Thorn in the body politic: a transatlantic dialogue on the aesthetics of commitment within modernist political theatre.
View/ Open
Date
27/11/2009Author
Karoula, Ourania
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis investigates the transatlantic manifestation of the debate regarding the
aesthetics of commitment in the modernist literary and theatrical tradition. Within the
debate theatre occupies a privileged position since (because of its two-fold roles both
as theory and performance) it allows a critique both of performative conventions and
methods and also a dialectical consideration of the audience’s socio-political
consciousness. The debate, often referred to as form versus content – schematically
re-written as ‘autonomy’ versus ‘commitment’ – and its transatlantic evaluation are
central to modernist aesthetics, as they bring into question the established modes of
perceiving and discussing the issue. A parallel close reading will reveal the closely
related development of the European and the American traditions and evaluate their
critical strengths and shortcomings.
The first part of the thesis discusses the positions of Georg Lukács and Bertolt Brecht,
Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin in tandem with those of the New York
Intellectuals, especially as expressed in the latters’ writings in the Partisan Review.
The second part extends this transatlantic dialogue through a consideration of the
theatrical works of the New York Living Newspaper unit of the Federal Theatre
Project (FTP) in the USA and Bertolt Brecht’s vision of and relationship with
‘Americana’ as revealed through such plays as In the Jungle of Cities, Man Equals
Man, St Joan of the Stockyards and the 1947 version of Galileo. The Federal Theatre
and Brecht’s respective dramaturgies demonstrate differences in the articulation and
application of the aesthetics of commitment and politics of engagement. A close
reading of four plays by the Living Newspaper unit will not only reveal the influence
of the Russian Blue Blouse groups and Meyerhold’s theatrical experimentations, but
also how the unit’s playwrights and administration attempted to re-write this aesthetic.
Hallie Flanagan (the director of FTP), recognising the limitations of Broadway and
having sensed the audience’s need for a new kind of theatre, realised early on the
importance of ‘translating’ the European aesthetics of commitment to conform with
the American New Deal discourse. Brecht’s plays manifest not only the differences
with respect to the European aesthetics of commitment, but also its highly
complicated development. His American experiences revealed that the failings of the
FTP’s attempt to establish a viable national theatre with a social agenda prohibited a
more powerfully theatrical connection (theoretical and performative) between the two
traditions.
Both the European and the American modernist aesthetics are informed by Marxist
cultural and literary theory, particularly by the writings centred on the political
efficacy of a work of art with respect to its reception and its modes of production. The
politico-aesthetic encounter of the Marxist tradition of engagement with a
commitment to aesthetic formalism (often associated with the autonomy position) led
to a confrontational and polemical rather than dialectical argumentation. However,
this thesis maintains that the arguments were not simply articulated by theorists at
opposing ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, Brecht and the Federal
Theatre Project’s interest in the advancements of the European avant-garde and
fascination with the notion of ‘Americana’ demonstrate the necessity to examine the
issue of commitment in a more dialectical manner. While their notion of the aesthetics
of commitment differed, this thesis argues for the necessity, not only of revisiting
some of the fundamental premises regarding the role and function of this aesthetics in
modernist political theatre, but also of reading the two traditions in conjunction.