1968 - Mark Kurlansky [45]
Under communism, just as in previous regimes, studying this play was an essential part of a child’s education. Dziady, sometimes translated into English as Forefathers’ Eve, begins with the ritual summoning of the dziady, deceased ancestors. The hero, Gustav, dies in prison and returns to earth in the form of a revolutionary named Konrad. Throughout the play the rebellious antiauthoritarian message is unmistakable, as is the Polish nationalist message, since much of the play is about the struggle of Polish political prisoners at the hands of the Rus-sian oppressor. But there were also demons, a priest, and angels. This is an extremely complicated piece of theater, difficult to stage and consequently the great challenge of Polish directors.
1968 was a great directorial moment for theater, a moment in which traditions were challenged, while the stage remained one of the important sources of social commentary. In New York, Julian Beck and his wife, Judith Malina, tried to break down the last barriers of traditional staging with their Living Theater. In their Upper West Side Manhattan living room they had begun directing works by difficult moderns, including García Lorca, Bertolt Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and the contemporary New York absurdist writer and social critic, Paul Goodman. They moved into theaters and lofts, where instead of selling tickets they collected contributions, and eventually traveled to Paris, Berlin, and Venice, living as a free-form commune with much fame and very little money. Julian built spectacularly original sets from scraps, and he directed occasionally, though it was more often Judith, the daughter of a German Hasidic rabbi and an aspiring actress who gave readings of German classic poetry, who was the director, especially of plays in verse. Increasingly political, the two boasted of having broken the barrier between politics and art. By 1968, their theater was a strong antiwar force and performances usually ended with not only applause but cries of “Stop the war!” and “Empty the jails!” and “Change the world!” The plays increasingly made contact with the audience. Sometimes actors served the audience food, and in one production an abstract painting was created in the course of the performance and then auctioned off to the audience. Theater of Chance determined lines by throws of the dice. Kenneth Brown’s The Brig, about brutality in a Marine Corps prison, allowed actors to improvise their abuse of the prisoner.
Peter Brook’s inventive direction of Marat/Sade was also influencing theater around the world. In New York Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in January, viewing Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of its two least important characters. At the same time Joseph Papp mounted a production of Hamlet in a modern setting starring Martin Sheen. Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, “An aimless Hamlet for Philistines who wish to be confirmed in their opinion that the Bard is for the birds.” Richard Watts, Jr., in the New York Post called it “lunatic burlesque, at times satirically amusing, at others seemingly pointless.” All of which may have been true, but still, Papp was celebrated for his boldness at a time when boldness was admired above almost all else. In April his production of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, largely about the hippie life with very little story, was moved to Broadway directed by Tom O’Horgan, who sent actors panhandling and distributing flowers