Birth Rate: The Biography of a Play for the Theatre

BMTH RATE: The Biography of a Play for the Theatre Tadeusz Rozewicz Today, October 31, 1966, 1 am on the verge of giving up. I have no desire anymore or the necessary energy, I don't believe in the need of bringing this play to life. For several weeks now work on this theatre piece has been nothing but rage and frustration. The quantity of notes, clippings, sketches, and scenes, the number of individual elements for the piece grows without any end in sight. But today I faced the greatest obstacle. It's not a question of difficulties of a technical nature, it's something fundamental: I feel that "the times," "the spirit of the times" (I believe in that famous phantom which for us dramatic poets is as real, as stubborn and vengeful as "the ghost of Hamlet's father"). . . and so I feel that "the spirit of the times" now demands serious drama (perhaps tragedy), not comedy. All my ideas of a comic nature suddenly appeared sinful to me. The very act of writing comedy became an act ofbetrayal and a waste of time. Today I spent long, painful hours in the company of this work of mine-which for many years now has been living and growing within me, in my imagination . The last day of October, 1966. Cold, overcast. Tomorrow is All Saints' Day; Wednesday is All Souls' Day, November. And I, an inhabitant of the greatest cemetery in the history of mankind, I am going to keep on writing a "comedy" called Birth Rate. Yesterday evening I wrote out the title again in black letters. I explain to myself that I am a "literary man," and therefore I am entitled to write not only serious drama, but also comedies and humorous sketches. Forms must have a certain amount of free space around them if they are to exist and have the possibility of developing. It can be silence. In my play BirthRate the problem is how to handle a living, growing mass of mankind which, due to lack of space, destroys all forms and cannot be "bottled up." In Act III the walls burst and a torrent of people pour 67 through the cracks. The very process of bursting, the crumbling of the walls, is the "action." Whereas voices and words have nothing to do with the action. I think that this is the first time since I started writing plays for the theatre that I have felt such an overpowering need to talk with the director , designer, composer, actors . . . with the whole theatre. But I am (here and now) alone. I feel the necessity of immediate contact with those people while I'm in the process of writing. I could actually begin the rehearsals for the piece right now. I'd gladly forego the full literary text of the play for a scenario. But I'm alone and I'm compelled to write a literary work, to describe what would be easier to transmitin direct contact with living people. I do not have my "own" theatre or director. Perhaps in a few years a director will turn up quite by chance who will want to work on my play, and I will be invited to the "world premiere." I have been putting off writing this play for a very long time. I began it in 1958 at almost the same time as The CardFile. Actually I didn't "put it off," but I couldn't bring myself to set down and describe what already existed in my imagination-in a changeable, but real shape. Which kept growing. I couldn't make up my mind to pick up my fountainpen /pruning-shears, to start lopping off images and ideas and get down to the sad task of describing the piece (sad and a bit tiresome). Discouraged by the knowledge that it would be preferable to improvise it all with a theatre group, I repeatedly broke off all attempts at writing it down. Only when I clearly realized that I was exclusively condemned to writing things down, did I set about writing this play. (I still don't know whether to limit myself solely to the...