“RESPECT FOR THE TEXT” by Peter Brook

With Peter Brook's production of THE GRAND INQUISITOR, based on Dostoyevsky's THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, now playing at the New York Theatre Workshop, I thought it would be interesting to reprint an old exclusive interview with him entitled “A Director's Respect For The Text”, which originally appeared in my magazine, New York THEATRE Review, September/1979 issue.

“I like strawberries. I'm sure you do. And sometimes I like strawberries even as they are. Sometimes I like mashing them with with my fork, mixing things. Sometimes I like what one always has at this time of year in France in every cafe –- which is strawberry tarts. Now all of those are expressions of strawberries, but the real reason for strawberries to exist, is because it has grown out of nature. And the real reason for you to put it in your mouth is because you need food.

“Now in exactly the same way, a text is not an end by itself. A text has come from somewhere. It has come from an author. And if the text is really good, it comes from the author trying to express something essential through the text. Now that author makes that attempt to express something essential, maybe in another period, in another context, than ours –- and we're here today, and we're longing to eat that food. We're like the people who want to eat the strawberries and we can eat it in different forms. We can eat it intact, or mashed, or served in a flan. Now which do we choose to do? I think the whole question here is a purely relative one.

“In the case of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, I didn't change one single word. In the case of THE TEMPEST, we turned the whole play inside-out. It all depends on the aim and the context. Nothing else. To say that you can take a text and use it as a springboard – - the proof of that pudding is in the eating. If by taking and turning it inside-out, an essential truth that is buried in that text can suddenly appear -- this is the great thing about the theatre – that event is justified, because you have done no harm to the text, which still remains there within its covers, perfectly intact.

“If on the other hand, you say today, for you, for me, for our context today, 'This as it stands is so perfect that anything I do lessens it,' then I'm a fool to start mashing it and cooking it in tarts, much as, in a restaurant, you actually make your pies usually out of the remains from yesterday. But if you have an absolutely beautiful new piece of steak, you don't chop it up and make it into a pie. You cook it, grill it. You don't put a sauce on it. You eat it as it is.

“Now it's exactly that, if what one needs to respect is the truth behind the activity. Now A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, for instance, produces truths on many levels, and the form that the play takes is extraordinarily perfect. So I thought the only way to touch the truth was to respect the text to the last degree.

“And although I love Shakespeare and I love his text, I haven't a blind respect either for him or his text. Because the reason I love him is for the truth he is trying to bring through his text. So my love also has to go towards that truth, and that's why each theatre event is different and must be judged entirely by all the circumstances that surround it, so that it's an argument that works both ways.

“In one context, it is criminal to fuck around with the great text, because one does it at one's risk and peril. That's why I have very often, very strongly attacked productions that turn Shakespeare inside-out - - because I don't think when you're dealing with great material you should do this too easily. So that the idea of the text being a springboard, I think, is one of the most dangerous ideas that have ever been launched - - simply because it encourages people, before they have gone through the process of digging deeply into a text, to already change it.

“I remember my father telling me that he had a friend who arrived in England from Russia after the first World War. After two weeks of being in England, this Russian, with not one single word of English, began writing a book called 'The Faults of the English Language'. Now in exactly the same way, to take a great play, and before you have really come to the core of it, you are already correcting it's mistakes - - and that is what one sees in a lot of springboard reactions – - this is criminal.

“On the other hand, to take a great play and not take into account that as time goes by there are things that mean less, values changes, balances change, immediacy disappears - - and therefore, out of respect, to leave it exactly as it is, allowing an audience not to come into contact with the essential, that is also false.

“So each time you are confronting a new set of decisions. Why are we trying to touch this material today? What is the purpose of it? And is that purpose best served by blind obedience or bold intervention? Or through a blend of the two? Those are the questions.

“If you are dealing with a modern play, suppose you're dealing with a young author. He writes his first play and brings it to a director. The director is in exactly this position. For him to tell the young author, 'You've got it wrong. You should cut this, you should change this, you should rewrite this' - - which is what people love doing - - is a very dangerous process, because he may be wrong. The author may have something he is trying to say, and the director my completely spoil it.

“But on the other hand, a director who is convinced that the play falls apart in the second act and doesn't say so - - and doesn't say so vigorously and strongly - - is also betraying the author. So once again, the truth has to be an honest search for something that combines the two. And the director has to intervene, or he isn't a director. And yet, he has to take into account that he is not there to intervene - - like producers do, because they're frustrated authors! He has to intervene genuinely to help the essence to appear, and that's why intervention is a double-edged sword.

“You can see how often producers destroy work, because they take a play on the road, and what comes out is not their wish for the essence to appear, but their wish for their own ego to suddenly have a ball. They can then prove to the author that they are a better author than he, and they can prove to the director that they are really a better director than he is - - but nobody has yet recognized that. And one has to recognize that those are legitimate temptations and dangers, and steer in-between them.”

scenebyme--ijb

David Mamet Revivals on Broadway

Two David Mamet plays are being revived on Broadway this season: AMERICAN BUFFALO and SPEED THE PLOW. When AMERICAN BUFFALO premiered on Broadway some 31 years ago, I moderated a "Critics Roundtable" for my new magazine, New York THEATRE Review. I assembled two critics (John Simon and Henry Hewes) for a non-confrontational face-to-face discussion with the creators of the new production -- playwright David Mamet and producer Joe Beruh. The result was an intellectual-yet-down-to-earth verbal "battle". They talked about the play, playwriting. audiences, government, the American economy, big business -- and things said then seem so totally relevant today.

Here are some of David Mamet's salient excerpts from my Roundtable:

"In the period when I first began to write the play, I was doing a lot of reading, and I was reading a lot of Theodore Dreiser stuff, and I had just started reading Thorstein Veblen, too.And I was playing a lot of poker with people who were very much like the people in the play. And the question which constantly arose in my mind was, 'What in the world is going on here?' The fiction, whereby we the men in this country, in the aid of which we conduct our lives -- the fiction of loyalty, the fiction of business and the fiction of self-improvement, is patently dissolving. It no longer supports us, it no longer makes us feel good. And the moral fabric, that is to say our perception, of the government, of those institutions whereon we peg, or at least give lip service to,the church and so on, we care for less and less.

"Our ideals are quite obviously completely out of line with the way in which we conduct our lives. And the area in which it most fascinated me, was in the area of business -- which as Veblen says, the myth of American business is nothing other than the sheerest mask for predatory behavior..... masking fraud and masking theft and masking death. And the things that we're taught in school, to salute the flag, and to improve ourselves under the auspices and under the wings of huge corporations. The whole Horatio Alger myth in this country that we give ourselves, is nothing other than self-enslavement and fraud -- and that's this country."

And here are some of Mamet's thoughts about structure and action in a play:

"Aristotle comes along and says that as a proscriptive formula, we have to have unity of action in a play. And Stanislavski comes along at the beginning of the twentieth century and says perhaps this is not a proscriptive formula, perhaps it's a descriptive formula. And he describes the process of perception that one goes through when one views a play. That is to say, not as any god-given fiat must we have a unity of action in a play, but solely because the audience comes in, and the curtain goes up, they see a play for two or three hours, and they come away. We're going to internalize that experience as a totality, and because of that, because of the nature of perception, you'd better jolly well make sure we have a unity of action in a play.

"I think it's absolutely essential that every beat in a play puts forward the action, that every word in a play puts forward the action. And any word of a play which does not put forward the action, must be excised from the play. And that any point in a play where the action takes too great a leap or turns back upon itself, that point in the play must be corrected. I believe that, completely, strongly.

"Those points at which the attention of the audience will lag.... no matter how brilliant the dialogue, no matter how exciting the stage action is, those points which are not essential to the action of the play -- what happens next -- must be corrected."

scenebyme--ijb

Who to praise -- or to blame?

Theatre critics seemingly have always trod the fine line of discerning the individual responsibilities of the various disciplines and elements that result in a theatrical performance -- what we, as an audience, see and hear and experience.

We usually can credit/discredit a playwright for the dialogue / story / relationships that we see on a stage. But when it comes to interpretation of the dialogue and storyline, the interactions and characterizations, it's not always clear who is to be praised or blamed -- the actor, the director, the choreographer -- or, in some cases, even the playwright!

But, after all, determining who "did" "what" in a particular production, is of course one role of the reviewer/critic. And no matter how knowledgeable or erudite, how perceptive or discerning, it sometimes becomes a guessing game.

Recently, I saw two very disparate off-Broadway shows: one was a new, contemporary musical; the other, a revival of an off-beat play. What they had in common, was that they both left me with the distinct feeling that the performances outshone the material. Each was based on very personal and intimate relationships within their familial settings. Each was told from the point-of-view of the playwright/protagonist. Each had their creator performing their onstage personas -- although the playwright of the revival had played his onstage stand-in for the premiere several decades earlier.

One is a rock-rap, hip-hop, contemporary musical drama expressing the very personal and professional journey of its two characters. The other, a multi-populated, dysfunctional family saga, narrated by the playwright's alter-ego, satirically unfolding his journey to becoming who he became.

In both these well-done theatrical presentations, the performances of both casts were outstanding, despite the shortcomings of the material. Some theatre professionals might argue that it was the material that made these performances possible -- and that unanswerable argument is an ever-present dilemma in the theatre.

scenebyme--ijb

Recycling the Musical Theatre

It has been an illuminating year for old-fashioned musicals masquerading in contemporary hip-hop clothing. This is particularly the case with "Passing Strange" and "In The Heights".

These musicals are about coming-of-age, and discovering that after all the searching is over, you are led back to where you started. Wrapped in rap, hip-hop, and rock musical trappings, these shows are both similarly about the nature of the journey -- leaving in order to find your place in the world --- which is back home!

While they are both described as innovative, even in their disguised structure, they linearly take us through a beginning, a middle, and an end. They "work" as theatre because they are traditionally entertaining --- which, after all, is a major goal of the commercial (Broadway) theatre experience.

So going forward by going backward can be a good thing, and recycling -- in the best sense of the word -- can bring us successful new musical styles. Let's not be afraid to take the best of the past as a guide for future -- even if skeptics like me sometimes call it "old-fashioned".

scenebyme -- ijb