Ideological Soporifics: Civilizing Whom?

Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, we all take part in one form of ideology, whether it's aesthetic, political, or religious. Acknowledging our individual tendency to fall complacent within our chosen ideology, often times, cancels our ability to think critically and constantly renew art for the sake of a critical task. Our critical task is to recontextualize ideology, whether aesthetic, political, or religious, OR, the way they sometimes work together in the mind of the ideologue in order to issue an agenda.

The place of art as a plan of energy for the Western Man - A Brechtian and Beuys hybrid

"with the frankfurtists. reichenbach is concerned like all social democrats with preserving the 'tradition' undamaged in a classless society. saving the nation's works of art keeps him awake at nights, whereas it puts me to sleep. in vain we explain to him that art-works have become commercial commodities. a beethoven symphony merely subjects the proletarian to the rest of 'culture' and this is barbaric to him. of course only those arts which make a contribution to saving mankind will be saved. culture must lose the character of a commodity in order to become culture again. 'but how can our understanding of art be preserved?" it is the arts that preserve (produce) it. schoenberg's music makes beethoven's comprehensible. the proletarians must free artistic production from its fetters just as with all other forms of production." Bert Brecht Journals 1942.

This production of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI was done in the classic American stage craft without paying any heed to Brecht's notes ...

on alienating the audience... But what can I say, Al Pacino! I hope they don't mind that I "borrowed" the poster and a review from their wonderful site http://velvet_peach.tripod.com/fzpacresistablerise.html. Thanks Al! I will try to stay true to your amazing stage craft! I hope my readers get a deeper sense of the importance of Brecht's play with Michael Kuchwara's criticism. Al, your picture evokes a gentle, naive tyrrant which should go over well with my planned production. I just hope I can find an actor as natural as yourself on stage.



Pacino Mesmerizing in `Arturo Ui', Wed Oct 23, 7:36 AM ET, By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic
(thanks Andy for this info)

NEW YORK (AP) - Epic theater demands an epic production, and the National Actors Theatre delivers with a smashing revival of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," Bertolt Brecht's massive agitprop masterpiece.
Interest has been high in the show � which has a top ticket price of $100 � primarily because of its star, Al Pacino (news), and he's mesmerizing in the title role. But the real headliner is director Simon McBurney who has marshaled a large cast with the precision of a military commander launching an all-out attack.
McBurney's ferocious vision fills the wide, auditoriumlike stage of Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. And he is unafraid to think big and bountiful. The director uses film clips, still photographs, an eclectic soundtrack that ranges from piercing whistles to Tom Waits (news) to vintage popular standards to Dmitri Shostakovich, and spooky, B-movie lighting to get the unnerving effects he wants on stage.
What is more important, McBurney keeps his actors on the move. There's not much slack time in this fluid, three-hour production with actors charging relentlessly from scene to scene. There's an almost Shakespearean quality to its scope, as the play, in a muscular adaptation by George Tabori, swirls toward its ominous conclusion.
Brecht's parable of a small-time Chicago mobster's rise to power, written in 1941, is a thinly veiled parody of Hitler's coup in Germany in the early 1930s. If there is any doubt about the connection, McBurney uses vintage newsreels of Hitler's takeover in Berlin to underline the link.
It's fascinating to watch Pacino's transformation from a simianlike thug, clownishly dressed in a long brown leather coat (with a fur collar), plaid pants and a white undershirt. He's a bad little-man, who crudely insinuates his way into the all-powerful vegetable cartel by first co-opting grocers, by announcing he will protect them "from force and violence with force and violence."
By the time Ui's power grab is complete, he has been turned into a polished, pinstriped executive, who would fit right in with today's corporate bigwigs under indictment or investigation. McBurney makes that point in an unsubtle way but it's effective.
Pacino is the biggest name in the large cast, but there are several other prominent actors who contribute mightily to the effectiveness of the production. Chief among them are Charles Durning as an aging politician (read Hindenburg) whom Ui manipulates and then humiliates; John Goodman (news) as a buffoonish but deadly hit man; Chazz Palminteri (news) as a loyal friend who meets an untimely end; and Steve Buscemi (news) as the creepiest of confidantes.
Even the lesser roles are filled with sterling performers, who often do double or triple duty. These workhorses include Billy Crudup (news), Paul Giamatti (news) and William Sadler (news).
And Tony Randall, founder and artistic director of the National Actors Theatre, has a choice bit as a drunken actor hired to teach the uncouth Ui how to talk and walk. It's very funny � one of the play's most inspired moments, one that never fails to produce laughs. Still, Randall, done up in a scraggily white wig and pasty makeup, gets even more with his hammy, hilarious turn.
The scene also reveals the complexity of the play. As the old man's lessons sink in, Ui's new footwork turns into a goose step and his sudden, confident use of his arms, transforms into a Nazi salute. Comic and chilling at the same time.
"The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," which closes Nov. 3, is a difficult play to pull off. Done badly, it's annoyingly didactic, a harangue that never seems to end. McBurney, Pacino and company have managed to make it come alive. The National Actors Theatre has had a fitful decade since its founding by Randall in 1991. With "Arturo Ui" and its new home downtown near City Hall, the theater's second decade has gotten off to a more than promising start.

Producing posters to alienate the audience

An important device for producing Brecht's plays is called defamiliarization. Victor Shklovsky articulated this most succinctly with his word ostranenie 'making strange.' The concept is simple. In terms of Brechtian theater, the audience should know they are watching a play. This is important because most conventional plays have invisible strings attached to the audience's psyche--pulling them into the action on stage and secretly slipping them an ideological soporific.

Theater, for Brecht, is foremost a spectacle. Psychological drama shields the audience from recognizing any ideological perspective the play puts forth. So the question for a producer of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI is how to alienate the audience, make them aware that they are not part of the production, psychologically or otherwise. This question hinges on the parable which the play is actually about. In terms of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, the gangsters represent The Third Reich. A modern production of this play should take this into consideration while also producing an affect of contemporary political issues.

Most of Brecht's plays begin with an introduction, alerting the audience that they will be viewing a play about such and such. So it seems apropos to introduce slogans as an affective device alerting the audience of the parable which is to be put on in front of them as a play. Without further ado, here are some slogans which might make its way onto a poster in the production of the set of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI:

"A PROPAGANDA SYSTEM WILL CONSISTENTLY PORTRAY PEOPLE ABUSED IN ENEMY STATES AS WORTHY VICTIMS, WHEREAS THOSE TREATED WITH EQUAL OR GREATER SEVERITY BY ITS OWN GOVERNMENT OR CLIENTS WILL BE UNWORTHY."

Some of you might recognize this from Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's MANUFACTURING CONSENT. And, you are right.

HE CAME FROM TEXAS

THE REAL McCOY LIVES IN A WHITE HOUSE

Imagine G W in a long collar

Dress Design 

Scarface inspired fashion 

Q: Who do you write for? Brecht: For the sort of people who just come for fun and don't hesitate to keep their hats on in the theatre.

Taking off glasses 

How to put on Brecht

BERTOLT BRECHT’S

THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI

Instructions for Performance

In order that the events may retain the significance unhappily due them, the play must be performed in the grand style, and preferably with obvious harkbacks to the Elizabethan theatre, i.e., with curtains of whitewashed sacking spattered the colour of ox blood. At some points panorama-like backdrops could be used, and organ, trumpet, and drum effects are likewise permissible. Use should be made of the masks, vocal characteristics, and gestures of the originals; pure parody however must be avoided, and the comic element must not preclude horror. What is needed is a three-dimensional presentation which goes at top speed and is composed of clearly defined groupings like those favoured by historical tableaux at fairs. Bertolt Brecht ‘Hinweis für die Aufführung,’ from GW Stücke