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APPENDICES
AB: When you write you write the analysis into the play. What is the basis of
that? Where does your analysis of the situation come from?
EB: Well, I choose situations that I think are problematic. They can only be
answered at a human cost and they are not like propaganda plays that say,
as in 1917 in Russia, plays that would say to the audience that you must boil
your water before you drink it or you will have cholera. Obviously that was
very valuable in that situation but obviously that is not our problem anymore.
It might become our problem again. So I try to choose those problems that
define your humanness, because if you can contact that then it is relevant
in all our vast range of problems and activities. Otherwise Macbeth simply
comes down to don’t talk to ghosts. That’s the problem with propaganda
plays. Of course the ghosts come from his own mind. So you've got to tackle
that in some way and that’s what I was saying this evening. You can’t have
a ghost coming on stage. But we still have those problems that the ghost were
used for. Does that answer your question?
AB: Well, yes. I understand the choice you make. But then how do you break it
down, so that it opens that question up?
EB: If you choose a subject — and I think this is a huge question, because I think
the Greeks chose all the cardinal problems but their answers no longer work
for us — one doesn’t want to return to some Greek aesthetic. An actress said to
me once when I was trying to explain a moment, she said to me, “oh you want it
done Greek”. That was in the RSC or somewhere. So you choose those problems
that are very difficult to solve in a completely moral way and very often you
have to balance things. To do something good you almost certainly have to do
something that’s harmful for someone. You have to balance those things out.
The philosophy of Pinter is keep your hands clean. That says murder, really.
It is totally irresponsible. I can keep my hands clean, but to be human you
must get your hands dirty. What you are doing is choosing those problems that
are very difficult and the answer comes in two ways. One - the play will have
a structure, which will pose certain problems which are unavoidable. You can’t
imagine Hamlet saying half-way through the last act “I have changed my mind,
I don’t think I will bother”. You choose those problems that have an imperative
that is unavoidable. Because if Hamlet did break, he might do it in some very
post-modern comedy and we can all fall about laughing, which is all rubbish,
probably all rubbish anyway. You have to face those problems which are really
unavoidable. This is the thing about the radical innocence, this why I go back
to the monad and that sort of thing, because for an infant, a monad, they are
unavoidable. The infant doesn’t have an alternative, it can’t go into the next
room. It is the next room. It can’t escape those problems, for its very existence
the problem must be solved. So the scenes, the structure of the plays will
define those problems for your society, your particular historical epoch. But
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