Georgio Strehler and Bertolt Brecht: The Meeting of Two "Men of Poetry"

~.' ,-1 I Georgio Strehleraad Bertolt Brecht: The Meeting of Two "Men of Poetry" ANNA PILETTI TRANSLATED BY JOHN D. TULK AND FLAVIO MULTINEDDU As far as I am concerned, I confess my relation with Bertolt Brecht has yet to be sorted out ... I feel I have an insufficient experience of the great problems of the theatre of the real - that is, non-naturalistic, non-elusive, non-irrational. If I were to blame myself, I would not say that Ihave done too much Brecht - acharge often laid against the Piccolo Teatro - but rather that I haven't done enough. Thus Giorgio Strehler wrote in 1979.' Often during his career and in his theoretical reflections, Strehler counted Brecht among his masters, along with Jacques Copeau and Louis Jouvel. In his eyes, Brecht is nottlie antagonist of the two French directors, but rather a point of intersection. As he wrote, "What Brecht taught me - among other things - is human theatre, rich, wholly theatrical (like Jouvet's, in a sense), but not self-absorbed; a theatre that is not only theatre.'" Going beyond Copeau's and Jouvet's "pure theatricality," a reading of Brecht leads the real to the theatre - leads "History" to the theatre - bringing to life an ever-vital dynamic dialectic between dramatic activity - the theatrical event - and Becoming. In this way, in Strehler's view, Brecht comes closer to Goldoni, a constant point of reference during Strehler's entire artistic career, so that theatre looks like "something connected to the world - Theatre and World at the same time.'" For Strehler, especially during the '950s, at the time of his first Brechtian production, The Measures Taken (La linea di condatta , performed by the students of the Drama School in the Sala Azzurro di Corso Magento, Milan, '955), the German author played a fundamental role. Among the consequences of their encounter are the break from a psychological interpretation of the text and the deepening of the link between theatre and the world (together with a focus on ideological and social considerations) that Goldoni had already suggested. Besides, at the end of the 1950s, producing Brecht in Italy represented an Modern Drama, 42 (1999) 234 Two "Men of Poetry" 235 act of courage, a bold choice, as much on symbolic and ideological grounds as on purely anistic ones. After all, as Strehler put it a few years later, "Brecht taught me that this an has some responsibility, that its playing field is humankind , and that the world can be changed.'" Poetry and action, commitment and objective tension accompanied the meeting of the two authors (they met personally in Berlin in 1955), as well as Strehler's production of a series of works by Brecht that are the most intense and dramatic moments of Strehler's entire career. Producing Brecht was always for Strehler a way to adjust the focus on reality and theatre through that "demystified illusion" that a good reading of Brecht should always suggest. This demystified illusion translates into a style of acting (in the 1950s, Italy was dominated by the naturalistic model, of which Visconti's stagings formed the apex) based on a personal interpretation of the Verfrerndungseffekt: long stretches of silence between beats to underline words pregnant with meaning and schematic, almost geometric gestures visually matching a profoundly theatrical, non-dogmatic search for distancing. Distancing brings about the essence of the "poetical act," a kind of poetry the actor creates by placing himself outside the event represented, halting time through "Te-creating" what is represented. One could say that his encounter with Brecht's dramatic theory and practice enabled Strehler to question the foundations of his directorial activity, his relationship with the audience, his view of the stage as well as of acting, and his relation to time, both his own and historical time. As M.G. Gregory put it, "it is not by chance that it is with Brecht, and specifically with The Threepenny Opera, that the Piccolo sets on a new course.'" Between 1956 and 1970, a time characterized by strong social conflicts, Brecht stood as Strehler's indispensable reference point. His productions of The Threepenny Opera (1956), as well as of The Good Person of Szechwan (1958...