations of the present and, being a r t, are somewhat removed from
r e a lity , do not many of the plays f a il in some degree to carry out
th e ir special purpose--to restore to us the power to see things f i r s t
hand? The best theatrical documentaries especially may fa il in this
way ( Deputy, Soldiers, Pueblo, White America). Only in Investigation
and XA is what is happening in the play happening to the audience and
not to the play's characters; fo r this reason, they are judged here to
be the fin e s t p o litic a l documentary works of a rt.
Some, playwrights included, question whether plays have any
p o litic a l e ffe c t. Even i f documentary theater were shown to have no
social influence, and have changed no one, the very least the play
wrights may accomplish is to prevent others from changing them.
Recommendations for Further Studies
Future studies may compare given documentary plays with the
materials on which they are based; compare the original German with
the translated versions; study documentary theater in other countries;
determine the p o litic a l effectiveness of p o litic a l plays; or, using
the records, create new documentary plays.
292
APPENDIX
SYNOPSES OF THE PLAYS
Our Racism
In White America— Martin Duberman
In White America is the story of what i t has been like for
the last two centuries to liv e as a black person in this country. The
twenty-nine separate chronologically arranged segments begin with a
white slave ship doctor's anguished diary (1788), and conclude with
the recollections of a fifte e n year-old g i r l, the f i r s t black to try
to go to school in L ittle Rock, Arkansas (1957). In between, there
are such passages as Thomas Jefferson writing of his racial compassion
but revealing his racial biases; men and women reminiscing of th e ir
lives in slavery; John Brown defying the dictates of a ra c is t society
and transcending the death sentence of the court; former slaves
te llin g of the joys and tr ia ls of freedom; black spokesmen meeting
with Presidents Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson, who condescend to
and rebuff the blacks; white people--a slaveowner's w ife, Klansmen,
and Senators— damning blacks to hell and back; notable blacks speaking
or w riting from th e ir souls (Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, Booker T.
Washington, Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and the L ittle Rock g i r l) .
Song of the Lusitanian Boge.y--Peter Weiss, translated by Lee
Baxendall
Bogey stages the data of the Portuguese subjugation of
resource-rich Angola in A frica, beginning with its discovery in the
fifte e n th century, but concentrating on the modern circumstances that
incited the native blacks to revolt in 1961. The play details the
f i r s t Portuguese exploration and settlement of Angola, the gradual and
fin a lly total colonization of the land, the system which rapaciously
exploits Angolan labor and natural resources for the benefit of
Angolan whites and mother Portugal, while brutalizing the native popu
latio n . The blacks rebel. Other countries, with th e ir own economic
interests in colonized Angola, actively aid Portugal, ju s tify its
policies, or demurely look away as Portugal savagely smashes the in
surrection.
Our Security
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer--Heinar Kipphardt, translated
by Ruth Speirs
Dr. Oppenheimer had supervised the development of the atom
bomb for the United States, had specified preferred targets in Japan,
and had assisted in developing the hydrogen bomb. By 1954, however,
he is suspected of giving information to Russia which has helped the
Soviets acquire th e ir own H-bomb. In the face of previous security
clearances given Oppenheimer, he is again called before a lo yalty
hearing. Despite the testimonies of security o ffic e rs , colleagues,
and Oppenheimer himself, showing that in almost every crucial c o n flic t
between f id e lit y to the government and fid e lit y to s e lf or friends,
Oppenheimer chose the government, Oppenheimer is judged to be loyal
but a "risk." He is banished from government service, only to be
rehabilitated and honored years la te r for the work he had denounced
following the adverse ruling.
Inquest— Donald Freed
I t is 1950. Russia has exploded its atom bomb a year ago.
Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and Greenglass' s is te r and brother-in-
law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, have been arrested and charged with
conspiracy to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Gold and
Greenglass confess and turn government witnesses against the Rosen-
bergs. Gold and Greenglass are seen to be unstable and unsavory, and
th e ir testimony is shown to have been coerced and coached by the
government. In spite of th is , and the extraordinary domestic and
international pressure to reopen the case or at least to commute the
unprecedented death sentence for peacetime espionage, the Rosenbergs
are electrocuted on a g u ilty verdict.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been— Eric Bentley
Are You Now abridges the appearances of eighteen of the w it
nesses in the 1947-1958 House Un-American A ctivitie s Committee inves
tigation of Hollywood and Broadway personalities. Witnesses are co
operative and name names, uncooperative and defy the Committee, or
both (Larry Parks begs not to be forced to inform on friends and asso
ciates, but eventually does). Individual testimonies vary from one
paragraph to th irty -fiv e pages; the witnesses are lesser known (Sam
Woods, producer-director; Marc Lawrence, film actor) or celebrated
295
(Zero Mostel, Arthur M ille r, Paul Robeson). There is no continuity
or story, only a succession of separate testimonies which recall the
climate of the McCarthy era's obsessive anti-Communism and the usually
disastrous human consequences, even to those who cooperated with the
Committee.
Our Sovereigns
Soldiers— Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Robert David MacDonald
Autumn, 1964. Dorland, a fa ta lly i l l theater director, is
w riting and rehearsing a play which he hopes w ill atone for the World
War I I incineration raids on Dresden in which he participated as a
B ritish Wing Commander.
His play begins. In i t , Winston Churchill is considering
which is the best way to compensate Stalin for B rita in 's in a b ility to
open a second front against H itle r. The alternatives are to con
ventionally bom b Germany's weapon sites and war plants, as Chief-of-
S taff Alan Brooke advises, or to fire-bomb crowded urban working-
class residential areas, as physicist-confidante Viscount Cherwell
advocates. Churchill chooses the fire -ra id s — "Operation Gomorrah."
Churchill must also deal with his a lly , Polish Prime M inister
Sikorski, who w ill not relinquish Polish border land demanded by
Churchill's other a lly , S talin . Churchill decides that S talin is
indispensable, and Sikorski is not. He yields to Cherwell's urgings,
and agrees that Sikorski is to be k ille d in an apparent airplane acci
dent. Churchill sees this decision as unavoidable but is devastated
by Sikorski's death when i t occurs.
Dorland's play w ithin-the-play ends. Dorland, unable wholly
either to agree with or condemn Churchill, receives word that his play
has been banned in England, as, in fa c t, Soldiers was.
Murderous Angels— Conor Cruise O'Brien
United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold flie s to the
newly independent Congo to end a c iv il war between riv a l black leaders
before i t leads to more serious h o s tilitie s Between Russia and the
United States. He bypasses the leg ally constituted Prime M inister,
Patrice Lumumba, who had requested U. N. help, and contacts instead
Moise Tshombe, puppet of white interests and self-proclaimed President
of a rebel Congolese province. Lumumba turns to the Soviets fo r aid,
but before he can get i t , he is placed under house arrest by U. N.
forces, supported by the U. S. and white financiers with interests in
the Congo. Lumumba escapes to attend his daughter's funeral and is
k ille d by rebel o ffic e rs . The financial consortia sees Hammarskjold
as the la s t obstacle to th e ir dominion over Congolese a ffa irs , and
arrange to sabotage the plane Hammarskjold is about to take. Hammar
skjold knows th is , but takes the flig h t anyway, accepting his own
death as atonement for Lumumba's murder, which Hammarskjold had delib
erately allowed.
An Evening with Richard Nixon— Gore Vidal
Accompanied by emcee George Washington, President Nixon views
and reenacts the incidents of his l i f e , beginning with his du tifu l
childhood in W h ittier, C alifornia; his combative courtship of high
school g irls ; and his college football days when he was used ch iefly as
a tackling dummy. Later, Nixon wages successful fear-and-smear elec
toral campaigns against Congressman Jerry Voorhis and Senator Helen
Gahagan Douglas. Between flashbacks, the ghosts of Washington, Dwight
Eisenhower, and John Kennedy comment on Nixon, themselves, other p o li
tic a l personalities, and the fa ilu re of the American experiment.
Vice-President Nixon has domestic public relations triumphs
against hostile crowds in Caracas and with Kruschev in Moscow. As
President, Nixon orders the invasion of Cambodia, and has a grotesque
and disastrous meeting with students peacefully demonstrating against
the invasion at the Lincoln Memorial. The play ends with the American
Bar Association disapproving his nominations fo r the Supreme Court in
1971, followed by the entire cast dancing gaily to a jazzy national
anthem, as a movie screen shows bombing in Asia and the American flag
in shreds.
Our Wars
The Deputy--R olf Hochhuth, translated by Richard and Clara Winston
In 1942, German Lt. Kurt Gerstein unsuccessfully trie s to get
the Papal Nuncio in Berlin to bring Nazi a tro citie s against the Jews
to Pope Pius' attention. Father Riccardo Fontana, a young aide to the
Nuncio, hears Gerstein's appeal, and himself undertakes to inform the
Pope and to combat the Nazi horrors in any other ways he can, which
la te r includes exchanging id en tities with a fu g itive German Jew.
In Rome, Gerstein is s t i l l living the double l i f e of a Nazi
o ffic e r and a secret anti-Nazi a c tiv is t. He fantasizes a plot to
commandeer the Vatican radio station and speak against the Nazis in
298
the name of the Pope, and then "prevent'1 Pius from disavowing the
statement. Riccardo, growing more desperate at the Pope's silence,
even considers k illin g the P ontiff.
Riccardo wins an audience with the Pope through the interces
sion of his father, a benefactor of the Vatican. The meeting ends in
frustratio n and f u t i l i t y , as the Pope composes a statement so vaguely
and fig u ra tiv e ly worded that i t cannot be interpreted as referring to
the Jews.
Riccardo, carrying the id en tific a tio n of the escaped Jew,
goes w illin g ly to a concentration camp. Gerstein persuades him to
allow himself to be rescued. The plan fa ils as the infamous chief
"Doctor" of the camp spots the ruse. Riccardo is gunned down by guards
before he can shoot the Doctor. The Doctor orders Riccardo, s t i l l
a liv e , to be burned in the cremating ovens.
The Investiqation--Peter Weiss, translated by Jon Swan and Ulu Grosbard
The Investigation condenses the 1964-1965 t r ia l in Frankfurt
of those who perpetrated, observed, or survived the murder of four
m illion people between 1941 and 1945 at Auschwitz. There is no p lo t,
only a sequential catalog of past actions committed by eighteen nearly
interchangeable Accused and attested to by a procession of nameless,
numerous Witnesses. The testimonies describe the prisoners' arrival
at the labor-death camp by box-car; th e ir degrading, tortured, usually
lethal treatment in camp; and th e ir extermination by poison gas and
disposal by cremation. There are no summation speeches, no verdict,
and no resolution within this play.
299
Pueblo— Stanley R. Greenberg
Lloyd Bucher took command of the U.S.S, Pueblo in 1968 to con-i
duct covert espionage o ff the Korean coast. When the Korean navy and
a ir force attack the ship, Bucher surrenders rather than permit the
massacre of his crew. He and the crew spend a year in a Korean prison,
eventually seeming to become instruments of Korean propaganda, while
actually deceiving th e ir captors with statements detectably false to
Americans.
On his negotiated release with the crew, Bucher is tried by
the Navy fo r possible court m artial, and called before a congressional
committee investigating the fa ilu re of the m ilita ry chain of command
to prevent the ship's seizure in the f i r s t place, and to rescue Bucher
from imprisonment in the second.
The congressional committee finds the government grievously at
fa u lt, but does nothing further. The Naval Court of Inquiry recommends
court martial for Bucher, but is overruled by the Secretary of the
Navy. The play ends with Bucher as p athetically uncomprehending of
a ll these events as he was during th e ir occurrence.
The T rial of the Catonsville Nine--Daniel Berrigan, te xt prepared for
production by Saul Levitt
Catonsville dramatizes the 1968 t r ia l of Father Daniel Ber
rigan and eight other lay and cle rical Catholics who burned with home
made napalm the records of a Selective Service o ffic e in Catonsville,
Maryland.
The nine accused Catholic t e ll what in th e ir lives previous
300
to th e ir radical act brought them to such a point. They speak of th eir
thwarted attempts to help the oppressed and deprived in Guatemala,
Baltimore, A fric a , and Washington, D. C. They recount how they turned
to congressmen, senators, cabinet members, to th e ir own church, and
how a ll of these men and institutions turned them away with refusals
and platitudes. They seek now a verdict of "not g u ilty ," not to spare
themselves, but because they are attempting, perhaps one la s t time, to
get an instrument of American society— the courts— to put a stop to
the violence, to the death, to the suppression of the tru th , and to
the war in Vietnam. In this they f a i l . They are convicted; the judge
refuses to acquit on the defendants' grounds that conscience supersedes
law.
XA: A Vietnam Primer—Michael Monroe and The Provisional Theatre
Collective
The Vietnamese people have a 4000-year past, and became a
nation in the third century B.C. For a thousand years, between the
second century B.C. and 937 A.D., China ruled Vietnam, defeating four
rebellions but losing the f i f t h and fin a l revolution against them. For
the next fiv e centuries, Vietnamese royalty, while fighting among them
selves, manage to conquer neighboring Indian and Cambodian provinces
and fend o ff Mongolian invasion. European nations then try fo r two
centuries to command commercial and religious privileges in Vietnam.
F in ally , in 1917, France becomes the dominant power in Indochina,
losing i t b rie fly during World War I I and regaining i t a fte r Japan's
surrender. Ho Chi Minh, who began the resistance against a ll foreign
301
control in 1924, becomes Vietnam's ru le r in 1945, An agreement with
France for Vietnamese independence is abrogated by France, and in 1946,
the Indochinese war begins, financed largely by the U. S. government.
In 1954 the battered French quit Vietnam, but Ho accepts temporary
pa rtitio n of Vietnam in return for the promise of elections. The U. S.
picks its own president of the southern zone, forbids p a rtitio n , and
the war resumes, this time a c iv il war fought also with men, supplies,
and money from the U. S. Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand are drawn in
with th eir own American-equipped c iv il wars.
302
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books*
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1933-1953. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
________ . A History of Broadcasting. Vol. 3: The Image Empire from
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Bauland, Peter. The Hooded Eagle: Modern German Drama on the New
York Stage. Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press,
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Bentley, Eric. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. New York: Colo
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. The Pla'ywright As Thinker. New York: Meridian Books,
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Unpublished Materials
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Zipes, Jack. May 1973.
312

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