Brecht, Artaud, Campbell: The Making of Jean-Claude van Itallie's A Fable

THE COMPAKATIST BRECHT, ARTAUD, CAMPBELL: THE MAKING OF JEAN-CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE'S A FABLE Gene A. PIunka During an interview with Ruth Robinson, Jean-Claude van Itallie recalled an article that Peter Weiss wrote for the Times in which he stated that the quintessential union ofform and content in the modern theater would blend the seemingly antithetical principles of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud (1). Weiss, ofcourse, achieved this goal in Marat/Sade, often cited by van Itallie as the apex of modern drama, particularly the 1964 Peter Brook staging of the play. In the Robinson interview, van Itallie concurs with Weiss in accepting the synthesis of Brechtian stage techniques and Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty as the acme of theatrical achievement (1). Van Itallie would never acknowledge, however, that any of his plays are conscious attempts to combine the theoretical constructs of Brecht and Artaud on stage; his dramas are visceral experiments rather than mere intellectual exercises. Nevertheless, van Itallie's collaboration on A Fable with director Joseph Chaikin (who was also interested in Brecht and Artaud) exhibits a move, conscious or unconscious , toward the structure that Weiss devised in Marat/Sade.1 This essay examines how van Itallie's play demonstrates that Weiss's synthesis of the antithetical theoretical elements found in the theater of Brecht and Artaud was no fluke and could be reproduced again on stage. Mary Caroline Richards's translation ofArtaud's Le Théâtre et son double in 1958 was a major factor in introducing Artaud to American dramatists, actors, and directors. War, van Itallie's first major play to be produced (1963), was inspired by his reading of Richards's translation. In an interview with Kevin Kelly in 1977, van Itallie recalled his first efforts at playwriting: "But, when I started, the direct influence on my stuffwas Artaud and his theater ofcruelty, and pictures and descriptions of Gordon Craig's sets, which I came across in various books" (A15). War, van Itallie's most autobiographical play, concerns the father-son conflict between the Elder Actor and his younger counterpart; this "war" is interrupted only temporarily by the Lady, obviously an idyllic conception of van Itallie's mother, who strolled through the park in Brussels with her parasol. War is similar to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, in which humanity 's nightmares are depicted on stage, recognized by the audience, brought into consciousness, and then purged. In "The Healing Power of Theatre," an essay van Itallie wrote to accompany his translation ofJean Genet's Le Balcon, he noted, "It seems that by acknowledging the wild cut-offparts ofourselves, we remove their power to commit uncontrolled violence; we become more integrated, and somehow more compassionVoI . 26 (2002): 83 BRECHT, ARTAUD, CAMPBELL, AND A FABLE ate" (6). As the Elder Actor and Younger Actor in War engage in a series of insults, van Itallie uses the theater as a metaphor to reflect the constant duel between our Apollonian and Dionysian selves. Artaud's idea of purging our unconscious, repressed drives and desires to heal ourselves becomes one ofvan Itallie's seminal themes throughout his work. Motel, initially titled The Savage God (1962) and later revised as part ofthe America Hurrah trilogy (where it ran at the Pocket Theater for 634 performances), was written slightly earlier than War but was not staged until later; it premiered at Ellen Stewart's off-Broadway's LaMama Experimental Theatre Club on 28 April 1965. Motel tried to shock and surprise bourgeois audiences in the 1960s much like Artaud intended to do in the 1930s. The play depicts two larger than life dolls (a Man and a Woman) who proceed to destroy a motel room run by the matronly Motel-Keeper. As she recites a litany ofjunk items that might appear to be antiques purchased from a mail-order catalog, the Man and Woman rip the bedspreads to shreds, tear apart the bathroom, pull down the curtains, smash the TV and picture frames, write obscenities on the wall, tear pages out of the Bible, throw clothing around the room, and finally tear the arms offthe Motel-Keeper. Van Itallie's play implies that an artificially commercialized civilization concerned more with material...