Bare Stage

Q. Your type of approach to what should go on in a theatre has included a rejection of most of the trappings of the traditional theatre. The Serpent is performed on a relatively bare stage with no costumes and a minimum of props and lighting. In the new productions. what have you done about these type of things?

A. The physical and visual aspects. such as costumes and sets, have been evolving since the Serpent. In the Serpent we considered images very much. We've expanded somewhat to consider what the visual thing is in an image. In Terminal it is not claborate by anyone else's standards but for us it is extremely claborate on the technical end. And Endgame makes use of what someone would call a very sparse set, and we make use of lighting in both of these pieces in way we haven't in the past. And these things seem to be important and it is important to come at them in a very spare way and not to get into that thing of overload - of making up for what's not there through sets and costumes and stuff. But, rather, to start with the content which may in some cases be the actor and sometimes it may be the script or whatever and to expand from there, very sparsely, very slowly and only use what is really necessary.

Q. Critical response to these kinds of theatre is always a problem. Though crities may claim that their role can be a creative one, in fact theatre criticism is almost always on the level of sitting back and judging-really marking-thereby stopping any attempt at communication.

A. I'm very interested in the role a critic might play. To me, there's no doubt that a highly intelligent person interested in the theatre but not interested in producing. in a sense, within the theatre, can have a value, a realvalue. a meaningful one to the theatre and to the people in the theatre but what that value is is in a kind of flux. For example, every piece we've done in the last three years we've found it necesary to play in Europe before we play it in the United States. One reason is because we're very, very involved with the question of the interaction between the performance, the performer, and the spectator. And when you play in the States the moment you're reviewed the only way a critic can approach you is good-bad. There is no sort of room for what we would call a work in progress.

Q. It would be as if after talking to you now I would go home and write a review of your comments. The actors can be seen as having a discussion with the spectators.

A. Exactly, that's exactly it. We find that for most of our pieces it is necessary for us to go through a period of time in which we further evolve the work in relation to the audicnce. And as I say, in every case in the last few years we've gone to Europe to do that. Part of our reasoning is that you get sat upon by the crities even if the crities say your work is terrific it is still being sat upon. So you say-Wonderfull I have nothing more I have to do with this because I've been flattered from N.Y. to Chicago. If it's booed you say-Well, there's nothing more I can do with it, it's been put down. I might as well just put it away and go on to something else. There's just not space. And even if you. as we tried to do. have made yourself as invulnerable to the reviewers as possible, the world you live in still affects you. What you reject can still be shaping what you are doing.

Q. It can shape the way the spectator sees your work too.

A. Absolutely, this is it. This is a massive thing. You say I don't care what so and so wrote in the New York Times. I'm going to change it or not change it as I will. But the spectator comes now, with this point of view or some position that's been given him from the newspaper.

Q. But if your own publicity department just gave me a copy of a Times review as promotion for your Cambridge performances.

A. Unfortunately, that's not our publicity department.

Q. Oh. that's the Locb's publicity department?

A. Exactly. Our thing is we never send out anything like that-we never even send out newspaper releases. And one of the reasons why I am here and willing to spend a day here is tosort of counteract that kind of bullshit because it is bullshit. Like the thing in the New York Times was the most non-reflective piece that you could have. You have someboly implying that we are an apolitical theatre that now wants to go political. you know. This is after the most political activities that we've participated in in five years.

Q. It seems to me that the problem is such that even student crities get into this same kind of mental bind. It's somehow very much harder. as someone was saying to me, to communicate with the student reviewer or someone with that attitude than someone who would be totally against the kind of polities we were trying to put forward in Marat-Sade.

A. Right.

Q. If theatre is going to be a communictation and the name Open Theacertainly emphasizes that. then to go in with a certain kind of critical framework-you sit back and watch knowing you are going to judge on what basis are you going to judge? It doesn't matter whether it's good or not. It matters whether you learn something you see something whether you communicate with the actors: and so it's just as much your performance as it is their performance . . . and you thank them or you didn't get much from them or something, but to go in and think you are going to critianaly?e it, that you are going to criticize it is self defeating for the critic or the spectator.-This bring me to the relationship betucen the actor the acting company and the spectator.

A. I'd like to talk about that in general because it is a central issue in all our work. Each piece dictates how you approach that issue. Like. in Endgame, if I could say it is about something. I believe it is about presence, Hamm at some point says to Cloy-You know what. I never realized I was never there. it all happened without me-meaning. I think, that one can be in the place that something is happening bodily but really not be there. And being there is something that really counts. Later Cloy says-I say to myself. Cloy you've got to be there better than that if you don't want to suffer anymore. Everyone in the audience is there bodily, but how there they are physically is terrifically important in Endgame. And getting to the other pieces we have done. all through the history of the Open Theatre we've been concerned with the fact that the audience and the performers are in the same room.

On a Trip

Q. I know Jean-Claude Van Italie in the published script of the Serpent talks about almost guiding the andience on a trip.

A. Right. Here is a ritual the spectator is being led through-we're guides. In Terminal we talked about being as well, but not quite in the same way. Terminal is really a meditation. It's our meditation of death as a political metaphor. We have come to the point of calling on the audience to meditate on the same themes. A meditation, it seems to me, can be very, very active, one can run, can jog and be meditating, and one can be lying flat on the ground and doing a yoga exercise and also be meditating. What seems consistent to me is that the mind clears and then things enter and leave it at its own pattern from person to person. Terminal is a projection of a group meditation on certain themes and it calls upon the audience to enter that meditation at its will, so that one may recede from it and enter it. And one may go away meditating on the same questions, coming up with other conclusions or similar conclusions or whatever. It attempts to stimulate the same themes in other peoplee's minds.

In the early days of looking into this question of audience presence many theatres became involved, as we did, in going into the auditorium and acting out that we were all present-touching people, having very direct physical contact with the audience. It becomes clearer and clearer that this is not necessarily the most meaningful form of focusing on the fact that we are all present in the same room. If I touch you it doesn't necessarily make a deeper connection than if I'm standing a hundred yards away from you. Every piece dictates, if you look at it carefully, what kind of contact is appropriate for the material, aesthetically, politically, and otherwise. We're trying with each piece we do to look into it in a way that is unique to that material.

Q. Jerzy Grotowski talks about the concept of theatre as a laboratory for the encounter between people and that he as producer-director is responsil?le for coordinating two groups. the actors and the spectators. He doesn't touch people but is very concerned with the psychic communication involved. His method of rchearsal which he calls via negativa, is a stripping away of any barrier between the actor and the spectutor: he says that even the text is a barrer because it is just one more metaphor separating and so it too must be made subservient to the actor-spectator relationship. It just has to be total communication. Now, this seems to work for him in his special situation. What do you think about Grotowski in relation to what we've just been discussing?

A. Well, I think a lot of things about Grotowski. The first thing I must say is that I saw most of his work and I have spoken to him. I have a great deal of respect for what he is trying to do and have a very strong response to the work itself. My feeling is that he is more successful in that situation where the audience is Polish. Not only because of the question of understanding the language, because I think the way in which it is spoken, the special use of speech makes the words impossible for a Pole to understand also. But I think the environment in which he plays, the situation of being in Poland and Polish makes his work more accessible to the audience than it does for us. I didn't see the success of that communication when it played in the States. I felt myself moved by it in the way I have been moved by great paintings, not by the way I have been moved by a live presence.

Q. That's strange because Grotowski doesn't want his theatre to be like a painting-that is exactly the spectacle aspect he is trying to get away from. He says that is what a movie can be and that is what television can be but theatre must concentrate on its essence. he relationship between the actor and the spectator. And so we have to get rid of all the costumes and props and lights and everything just to get that. So, in fact, your comment is an expression of the ultimate failure of his work for you.

A. Well. it's a very difficult question because he's stripped away all of those things that you just listed. When he works with the actor he says that the first thing he does is to try to strip away all that is exterior. All the exercises, all the things they do. are to get rid of. to take away, everything that is not essence. Tht process of stripping away as a concept is excellent. The problem I find is that frequently what happens when the actor has stripped away body tension and he is entrapped in its place is the trappings of the stripping away. So that he's stripped away body tension and heis entrapped in acrobaties. You know, things such as that. One sort of set of trappings ends up replacing the old set and when that happens I think you haven't gone very far. I think with some of his actors that isn't the case, that they have actually gotten a certain essence which is deeply human.

What I found also really amazing about him is that I saw Akropolis both live and on television it was incredibly moving to me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and in some ways really participating in. And in person it was at a great distance from me and one if the things I could conclude is that his work must have suffered greatly from being presented in New York City where it was extremely difficult to get tickets for it, where there was a great kind of atmosphere of importance about this event. It was unfortunately for something called "the poor theatre," a real, big, fancy New York event. And I can't blame Grotowski for it, I can only blame New York.

Q. He defends elitism for Poland.

A. But you see elitism in his terms are not the same terms as New York elitism. I think there is nothing wrong with the idea that for example that he works for a certain audience and that audience is genuinely interested in what he is doing. That form of elitism seems fine. If you say to yourself theatre can't really change the world: it can move things a little bit, it can give support to certain things, it can enrich some people's experience. It can't make a revolution, I don't think it has ever done that. I mean a psychic revolution as well as an actual one in the streets. I think it can cause a psychic revolution in an individual, I don't think it can in a large group of people. I think it can affect individuals, I don't think it can affect masses. If you agree with that then you can also agree with an idea that theatre can be made for special audiences. The thing I think was wrong with the elitism in New York, as must be the case in Paris or London, is that special audiences that are sensitive to his work are not the audiences that are the elite audiences. In New York it was the culture vultures. . . .

Theatre and Polities

Q. What place do you think theatre can play in American radical polities?

A. That is a very, very complicated question. One place of it is that people working in the theatre must confront themselves with the question. That's the first step. I don't think it can be summed up and answered neatly.

Q. How have you in the Open Theatre confronted the question of your own involvement in politics?

A. When I first started in the Open Theatre my political activities were personal. Later, many of us have tried to and successfully informed, influenced-whatever you want to call it-the rest of the people in the group. We've radicalized one another in many ways. We've tried to commit ourselves to situations which would educate us and continue to re-educate us all the time and to act on that education. Sometimes that meant playing in the dullest upstate New York communities in the world and at other times doing things that I suppose arenot supposed to be done like being arrested at a draft resistance demonstration, although that's unpleasant.

It has always been part of the tradition of the Open Theatre to do bencfs for certain radical causes that either are in great need or are not being noticed or something like that. We moved more and more towards doing things such as dedicating our performances as a means of spreading information in relation to various things that were going on. Like in relation to the draft. And in the last year almost all our work has been in relation to the Panthers, particularly the New York 21. About a week after we went on our last tour, Fred Hampton was killed and David Hilliard was arrested and accused of threatening the President's life. The juxtaposition of the whole thing that was going on just blew our minds and we found ourselves dedicating our performances in Europe to the Panther struggle in the United States, and at each dedication we would give a list of the events which were going on, which was a very small way of informing the audiences. But in the process of doing this every night, these same things repeated, you change. You feel committed to what you are saying and then it also moves your mind somewhere else. By the end of the tour there was a very firm commitment to giving support to the Panthers. Since we came back to New York almost all our performances have been benefits with procceds going to the 21, who are really in a ghastly situation. But, that's just one route one could take.

Q. You're talking about what you in the Open Theatre are doing as individuals. What place do you think theatre itself can have-that is what you are doing on stage? When you made an announcement every night about the Panthers that became a part of your dramatic ritual. How do your polities affect your whole presentation?

A. All of these things inform the presentation. We have never been interested in developing a piece that has as its content a partciular cause-I take that back-

Q. It could be a particular consciousness.

A. What we've been involved with is a particular consciousness. We did talk about and begin working on a picce that would contain direct and immediate information concerning draft resistance. But that is not the main thrust of political activites we see for ourselves nor that we see for the theatre as a whole. There's a place for that knd of theatre but it seems to us extremly limited. However, the kind of things I was describing and the dedication of work informs that work in a certain way. It is something I would rather have you see for example in Terminal than outline verbally. When you see the three pieces that we have I think you see a progression in terms of political behavior on the stage.

Then there are other things. For example, Endgame was played at a prison and will be played at prisons again in the fall. Endgame itself looked at in a kind of isolation could be seen as a completely apolitical piece, although I don't see it that way. I know it would be very easy to see it that way. However, the use of it is a whole other question and you take Endgame and you put it in the context of men being forced behind walls by other men and it takes on the most incredible anti-establishment ramifications that are imaginable. It's an important thing-how you see what you do puts it into a political-

Q. You're not going to do a threemonth run on Broadway?

A. Well. what do you think? That kind of thing has become, now, thankfully, completely out of the question. We have moved a whole other route. Joe Chaikin whose notes I was reading a few weeks ago about the days they did America Hurrah which did do through a commercial stage off-Broadway realized that we were investigating many things with that run. We realized later tht one of those things we were investigating was could we make it? We discovered we could.

One of the things about freedom of choice is that if you discover you can make it you have the choice to reject it. Making it in their terms is something we're not interested in anymore. One finds there's a constant attempt to be seduced by the society and it's a falschood to say it doesn't interest you completely. I think you can't live in this culture without being attracted to some aspect of what the culture calls making it. It's what you do with that attraction that counts. I mean, you can be attracted and say I reject that attraction. You can also say I can't help it I'm going to follow it and try it on their terms. I think there is a false purist point of view that says it never interested me-I'm not looking at it, I never have, and I never will. That's not a very useful lie.

Q. Do you consider that a kind of political struggle too?

A. Yes, I do very much so. I find that for people in the theatre that is one of the real political struggles that a person, as an individual, has to be confronting himself with-because if you're talented and if you're creative, you will be bought. You may only be bought for a month, but you will be bought and you will be attracted to what looks like the fruits of the being bought. You have to do some kind of battle with it. Sometimes, the battle may include going with it fosome portion of time. The ideal thing is to able to reject it before having to accept it. The next possibility is you may have to accept part of it before you can reject it. I can't sondemn that. One very often must seek success before one can say no to it.