The American Theatre, 1969-1970
Brudnoy, David
"The American Theatre, 1969-1970" As this hook is highly innovative methodologically, it is particularly lamentable that the behavioralists, in their preoccupation with "method," should ignore it. Kendall and Carey have fused...
...Times know, is scintillating, and he's so urbane, so quick to tire of faddism, that he deftly leads us through the mass of whoopsy-doo i-n-n-o-v-a -t-i-o-n to some perspective about what might have lasting value and what's there just to arouse...
...The plain fact is that most of what's exciting in New York theatre isn't Broadway...
...You can perhaps imagine my surprise when I observed that the Chinese delegation greeting Mr...
...The writing, as those who follow Mr...
...Barnes seem almost to smack his lips with glee as he writes of all the wild and whacky (and, in some cases, nauseating) stage business enliven the off- and off-off offerings...
...So I suppose American Theatre 1969-1970 has a lot to offer me, and maybe you...
...And who took the eng~es off all their cycles...
...Nor does it ease all my doubts about modern drama, although I found it more palatable than would have been the case two years ago, when on emerging from Dionysus in 69~ I mumbled something about the play being subversive of the American value system" and was, I suppose justifiably, hooted at by my companions, both New Yorkers far more sophisticated and understanding of what had of late been happening on stage than I, a hick down from Boston for a weekend in the big city...
...and, the new styles of behavior associated with them, are created by small coteries which are devoted to exploring the new...
...Under such conditions public service loses all of its allure, and promising politicians depart for more profitable fields like journalism, for instance...
...But even for infrequent theatre-goers like me, the theatre remains uniquely that artculture form which can transport one for a limited time into a world removed...
...of Philosophy The New York Post Dear Mr...
...Kerr talks of the '~rheatre of ~herapy'," which he says is "with us everywhere, in the dithyrambic abandon of a suddenly topless (sic...
...From the "Nadsat" language of the young we are given to believe that the Russians have conquered and are in the process of instilling the Worker's Paradise, but this aspect is underplayed by the producer, Stanley Kubrick...
...I hope the latter accounts at least for my disenchantment with the present theatre, but frankly I ' m not sure...
...Clearly Broadway is down...
...Maybe they don't do that anymore in this country, but if they do, then I'm probably not wrong in thinking that for most Americans, theatre is still something one is taken to, a t a tender age, and then abandoned like spinach...
...The discerning moviegoer will have already recognized these' phenomena as signs of a Very Bad Movie, but for once he is in for a surprise: A Clockwork Orange, despite some major faults, ,has moments of true excellence that stand like a lighthouse amidst the pornographic and commercial mainstream...
...Alex is nothing short of a fascist beast...
...Everyone disports about doing his own delightful thing: Life is elegant and exhilarating...
...Kerr must be myopic) bacchant~ inviting members of the audience to shed inhibitions and join the players on stage...
...Thus, this doctrine about the people's right to know is butter for every, journalist's bread and should ipso facto he consldered ethical and indeed sacred...
...Perhaps as a monstrous generalization one could say that the traditionalist demands linearity, the play's the thing," beginning, middle, cfimax, denouement...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...A tradition of the new, Harold Rosenberg's neat oxymoron, encourages art to be unfettered, breaking down all genres...
...Her enthusiasm for the state, for the possibilities of theatre even in today's United States, are inspiring and solidly grounded in experiences, heartbreaks and successes alike,, lending authoritativeness to all that she writes...
...Gottfried had to strain to get through to the end of his piece without a yawn...
...His passion for Beethoven is, I suppose, what makes him strangely forgiveable as he patrols the streets with his gang, committing indescribable acts of violence and mayhem...
...And all the while he has been mending political fences with America's agricultural barons...
...Where once people were shocked even to rage, as happened at early performances of Ibsen (A Doll's House, Enemy of the People, and others), now in the West at least, those who frequent the theatre are tolerant of anything...
...When several courageous and, I might add, dedicated representatives of the media asked him about these mysterious black eyes he had the temerity and, I might add, guile to say "no comment !" Is this not a violation of the people's right to know...
...oh, the Alley has a multitrillion dollar home in which to frolic, but the theatre is dead...
...At any rate, Alex is finally caught by the police and convicted of murder, and after a useless year or so in prison is subjected to a "new" form of penology, a sort of cinematic Pavlovian brainwashing that conditions him against violence arid sex, and inadvertently Beethoven, by depriving him of his free will...
...Hamfll: How astonished I am to see that even a serious journalist like yourself has fallen for Mr...
...A New Demand Response System...
...Long hair is suppressed...
...The tendency to implicate others in one's less noble activities is always a danger, but am I simply rationalizing by thinking that it's precisely the kicks of voyeurism, legally sanctionf<l, as it were, that account for the success of things like Dirtiest Show...
...and because the new has value in and of itself, and meets with so little resistance, the new sensibility and its behavior styles diffuse rapidly, transforming the thinking and actions of larger masses of people...
...The book doesn't answer all my questions about why today's theatre is as it is, or why I rarely see plays...
...They have combined the "text analysis" method of Leo Strauss with the "symbols" approach of Eric Voegelin...
...The American Theatre, by no means perfect, nonetheless is a healthy sign of the continued high level of concern about and activity in our theatre...
...But l've the feeling that most who read this will be, like me, irregular theatre-goers at best, and many will have given up on the delights on t h e stage after their high school English teacher dragged them to their last local junior college production of Lear...
...GWP II of the Performing Garage tells us about this is his essay, "Post Proscenium...
...regional theatre is a sometime thing...
...Nixon to attract attention to himself and away from the horrors of'modern Amerika...
...even the young, who think thrice and usually negatively about shelling out for a theatre ticket, will pay through the nose, and plan far in advance, to see the Rolling Stones, or Tina Turner, or name it...
...This is something the good government crowd never seems to understand...
...When journalists report their findings that, say, a Senator eats his beans from a can or sleeps in his suit, it is an annoyance for the esteemed representative of the people...
...Poking around in other people's, affairs has been one of the great triumphs of journalism and making the commonplace or the trivial juicy is what distinguishes the mediocre journalist from the virtuoso...
...Surely not the nudity--the players are almost invariably nice to look at...
...When discussing the afore-mentioned Dionysus in 69, for instance, Mr...
...As with so many other things it boris down to a question of ethics...
...now they do Fortune and Men's Eyes at one of the colleges a t which I teach, and that's the most conventional offering of the season...
...Briefly, we have a fantasy-fable of the future, set in an Orwellian nightmarish world ruled after dark by teenage gangs...
...I recently saw Follies, as superlatively staged and as technically proficient a perforinance as one could want: big, bold Broadway...
...Just before the last few essays there appears one which is alone worth the price: "Theatres of Institutions...
...On the other hand, for the politician the doctrine can prove annoying and when taken to its extreme it can even debilitate a nation's polity...
...Is it the themes or the forms that most unsettle us...
...Is the reason that those of us who feel uneasy about and confused by today's theatre that we are not amused by cannibalism on state...
...A Clockwork Orange is, I suppose, something that appears organic yet is 20 The Alternative April 1972...
...one usually must plan in advance to go, march off to buy tickets, and then appear precisely on time...
...the with-it crowd has already seen it three times...
...Barnes in the...
...In Houston, in much of Texas for that matter, where I spent two years in the middle sixties theatre, most particularly the Alley Theatre, was rousing, innovative, daring, and Texans supported it...
...I greatly enjoyed the very nude, very naughty Dirtiest Show in Town, not, certainly, because of its story," which was minimal, in fact barely existent...
...off-Broadway is a jumble of true creativity and squalid opportunism...
...We did Time Out for Ginger when I was a budding and quite untalented thespian in school in the late fifties...
...They have made him out to be a great yearner for peace...
...Walter Kerr of the New York Times leads off with a snappy overview of trends, his writing, as usual, more than competent...
...From this examination, they are able to detect the "derailment" of that sound, viable and durable tradition, rooted in the order of being, which Publius knew so well...
...Surely you should have known that the real China is one of the glories of the globe...
...Kendall and Carey have fused the approaches of two distinguished political theorists...
...Theatrical performances are expensive, usually at least twice as expensive as movies...
...We live in a time witnessing a breakup not only of genres but of rational cosmology as well...
...Los Angeles Times man Dan Sullivan's discussion of California theatre...
...Barnes shows why...
...What is more he is undertaking a dangerous hair transplant...
...We all know of theatre-in-the-round and in-the-square, but theatre in and around the audience is less familiar to most Americans...
...Granted, the theatre does not reach large masses of people, surely not like the movies, that cultural form (aside from books) with which I'm most concerned...
...The new sensibilities, in Daniel Bell's terms, are definitely to be found in all degrees of quality, on stage...
...In employing both methods, Kendall and Carey analyzed the following key documents of the American political tradition: the Mayflower Coinpact, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights...
...the new theatre-goer demands at least some thought and a soupcan of content but will contentedly tolerate an absence of linearity, whereas the young who shun theatre but patronize rock concerts demand sensation galore and happily settle for little if any content...
...a nicely-done light expose of "The Great Mail Fraud" and the hucksterism of regional theatre...
...GWP Dear Mr...
...Just what separates the sensibilities of the traditional theatre-goer from those of people who now appreciate the new theatre and, in addition, from those who lap-after rock but shun the theatre, is hard to determine...
...the antibourgeois, masquerading as the avant...
...and a fascinating piece by David Hays on the Theatre of the Deaf, one so exiciting that I've marked the deaf theatre down as an experience not to be missed the first time it comes to Boston or I come to it...
...critics have made profound judgments about it as a Parable Of Our Times...
...Nixon's latest scheme...
...Strauss has taught that careful text analysis of significant political works will reap rewards in terms of theoretical traderstanding, while Voegelin has emphasized that the study of political "symbols" can reveal much about a society's underlying theoretical foundations...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootbhck Stand, The Establishment, R.R...
...Now, through this column, the distinguished Dr...
...Nixon's trip, there are no blacks among the government and party leadership...
...You have been had...
...it can be purchased in all bookstores...
...But when a journalist is inveterately exposing, say, pay-offs between senators and HEW bureaucrats, this is a more serious matter...
...The inventiveness, Gottfried clearly shows by omission, is no longer on Broadway, though the technical expertness still is...
...The people in the streets all look just like participants at 4-H Club Conventions...
...There are some questions that are best left unasked...
...Once more (I hate to dwell, but I see I'm dwelling), for what is nudity for nudity's sake, if not merely to arouse...
...It's a bother that few Americans are willing to undergo, although hundreds of thousands endure much more inconvenience to attend Woodstock or Altamont...
...But-the plays -- and of this I'm in accord with Mr...
...The book continues with some good pieces about theatre elsewhere, such as Arthur Ballet's "The Theatre of Middle America," which especially attracted me because of its intelligent discussion of the Guthrie Theatre in my boyhood home-town, Minneapolis, probably consistently the best company not on the coasts...
...It is those who do not go to the theatre - - the anti-culture police, blue-nose judges, among others - - who today threaten the theatre in America, and their threat is a rear-guard action and but delays, rather than impedes, the advance of just about any manifestacloth, $4.95 paper tion of theatrical whim imaginable (I think of the reception Hair received in Boston: closed by judicial order, with police connivance, because of some nudity and flag- disrespect" business, but eventually reopened with complete victory for the producers and defeat of the censors...
...Geyelin: This whole matter of the people's right to know is an enormously complicated issue...
...Onany given night in America, more people s e e a prime-time TV show than attend all the theatrical performances performed across the land in an entire year...
...Herbert Kupferberg's fine piece on the New York Shakespeare Festival, this being the remarkable free theatre in Central Park which may account for whatever chance the "masses" have to come to love the bard as he deserves...
...Other essays include an interview with Peter Brook...
...Theatre in the streets has possibilities, though I'd guess that the loss of that magic quality present in an enclosed building is not sufficiently offset by the immediacy and mobility of outdoor theatre in public plazas...
...Now that reporters have been buzzing around poor Senator Proxmire, the word is out that those black eyes are the aftermath of a face lifting...
...Returned to society as a harmless marshmallow, Alex is trumpeted by the state as the final solution to the problem of crime and lawlessness, but through happenstance falls into the hands of a liberal muckraking writer and his cronies, who plan to use Alex as a martyr for their anti-Establishment cause...
...and with a discussion of books and a good bibliography...
...But more than film, more so, in fact, than any other art form, the modern theatre reflects the new sensibility, and, created by just such small coteries as Dr...
...Now it's dead...
...Unfortunately, the writer soons recognizes Alex as the young lad who, a few years earlier, had raped and beat his wife, and his desire for vengeance overcomes his devotion to his cause...
...off-BroadNow, of course, the newspapers can make a great deal of money by snooping around and turning up juicy talesabout public figures...
...Richard Schechner of the Chinese People's Republic...
...Or is it the nudity...
...a causeless rebel whose level of thought oscillates between the gutter and the groin -yet there is one aspect of his humanity that is not perverted, and that is his love of classical music...
...Well, like all gross generalizations, this one may best uttered softly and then abandoned quickly...
...These remarks are occasioned by the appearance recently of The AmeriCan Theatre 1969-1970, a well-designed anthology containing some excellent, frank essays and a wealth of fine photographs and cartoons (Hirschfeld and others...
...Tolerance and diversity abound and there are flowers, always flowers...
...Oklahoma City is big this year...
...It is this kind of publicity that has given graft a bad name, and driven competent men from public life...
...Hell man, downtown Peking looked just like I imagine downtown Kansas City must appear...
...by Zelda Fichandler, the driving force behind the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C...
...DavM Brudnoy Blood 'n Guts'n Beethoven A Clockwork Orange A CLOCKWORK ORANGE has arrived on The Scene with the force of D-Day...
...They have given him wave after wave of headlines...
...A kind of attenuated bell bottom seems to be allowed, but there is no grass...
...But obviously that's beyond the purview of such a collection of essays prosaically grounded in discussions of what is, rather than in convincing hypotheses of why it is as it is, and isn't...
...This book is political theory at its best, for the authors, with a keen appreciation of concretes and realities, have through the process of distillation discerned a broad theoretical overview of the essence of the American political tradition...
...What kind of government will you have if the Halls of Congress are inhabited by mediocrities...
...Next year...
...Regards, Pete Hamril Dept...
...He simply packed all those eastern journalists onto The Spirit oJ 76 and flew them to Kansas City...
...Our anti-hero is Alex, leader of his own gang and a working-class tough whose primary interests in life seem to be mugging, looting, raping and listening to Beethoven...
...Think of the propaganda coup...
...John P. East The Play's the Thing, Maybe The American Theatre, 1969-1970 Scribners, $9.95 B OURGEOIS culture we're told, has been touted...
...Plunkitt has agreed to advise American statesmen in this time of troubles...
...Or the frequent seeming meaninglessness of the play: 18 The Alternative April 1972 The Bootblack Stand Dr...
...Barnes differentiates the "outrageious and uproarious" Dirtiest Show in Town, which was fresh and amusing, from such "drivel" as The Way It Is and A Circle in the Water, respectively heteroand homo-nudies, both aborted even before their openings...
...Plunkitt: For years now I have been increasingly aware of the enlightened qualities |1 IIIIIII wa " y, which includes off-off B and offoff-off B, is up - - down and up, that is, in the eyes of this book's contributors...
...Nixon's landing in Peking was decidedly unyoung, unblack, and ungay...
...I can't evaluate The AmeriCan Theatre or tall about trends in theatre with the same ease as I could about a book concerning today's film--that by way of advance warning...
...In "Again from the Razed Grom~, an Experience of .the Theatre, 1920-70," Harold Clurman, one of the long-time giants of the American theatre (actor, then dramatist, now critic), offers a The Alternative April 1972 19 neat review illustrated with wonderful drawings, text and illustrations alike evocative of better days on Broadway, days unlikely to find their match in the future, at least on these shores...
...garde, is on the verge of triumph...
...Gottfried -- the plays have been less than brilliant...
...Published in August, it focuses on the unique position of minority groups in the Congolese electoral process...
...But in the very few productions I~'e subsequent ly seen in which the players (not their genitals, however) bobbed around midst the audience, I found myself more interested, more involved, less put-off...
...In fact from what I have been able to discern from the television coverage of Mr...
...Theatre is so changed, even in the heartland where I grew up, that our recollections of it from years ago scarcely square with today's reality...
...Alex and his "'droogs" (friends) live somewhere in a dreary socialist England that is in the process of becoming a police state...
...we trooped eagerly off to see the Yale Players doing Moliere in the early sixties...
...The essential question is "Can I or can I not make a buck from it...
...Zelda Fichandler doesn't know for sure what direction the American theatre is taking...
...Time and Newsweek have headlined it...
...The American Theatre 1969-1970 is the third in a series of annual publications, a good book by which to learn what's up in the theatre at present...
...Not so Clive Barnes, whose "Off-Broadway and Off-Off 1969-70" sparkles...
...So that's what it was...
...Theatre waxes and wanes in Middlemerica...
...When Martin Gottfried turns to "Broadway 1~0-70," however, we really see the morass into which Big Theatre has fallen...
...George Washington PlunkRt, our prize-winning political analyst, has just completed a penetrating study of the last Congolese election...
...Philip L. Geyelin Editor, The Washington Post Dear Mr...
...What is Red China anyway, a Rockefeller fiefdora...
...we thought it was the end-all when, on escaping from grad-school for a weekend in New York, my roommate and I went to Genet's The Blacks...
...Plunkitt: On February 8 Senator Proxmire was seen in Washington, D.C...
...in addition, there doesn't appear to be much to separate such street theatre from the histrionics of the political slreet-corner harangues to which we've grown accustomed these days...
...This whole China thing is an elaborate hoax by Mr...
...In itself this might seem a matter of little moment but its significance is really quite grave, for now the Bolsheviks know that our senators, heretofore judged as the most comely solons on the globe, are artificially preserved...
...Broadway is in bad straits...
...The new sensibilities," writes Daniel Bell ("The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism," in Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, eds., Capitalism Today 1971...
...Bell mentions, explores the new and meets with surprisingly little resistance by theatre devotees...
...experiencing jostling genitals in my face, at a play, is a bit disquieting...
...Statistics are unreliable here, but I'd guess that we could say in two entire years and not be far off the mark...
...None of the book's articles gets into any sort of satisfying analysis of why...
...It is titled Escape...
...wearing a pair of dark sun glasses, apparently to hide from the view of the people a couple of black eyes around his eyes...
...We must be honest "about our motivations...
...In fact, they all look alike to me...
...Those drab scenes you are seeing on television are downtown Kansas City...
...The book concludes with a perfectly dreadful -- adverb and adjective carefully chosen -- mishmash "play" called Vietnam Campesino, which for ten dreary pages reveals why so much of the theatre of the political is unseeable, at least by me...
...Finally, Alex again becomes a tool of the Establishment politicians, and as we close out he is converted back into his lovable barbarian self...
...I admit again to a somewhat fusty attitude at the start toward theatre in which the players literally lunge at me...
...Schechner's piece is leaden, but the trends he describes are intriguing...
...Dear Mr...
Vol. 5 • April 1972 • No. 7
