Radical Shakespeare - A New Way of Doing Shakespeare - Essay Example

Radical Shakespeare: A new way of doing Shakespeare When one thinks of the word radical, the definitionthat most often springs to mind typically consists of a vague idea of something vastly different from what’s expected. Webster’s Dictionary defines the term in several ways including: of or pertaining to a root; relating to an origin; and marked by a considerable department from the usual or traditional.1 The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary further defines it when used as an adjective as “believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social or political change” and when used as a noun in terms of “a person who supports great social and political change.”2 Working from these definitions, it should not be surprising to learn that “radical theatre aims to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions or institutions.”3 However, this simple definition is deceptive as the concept of radical theatre becomes much more complex in the various ways through which this alternative approach might be applied – whether by protest, aesthetic differences or through other forms of expression. In his pamphlet discussing the various forms of radical theatre, Richard Walsh identifies three distinct approaches to radical theatre that can be generally classified as aesthetics defining politics, politics defining aesthetics, and aesthetics obscuring politics – “the social and political dimensions of theatre were truncated to allow an exploration of the encounter between the theatrical medium and the individual perceiving mind.”4 This idea of the use of the term radical to describe the theatre can be best understood by examining the work of a radical director such as Peter Brook. Therefore, this essay will consider in which ways, and to what extent, the work of Peter Brook can be regarded as radical. In order to develop an understanding of the radical changes that Peter Brook and others brought to the stage, it is necessary to first have a concept of the world of theatre as it existed before Brook entered the scene. The commercial structure of early British post-war theatre was characterized by the classical teachings of the upper/middle classes who felt theatre should reflect a particular adherence to tradition. Coming out of the war, much of Britain’s mainstream theatre was dominated by the ideologies of a relative minority of commercial businesses who were merely seeking a profit rather than being overly concerned with any kind of artistic achievement. If a theatre company wished to garner the resources offered by these commercial enterprises, they could not present themselves as experimental or controversial in any way. For this reason, much of the theatre developed in this time period “represented the safe middle-class milieu and world-view aspirations of the audiences that would come to see them.”5 The purpose of theatre had been reduced to provide a rather thoughtless, structured evening of culture without the necessity of challenging beliefs or social norms. “They didn’t want anything else, they were perfectly happy to put their feet up. That was what going to the theatre was normally about, going and putting your feet up and just receive something, received ideas of what drama was, going through various procedures which were known to the audience. I think it was becoming a dead area.”6 At the same time, playwrights and producers had to be careful regarding the content and presentation of their material to be sure it fell within the strict regulations of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. This harsh environment saw the number of theatres with permanent repertory companies fall from 96 to 55 between the years 1950 to 1955.7 Despite the commercial structure of theatre following the close of the war, the dominant conventions of stage realism played a part in determining Peter Brook’s radical approach. During the nineteenth century, theatre took on shapes and forms that would not be recognizable today as realistic despite their claims to the contrary.8 Advances in stage set design that included more and more realistic trompe l’oeil encouraged a greater degree of naturalism in the acting performance, all set within the proscenium-arch picture frame of the stage.9 Realism throughout the nineteenth century and into the early portions of the twentieth century was heavily influenced by the new sciences that were emerging, changing the emphasis from those of rationalism or melodramatic displays of emotion. “The terms of Zola’s naturalism required the actor to perform as though completely unaware of the existence of an audience, presenting a fragment of that character’s physiological existence as a series of symptoms that exposed his social and biological history.”10 These changing approaches to acting in light of a changing world contributed to the development of the modernist movement, which was initiated in theatre in the early twentieth century by essentially four men – Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Brecht and Artaud – who each focused in different ways upon the idea that theatre is always symbolic. “It assumes that everything that happens on stage stands for something else. This is true even of the most naturalistic piece.”11 While each of these men placed emphasis on different aspects of their productions and the importance such emphasis had on the final outcome, each recognized the essential nature of the actor in this process. “Each helped to open up acting and to liberate it from old traditions. Each saw the actor as a creative artist in his own right.”12 Their influence on theatre had opened up new ideas for theatre prior to the war period and helped pave the way for Peter Brook to bring his radical approaches to the stage after the war was over. Peter Brook was born in London in 1925 to Russian-Jewish immigrants. He had an excellent early education and made the decision to pursue his creative interests despite his parents’ wish that he study law.13 His first stage production was Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus in 1943 when he was still an undergraduate, which gained him the substantial support of Aleister Crowley. His first professional stage production was Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine in 1945. The choice of this particular text illustrates Brook’s natural inclination to tackle more controversial topics as this particular text was considered either too daring or completely un-performable by most of Brook’s contemporaries.14 By the time he was 21, Brook had worked for some time with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and was commissioned to direct Love’s Labour’s Lost for the Stratford 1946 season by Sir Barry Jackson. “This was the beginning of a long association with what was to become eventually The Royal Shakespeare Company, formed by Brook and Peter Hall in 1960, and of the analysis of the great plays of the Bard which Brook never ceased to explore, to reassess and to visualize.”15 Brook’s approach to the actor built off of the ideas of the earlier Modernists, yet brought these aspects to the forefront through his approach on stage. “All theatrical performance starts from the assumption that a performer is using her body to represent a virtual body. The actor’s creation of a virtual body transforms an actual place demarcated as a playing space into a virtual place. Real time is transformed into virtual time for the duration of the performance.”16 Demonstrating a profound understanding of the many elements, Brook’s productions took on a tone and direction that could only be defined as radical. The theatre scene at the time of Brook’s earliest plays qualified as what Brook refers to as Deadly Theatre. “A true theatre of joy is non-existent and it is not just the trivial comedy and the bad musical that fails to give us our money’s worth – the Deadly Theatre finds its way into grand opera and tragedy, into the plays of Moliere and the plays of Brecht.”17 According to Brook, Deadly Theatre refers to all types of theatre that is based upon the ‘right’ way of doing things, the prescribed way of acting, the determination of the ‘one right way’ to produce and present a text. “The Deadly Theatre takes easily to Shakespeare. We see his plays done by good actors in what seems like the proper way – they look lively, and colorful, there is music and everyone is dressed up, just as they are supposed to be in the best of classical theatres. Yet secretly we find it excruciatingly boring – and in our hearts we either blame Shakespeare, or theatre as such, or even ourselves.”18 As early as 1946, with his production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Brook demonstrated a willingness to take a new approach to Shakespeare that would serve to wake up the attending public and instill a new sense of life in the stagnant theatrical world. Rather than following the somewhat dusty routine of Shakespeare productions, in which it was considered necessary to ‘play what is written’19, Brook chose to costume his actors in Watteau-eighteenth century clothing (consisting of a number of pleats in the back), yet opted to costume one character slightly differently. The character called Constable Dull was dressed as a Victorian policeman because of the image Brook had of him as a London bobby. The change in costume from Shakespearean to Victorian was only one instance in which Brook pointed out the symbolic notion of what is written. He applied this concept equally to the text as it was written. “What is written? Certain ciphers on paper. Shakespeare’s words are records of the words he wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds from people’s mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of their meaning. A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behavior which dictate the need for expression.”20 To illustrate his approach to Shakespeare’s plays, Brook points to the lack of stage direction included in the texts. “The best dramatists explain themselves the least. They recognize that further indications will most probably be useless. They recognize that the only way to find the true path to the speaking of a word is through a process that parallels the original creative one.”21 By keeping this in mind, Brook has slowly evolved his own approach to theatre that increasingly celebrates the involvement of the actor as actor and keeps the creative process at the forefront of the production. Like Love’s Labour’s Lost, Brook’s approach to Measure for Measure (1950) was characterized by a certain license given to the actors as the play progressed, such as the breathless length of time that passed in silence before Isabella finally asked for pardon for the man who had tried to rape her in exchange for her brother’s life. These changes, pauses, costume and set design changes to the traditional way in which these plays had been presented emerged as a natural result of the way in which Brook had his actors approach the process of the production. This approach enabled Brook to always be aware of how the subtle nuances of a text could emerge when one allowed the actors to explore the ideas that naturally arose from working in close proximity with the text rather than simply allowing themselves to be limited by the text. “In a living theatre, we would each day approach the rehearsal putting yesterday’s discoveries to the test, ready to believe that the true play has once again escaped us.”22 This required not only actors that had been trained in Method acting, in which the only way to examine a part was through the experience of it, but also a different approach to directing. When describing his role as a director, Brook indicates he “needs only one conception – which he must find in life, not in art – which comes from asking himself what an act of theatre is doing in the world, why it is there. Obviously, this cannot stem from an intellectual blueprint.”23 To avoid the imposition of too much intellectualism in his productions, Brook explains he typically begins a play with an initial, inexplicable hunch regarding something about the play. “That’s the basis of my job, my role – that’s my preparation for rehearsals with any play I do. … I have no technique … I have no structure for doing a play because I work from that amorphous, non-formed feeling, and from that I start preparing.”24 Without this hunch, he says he cannot make a success of any play, yet it is also essential that a play have originating elements upon which the team can build. In this sense, then, good theatre emerges not only as the result of a good acting team and a good director adopting a novel approach, but also as the result of a solid text that has managed to capture the essence of humanity without dictating the same. For Brook, everything that happens after this initial hunch is first felt happens as a means of further defining the hunch until it becomes a cohesive whole that transmits the play to the audience on a experiential level for actors and audience alike. “What kind of costumes? What kind of colors? All of those are a language for making that hunch a little more concrete. Until gradually, out of this comes the form, a form that must be modified and put to the test, but nevertheless it’s a form that’s emerging.”25 Actors become part of the process during rehearsals. Even here, Brook takes a radical approach to directing in that he doesn’t greet his actors on the first day of rehearsal with a speech regarding what the play is about and how he plans to approach it.26 Instead, he indicates that it’s important for the actors to feel comfortable with themselves, each other and with the director to allow them to explore freely what their part is about. This exploration leads to the production of a great number of possibilities through which the hunch begins to take on that final form the team is working toward. “You see forms that you begin to recognize, and in the last stages of rehearsal, the actor’s work takes on a dark area which is the subterranean life of the play, and illuminates it; and as the subterranean area is illuminated by the actor, the director is placed in a position to see the difference between the actor’s ideas and the play itself.”27 As the extraneous bits of interpretation are discarded and refined, bringing the hunch into sharper and sharper focus, the production of the play becomes at once a faithful interpretation of the words as written and intended by the author and a new interpretation that is unique and modern, completely in context with the living, breathing world. “The form is not ideas imposed on the play, it is the play illuminated, and the play illuminated is the form. Therefore, when the results seem organic and unified, it’s not because a unified conception has been found and has been put on the play from the outset.”28 The creative process that gave birth to the text has been used to give birth to the performance creating in its wake a performance that manages to energize both to a higher degree than the traditional approach seems capable of accomplishing. This approach was summarized in Brook’s description of the process of autobiography as well as theatre: “I side with Hamlet when he calls for a flute and cries out against the attempt to sound the mystery of a human being, as though one could know all its holes and stops.”29 It is impossible for one playwright to capture every aspect of each of his characters within the text of his play just as it is impossible for one director to know the various approaches that might be taken to a single character on stage to provide the ‘one true’ aspect that was intended. Instead, Brook insists there are a variety of approaches that can be taken to each character that vary depending upon the actor playing the part and the team with whom they are acting, the set they are acting in and the various other essential aspects to a production that might be changed to reflect a new point of view or a changing audience mentality. It is this concept of involvement for all levels of the production that brings Brook’s work into the radical realm and that has given rise to a whole different genre of theatre. This changed approach to theatre also gave Brook the concept of changing the text of a play to more fully appeal to the changing audiences of the twentieth century. Pointing out that few people have the patience for the archaic speech and royal genuflections of earlier times, Brook’s alterations can perhaps best be examined by looking into his various productions of Hamlet over the years. His first production of the play was held in 1955. Unlike later productions, this was a full production of the text. “I was so respectful that I didn’t do anything at all but leave it to speak for itself, which is a great mistake because plays can’t speak for themselves.”30 However, his most recent production of the play (2001) featured a highly condensed version that still managed to gain critical acclaim despite the controversies. More than half of the play was cut out, several characters were entirely cut or were played by the same actor and several scenes were rearranged. “Since his reverent ‘Hamlet’ of 1955, Brook says he has come to feel that it is perfectly legitimate to rearrange works whose form was not their greatest virtue.”31 The cuts made included most of the political and courtly sections, and with them characters who had little to no direct association or importance to the unfolding of Hamlet’s lines. One of the more obvious scene movements is the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. While many of the more often quoted lines have remained unchanged, Brook’s changes not only reduced the play’s run time, but condensed the tragic aspects of the play, refining it and defining it in surprising and demanding ways. The changes made to the play were wrought using Brook’s method of involving the actors in an active exploration of what the play means. By ending the play with Horatio rather than Fortinbras, in which the first lines of the play are repeated, Brook focused the play on the concept of reconciliation and consolation. “Ending is hardest of all, yet letting go gives the only true taste of freedom. Then the end becomes a beginning once more and life has the last word.”32 The 2001 production arose from years of workshop and rehearsal work in which Brook explored the play in many of the ways discussed above. Natasha Parry, the actress who played the part of Gertrude (and Brook’s wife in real life), is quoted by Bloom: “It’s not like some directors who are heavily into the details from the beginning. For him it’s like big overall splashes of color, and then it gradually gets pinpointed. By the time we had our first public rehearsals everything was still being worked on. It’s like a permanent trying things out.”33 Like his other plays, Brook’s hunch for Hamlet was an exploration into what makes a classic. “Is one looking above all for an experience in the present? In that case every single play, whatever its background, whatever its period, must seem to the audience while they are watching it contemporary.”34 For Brook, the definition of contemporary means creating a space in which an individual audience member is able to believe completely in the reality of what is being expressed at that moment, which sometimes requires some significantly new ways of looking at things. By making the changes he made, Brook was able to intensify the complexity of the play without losing its meaning or its ability to challenge the audience and actors. Reducing some of the extraneous matter of the play and reducing the amount of courtly speech enabled Brook to keep the audience’s attention focused on what emerged as the dominant theme of the play. Yet to retain some of the confusion and complexity of the play, thereby symbolizing Hamlet’s confusion and doubt, Brook combined several characters within the same actor, such as the Ghost and Claudius. “Thus deprived of familiar landmarks, Brook’s Hamlet must agree to recognize the truth beneath the changing features of illusion, say, in the image of the ghost that presents itself to him to demand vengeance … For all that, illusion (even if it is omnipresent) is itself a deception in the play.”35 This illusion is set against a characteristically simple set consisting of a simple orange carpet to denote the area in which the protagonists face each other that serves to indicate there is no room for illusion just as the quick movements of Hamlet through the play are set against the painful doubts and slowness of response with which he is typically associated. Thus, the radical approach of completely cutting out lines and making other changes was able to illicit a similar sense of mystery, complexity and wonder to a heightened degree in audience members who had long ago become bored with the traditional presentations that no longer provoked examination and interpretation. Often seen as the turning point in Brook’s approach from the somewhat subdued approaches seen in his earlier Hamlet to the blatant and daring changes of the most recent production was Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1970. “From David Garrick to Max Reinhardt, directors had leaned heavily upon the tradition of cloying romanticism, and few had the temerity to break it. Finally, Peter Brook did. His Midsummer Night’s Dream was a deliberate departure from convention – contemporary in design, Freudian in tone, and, at the same time, faithful to the Shakespearean text.”36 Beginning from a concept of a celebration of love, magic and theater in general, Brook described how his process began with a simple white box. The initial idea was to create a space that was completely unlike the fanciful forests and dreamscapes that had been used in other productions throughout history. “Nothing was going to impose an actual shape on the story, nor would any of the costumes impose an interpretation on the actors. It would all be purely functional, in a theatrical way. The place had to be somewhere that told no story but enabled very difficult theatrical actions to be seen.”37 While the white box provided exactly this kind of space, one that told no story of its own, it also functioned to provide an illusion similar to that created in the most recent Hamlet, that no magic could take place here because there was no where to hide the illusions. Wires, swings and other props remained in full view for the actors to utilize without detracting from the overall effect of a blank room. Costuming for the play was approached in much the same way but with different effect. Actors in jeans and sweaters accomplished the goal of placing no emphasis or interpretation on the play whatsoever, but the end effect served to reduce the meaning rather than enhance it. “We were making a celebration in Dream. … Actors dress up because you can do more brilliant movements if you have a flying cloak; you can fly through the air more dazzlingly if you know that you are a streak of yellow moving through the air. … They were working clothes for performers trying to perform, proud of what they were – that is, performers enjoying performing in front of other people.”38 While each of the main characters ended up in a particular signature color – Oberon in purple, Puck in yellow and Titania in green for example – rehearsals started with no particular colors assigned and only the effect of that character’s actions helping to determine the most effective hue to express their emerging personality. On the blank canvas of the stage, these colors shimmered and drew attention to the actions being performed on stage and in the air while creating a magic all their own. Finally, Brook added circus elements to this production, again as the result of his refinement process. “I didn’t do it as a circus. It has nothing to do with the circus. It worked quite the other way around. What I wanted to do came from the elimination of impossible alternatives. You have a play that contains elements of magic and fantasy. It’s about acting. It’s about illusion. And it is a joyous play. It is a celebration for actors, to be performed by actors, and, in one respect, it is a celebration of the arts of the theater.”39 In order to describe this magical joy and celebration, Brook felt it would be trite to return to some of the more traditional means of expression, such as illusionistic theater which had already lost its wonder. Instead, the only way to demonstrate and celebrate the essential elements of pure theater became the demonstration of the talents and abilities of the actors as they spun and swung, juggled and walked on stilts, demonstrating their pleasure in actively doing challenging things that take a great deal of concentration and talent to pull off. “My basic decision was that this should be theater that celebrates theater and therefore it had to be theatrical. Which is quite different from wanting to use the circus as a metaphor, or something like that. Which I wouldn’t dream of doing.”40 The play, while definitely radical in every sense, from the set to the costumes to the use of circus elements, was widely accepted and appreciated as the celebration it was intended to be. The new insights and excitement injected into the play through this understanding marked the turning point not only for Brook, but for the approach to Shakespeare in general. “In its break with tradition, Brook’s production, in all its visual beauty, opened up new possibilities for producing Shakespeare, and, in fact, it encouraged new and daring work by others.”41 More than simply exploring the ideas inherent in the play, such as love and sexual desire, Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream explored what is meant by theater and celebrated the dream of the stage, reawakening the excitement of earlier times and providing a strong draw away from the modern distractions that had caused a decline in theater attendance up to that point. “This Dream revealed the ambiguities of love, the uncertainties of sexual desire, the grotesque subconscious images, the lunacy and obsession of love. ‘What fools these mortals be’ is, to be sure, an integral part of the play, but so is ‘what visions have I seen,’ which underscores the essence of this amazing production.”42 In addition, it illustrated to the world how such a radical approach to staging, costuming, musical scores and various other elements could lead to entirely new understandings of the text and of the theater in general, giving birth to a new generation of directors willing to take a chance on new approaches and opening up the funding sources to more creativity and exploration. Throughout his career, Brook has made it a habit to approach his productions with an open mind and a willing capacity to question long-standing interpretations, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. “I wrote in my book The Empty Space that the theater has to go forward. It can’t live in the past or even the present. And that it must go forward to Shakespeare. And that going to Shakespeare is a movement forward because, whether one likes it or not, the phenomenon of Shakespeare is like the carrot in front of the horse, we are always working to catch up.”43 While it can be argued that Brook’s work is difficult to understand or that he takes too much license with traditional texts, those who have a willingness to pay attention with an open mind are able to experience new aspects of plays they thought they’d long ago deciphered. New elements emerge that make the play real to not only the contemporary audience, but also to those actors and actresses selected to take part in the process. While others have tried to follow in Brook’s footsteps, many fail because of their lack of ability to allow the creative process to flow while still maintaining control and direction. Rather than following along Brook’s suggestions to build off of a single hunch regarding the text to be produced, many of these directors strive to force a view or a variety of views upon a text that it not strong enough or tested enough to really appeal to a contemporary audience. Either this or they have misidentified the contemporary audience concern. However, Brook’s approach still remains as effective now as it was when he first developed it, as the critical and audience acclaim for his most recent rendition of Hamlet testifies. When one approaches a solid text with the willingness to explore its ideas and encourage creativity on all levels, hidden depths become clearer and the translation into modern conventions becomes seamless for all concerned. References Arvers, Fabienne. (April 2001). “Bard to the Bone – Theater Review.” ArtForum. Accessed 28 December 2006 from < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_39/ai_75830809> Batty, Mark. (2005). About Pinter : the Playwright and the Work. London : Faber. Bernhard Reitz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz. (24 May 2005). “Peter Brook.” The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company. 28 December, 2006. Bloom, Mary. (27 January 2001). “What is a Classic? Peter Brook on ‘Hamlet.’” International Herald Tribune. Accessed 28 December 2006 from Brook, Peter. (1987). The Shifting Point: Theatre, Film, Opera 1946-1987. New York: Theatre Communications Group. Brook, Peter. (1995). The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. New York: Touchstone. Brook, Peter. (1999). Threads of Time: Recollections. New York: Counterpoint Press. Clough, Sarah. (2006). “Take Care: Theatre in the 1950s.” The Caretaker. Sheffield Crucible. Accessed 28 December 2006 from Croyden, Margaret. (2003). Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000. New York: Faber & Faber. “Radical.” (2006). Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. Accessed 28 December, 2006 from “Radical.” (2006). Mirriam Webster’s Dictionary. Accessed 28 December, 2006 from Gordon, Robert. (2006). The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Leach, Robert. (2004). Makers of Modern Theatre. New York: Routledge. Sant, Toni. (29 December, 2006). “Radical Theatre.” Applied and Interactive Theatre Guide. Accessed 28 December, 2006 from Walsh, Richard. (1993). “Radical Theatre in the Sixties and Seventies.” Pamphlet. British Association for American Studies. Accessed 28 December, 2006 from Read More