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Elements of American Theatre and Film in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle JAMES K. LYON If one ventured to accept as autobiographical a poem Brecht wrote shortly after reaching New York City in 1943, one might conclude that the great stylist 's first impression of Broadway was one of disappointment. Entitled "The Son's Report" ("Bericht des Sohnes"), the poem describes how, upon reaching the city his father had described as "the most beautiful," the son sets out from the train station in search of the famous street. After asking someone where it is, he is told he is standing in it! I According to the poem, Ihe sight of Broadway failed to overwhelm "the son." Though Brecht's poem may be a fiction, the fact is that during his American exile Brecht failed to overwhelm Broadway, though not for lack of trying . In his years of exile he recognized that only three theatre cities in the world were important to him - Moscow, London, and New York. A single journal entry summarizing the period he spent in New York between November 1943 and April 1944 focuses almost exclusively on one topic: conquering Broadway.' He desperately wanted the American theatre world to know and recognize him as one of the most important living European dramatists or, in his own words, the "Einstein of the new stage form."3 His journal entry tells of four plays that, he writes, have a chance on Broadway: Galileo, Szechwan, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and The Duchess ofMalfi. He neglects to mcntion that in addition to promises by or agreements with prominent people to perform these plays, he was simultaneously conducting serious negotiations for the production of three more in New York: Schweyk, The Master Race, and The Threepenny Opera. Of these plays, Chalk Circle had by far the best chance of reaching Broadway at the time. Unlike others that had their origins in Brecht's American exile, and which he tried to sell to Broadway producers, this was the only one he wrote with a Broadway contract in hand before he began writing, and the only one that (he believed) was guaranteed a Broadway performance. Never Modern Drama, 42 (1999) 238 American Elements in The Caucasian Chalk Circle 239 mind that the perfonnance never materialized; that is another story' But keeping in mind his focus on and his solid prospect of reaching a Broadway audience , I shall argue that in writing Chalk Circle he incorporated more specific elements into the play that he thought would appeal to an American audience than he did in any other play of his American exile. Late in 1943 the two-time Academy Award winning screen actress Luise Rainer approached Brecht and requested that he write something for her as a vehicle to appear on Broadway. It seems this winner of back-to-back Academy Awards as best screen actress of 1937 (The Greal ZiegfeldJ and 1938 (The Good Earlh) had an "angel," a wealthy backer who would finance her in any Broadway role she wanted. After discussing it with Brecht, they agreed on the Chalk Circle material, which they both knew from a Klabund play produced in Berlin in the 1920S. Brecht accepted eagerly, signed a Dramatists' Guild contract in February 1944 before he ever wrote a single scene, and began receiving royalties from the backer, Jules Leventhal, well before the play was finished. In his entire American exile, this was the only time Brecht knew (or thought he knew) his target audience while he was writing a play. From mUSicals, from the few Broadway productions he saw before the play's inception, from vaudeville and burlesque shows, and especially from the Hollywood films this inveterate movie buff saw once or twice a week in the greater Los Angeles area (he attended matinee double features because they were cheaper), he thought he understood American taste in commercial theatre specifically, and in popular stage and film entertainment generally. This caused a conflict as he wrote the play. In one journal entry, he complains of being caught between the demands of "art," a word he seldom used, but which might refer to his desire to follow his own instincts as a...

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