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APPENDICES
AB: Yes. My understanding of what you are saying is that the dramatizing of
the analysis is linked to breaking up the event and keeping it in the logic of
reality.
EB: Yes. I now automatically, when I am writing, dramatize the analysis and
not the surface. If you want to make the play work for you then you’ve got to
do the same. But I believe this to be true of all drama as opposed to theatre.
And that’s a big difference, theatre has no analysis, but drama obviously does,
because it is trying to create the meaning of things. And drama would not do
that by lecturing anybody, it does it in much more concrete ways, by using
people in situations.
AB: But then the dramatization is done to open questions. How specific
do these questions have to be? Is it done to direct the audience’s attention
to the important questions, like why does this dying man get up to wipe
the bayonet?
EB: Well that is to do with the connection between the stage and the audience.
Because if you are doing theatre, then the audience just look, watch, they
become spectators, but if you are doing drama, then the stage becomes
the site of the audience’s mind. The stage goes into there (points at his
forehead) because then you are engaging with the audience’s problems, which
they bring to the theatre, so the drama is written in such a way as to enter
into those problems. In a way there is often no final solution, I mean will
you please tell me what I am doing in this world? What is the objective of
being alive? Now, Brecht will tell you. It’s to be a good communist and serve
the party, or a Christian would tell you it’s to be good and to serve God, but
I am saying there are no solutions of that sort. So, the only possible solution
is that what do I think of this situation, how do I relate to this situation, how
can I make this situation bearable and creative. That’s the audience’s concern,
but then you can act that out on the stage. Because the character will say, this
is how I relate to this problem, this is what I think of it as a human being and
then the audience can either say that’s rubbish, or you can have engaged with
things like the invisible object and radical innocence. Because the invisible
object is the appearance of radical innocence. If you can make the drama
work like that, then the drama illucidates the audience’s problem, and their
reaction to the problem becomes the only possible human solution. Because
the problems are big moral problems. You can say, look these people are
starving, we have two problems, one problem is how can we get food to them
and the other problem is, but why should we? And it’s that second question
that makes civilization.
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