REAL THEATER

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

150 troopers called to help quell riots in Michigan city

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. -- State police sent 150 troopers into this city Wednesday after two nights of rioting touched off by a deadly police chase in this community, plagued for years by poverty, high unemployment and racial tensions.

City officials also said they would aggressively enforce an overnight curfew already on the books for those 16 and younger, saying those are the ones causing the trouble.

And

Residents complained that they have long been harassed by the 25-member police force.

However, Harris said Wednesday on ABC's Good Morning America: "We're basically predominantly a black community. Many of our police officers are white, but I seldom have complaints of the racial nature."

Benton Harbor, a city of 12,000 people situated on Lake Michigan about 100 miles east of Chicago, is 92 percent black, according to the 2000 census. Boarded-up buildings dot the community, and the unemployment rate last year was 25 percent.

For the full story, click here.

While I'm sure that race is probably the major cause of this riot, the sense of extreme poverty (which is associated with race, anyway) as a contributing factor made me think about my favorite musical, The Threepenny Opera, by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer, Kurt Weill. I had never really heard of Brecht until I studied theater history in college. I loved him almost immediately. Here's why (taken from the Brecht bio link above):

Brecht experimented with dada and expressionism in his early plays, but soon developed a unique style suited to his own vision. He detested the "Aristotelian" drama and the manner in which it made the audience identify with the hero to the point of self-oblivion. The resulting feelings of terror and pity he felt led to an emotional catharsis that prevented the audience from thinking. Determined to destroy the theatrical illusion, Brecht was able to make his dreams realities when he took over the Berliner Ensemble.

The Berliner Ensemble came to represent what is today called "epic theater". Epic theater breaks with the Aristotelian concepts of a linear story line, a suspension of disbelief, and progressive character development. In their place, epic theater uses episodic plot structure, contains little cause and effect between scenes, and has cumulative character development. The goal is one of estrangement, or "Verfremdung", with an emphasis on reason and objectivity rather than emotion, or a type of critical detachment. This form of theater forces the audience to distance itself from the stage and contemplate on the action taking place. To accomplish this, Brecht focused on cruel action, harsh and realistic scenes, and a linear plot with no climax and denouement. By making each scene complete within itself Brecht sought to prevent illusion. A Brecht play is meant to provoke the audience into not only thinking about the play, but into reforming society by challenging common ideologies. Following in the footsteps of Pirandello, he blurs the distinction between life and theatre so that the audience is left with an ending that requires social action.

Brecht wanted audiences to think, rather than to be simply entertained. In other words, he wanted theater to count, to be relevant to society. Until the point when I discovered Brecht, theater and acting had been, to me, a fun thing to do to make people experience emotion, to purge sadness, or to uplift and make happy. Even though these are noble pursuits, the strong political aspect of my identity had not yet found an artistic voice in the theater--for me, at that point, politics had only been a part of my songwriting; Bob Dylan's influence had made that a certainty. Truly, Brecht and The Threepenny Opera opened my eyes: all the arts could be, should be political; without a social dimension, the arts are simply diversion. Brecht allowed several aspects of my identity to merge; as I grew older and further to the left, Brecht's love of Marxism excited me all the more (while I am not a communist, Marxist criticisms of capitalism are still quite poignantly valid today). Brecht created theater to provoke thought: more importantly, Brecht created theater to change society.

That brings me back to the issue of the Benton Harbor riots. The town's sense of total indigence is striking. That such impoverishment is allowed to exist in a nation as wealthy as the United States is utterly appalling. Poverty should be ended because it is just to do so, and the US has the ability to do it. However, to go beyond considering the simple moral dimension of allowing the existence of abject squalor, society has an interest in ending poverty because it is a good idea for keeping the peace. Sociologists have known for decades that there is a clear, undeniable, statistical link between poverty and crime. But anyone with half a brain and an ability to see through the "conventional wisdom" could tell you that. In fact, The Threepenny Opera, by and large, examines this relationship between crime and poverty--the play was written and performed in 1928, while sociology was in its embryonic stages.

Here's an example:

What Keeps Mankind Alive?

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shirk the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts

True words.

But you've gotta hear it. Here is some streaming audio of Tom Waits singing my favorite version of "What Keeps Mankind Alive." To get the best effect, imagine you're in a smoke filled caberet in Weimar Berlin while you listen.

UPDATE: Well, I woke up this afternoon and found that the Tom Waits link wasn't working--the website hosting the audio claimed too much traffic. Instead I found this segment of the song. It's not as good as the Tom Waits version, but it gives a pretty good idea of what the Brecht/Weill sound is all about...

Also, did you realize that Brecht and Weill wrote "Mack the Knife" (performed by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Bobby Darrin to McDonald's commercials) and "Moon of Alabama" (performed by the Doors on their first album)?

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: The Tom Waits link is back up. Go check it out.

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