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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 + 269 +
