Brechtian Sexual Politics in the Plays of Howard Barker

Brechtian Sexual Politics in the Plays of Howard Barker DESMOND GALLANT Bertolt Brecht's impact on the contemporary vision of theatre is widespread. This includes American feminist theatre, which has identified its development with Brechtian methodology - "Individual playwrights, feminist theatre groups, and other women who have assumed leadership roles in the contemporary theatre have linked their work with Brecht's in a variety of ways"'- and contemporary German playwrights such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose "place in the line ofhaters oftraditional theatre can be seen in his affinity with early Brecht,'" and Heiner Milller, Peter Hacks, and Helmut Baierl, who Rolf Rohmer says could be considered as "Brecht's disciples" whose "style and method of playwriting were - however individual and different- unmistakably Brechtian."3 Brecht has shown himself to be most influential, however, with regard to British playwriting. Many British playwrights working today show at least some sign of having been swayed by the waves and ripples of Brecht's theatrical armada. Whether it be in structural design, political ideology, or social philosophy , and whether it be conscious or subconscious, the effect Brecht has had is clear. One playwright in particular is an interesting example. Howard Barker strives for a theatre that rejects much of Brecht's raisoll d' etre: "[Tlhe audience had to share my not knowing," he writes, "when it was accustomed to being taught.." So the audience was sometimes angered, being used to ... the Brechtian absolutism,"4 There can be no doubt, however, that he has been influenced by Brecht all the same. Eric Bentley has said of Brecht, "In England he influenced playwrights, too. Was this good?...These things are hard to gauge. Who knows what Edward Bond would have been without Brecht? Maybe less dryly didactic .and better."5 This is hardly the point. The question to ask is not what Bond would have been without Brecht but what he is with Brecht. The point is not whether the influence was good or bad but that there was influence. Modem Drama, 40 (1997) 403 DESMOND GAlLANT A good playwright, like any other artist, can be influenced, but he then transmutes that influence into his own personal style and speaks with his own original voice. This is something that Barker has excelled at, and of particular significance is the manner in which he depicts human sexuality and how his treatment can be traced back to Brecht. Throughout the history of art, human sexuality has been a most potent topic and theme, and this holds no less true for the theatre than for other arts. From Sophocles's Oedipus Rex to Ionesco's The Lesson, from Ibsen's Ghosts to Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, the power sexuality wields is tremendous . Brecht understood this, and human sexuality and its perversion found a comfonable home in his work. As he developed his Marxist ideology and began to view capitaJism as "synonymous with regression, corruption, and the absence of human values,"· he began to identify sex and money as capitalist tools of power and control. He saw how human sexuality was no longer just an expression of love and tenderness but something exploited as a means ofattaining and maintaining supremacy, and he represented that observation thematically and symbolically in his plays. His theatre is rampant with a cynical view of love and sexuality. PerIJaps nowhere is this expressed more ovenly than in his first play, Baal, in which "[w]omen function only as objects for Baal's lust as they are seduced or raped or driven to suicide.'" As for Barker, Brecht's treatment became a springboard from which he launched into an even less subtle, and perhaps more intense and poetic, use of sexuality. As Alan Thomas has put it, "Barker cenainly directs himself into areas of human behaviour which challenge the power of reason - one continuing theme being the complexity of human desire."g In order to establish how Brecht has influenced Barker's treatment of human sexuality, it would be wise to examine briefly how his influence exerted itself in other, more overt ways. Brecht's theatre - self-titled The Epic Theatre - was born of a belief that the traditional theatre of his time was...