If it weren't for the current revival of The Brig playing at the Living Theatre's new space on the Lower East Side, you would hardly know from the theatrical offerings here that America is entrenched in an obscene war of aggression. Thank the Great Whomever that we still have visionaries such as Judith Malina and Hanon Reznikov around to remind us of our true calling. This is what the theater is for - dissent. Especially in a time of obfuscation and oppression such as we've been experiencing in the last six years. But why do we have so few offerings? Where are the protests? Where are the radical theater companies taking off their clothes and rolling in the avenues, getting arrested for staging sit-ins or the street theater that jars people from the oblivion of denial?
A few regional theaters may hint at the current state of affairs, reviving old masterpieces that send a vaguely anti-war message. Plays such as G.B. Shaw's Arms And The Man, Arthur Miller's All My Sons, or even the age-old Lysistrata pop up in small theaters and colleges around the country. But what has our generation contributed to the dialogue of current affairs? Are we just too shell-shocked to even go there? Too horrified at the actions of our own government? Too complacent or complicit?
Please somebody tell me I'm wrong. Let me know what's going on that I don't see. I want to know we're still alive, still vital, still answering the call to social responsibility that is the lifeblood of the theater. If nothing else comes from adversity, at least let there be art in the making.
When I think of theater in a time of war, my mind immediately travels to Bertolt Brecht, who created a whole method of acting in answer to the bourgeois ignorance which gave birth to Nazism. (It is no coincidence that Judith Malina is a direct descendant of Brecht's lineage, having studied with the great director Irwin Piscator at the New School before founding the Living Theatre with her husband Julian Beck.) This is courage in the face of death. Art flying in the face of supreme power. Do any of us still have the backbone to tell each other the truth?
I recently came upon a website devoted entirely to Brecht. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI has released its files on the playwright. You can read the whole thing here. One passage however, in the very beginning, sums up how the Bureau was building a case in pursuit of Brecht:
On March 5, 1943, Source "B" advised that he knew BRECHT by reputation in Germany, where he was considered a radical and an assoicate of persons with Communistic inclinations. Source "B" stated that he became acquainted with BRECHT personally in the United States and found him still a radical and an enemy of Capitalism.
We could do with a few more enemies like that. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
