NOTES ON RECENT READING
Carol Rocamora’s CRISIS: THE THEATRE RESPONDS
By Samuel L. Leiter
Ever since the ancient Greeks, the theatre has been not simply
a place for amusement, but a place where the great issues of the time could be
presented in dramatic or comedic fashion. Still, theatre’s active participation
in contemporary crises concerning society at large has often played second
fiddle to the primary objective of providing entertainment. Entertainment and
social consciousness, of course, need not have been exclusive, as such 19th-century
melodramas about racism as Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Octoroon
revealed. Even hit plays like those derived from Dickens’s novels, like Oliver
Twist, had important social messages to convey.
In fact, looked at broadly, countless dramas over the course
of history can be said to have addressed the problems of their day, even if submerged
within overtly commercial purposes. Which is why any single book focused on discussing
how the modern theatre has confronted a wide range of social, political,
scientific, racial, militaristic, and other problems is bound to be incomplete,
able only to scratch the surface.
Dr. Carol Rocamora, a professor of dramatic literature at New
York University who is also a distinguished author (bios of Chekhov and Václav
Havel), Chekhov translator, playwright, and critic—she's also an admired colleague of
mine at the Theater Pizzazz website—has taken on such a task, with mixed
results, in Crisis: The Theatre Responds (city unspecified: Salamander
Street, 2023, 250 pp). Her compact book makes a valiant, but unavoidably
limited, attempt to provide an overview of how various playwrights have
responded to major crises over the past 100 years.
According to the book jacket, the issues at stake run “from
World War II to communism, apartheid, the AIDS epidemic, gay hate crime, urban
race riots, conflict in the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan, systemic
racism, immigrant identity, the refugee crisis, authoritarianism, failing
educational systems, environmental peril, and, most recently, the pandemic.” Mainly,
Rocamora covers specific plays and playwrights, but one of her most important
contributions is a chapter on the Belarus Free Theatre, originating in Minsk,
which also plays an important part in Hermione Lee’s Tom Stoppard: A Biography,
covered in my most recent book posting.
Her highly selective account begins with an overview of
three internationally iconic figures, Germany’s Bertolt Brecht, South Africa’s Athol
Fugard, and Czechoslovakia’s Havel. This is about the extent of her international
coverage. She moves on to discuss Tony Kushner (mainly Angels in America),
Anna Deveare Smith, and Moisés Kaufman, explicating the latter two’s work on
documentary drama, which she calls “verbatim drama.” Rocamora, however, for
some reason, doesn’t explain that people like Smith and Kaufman were following
a well-established docudrama tradition, often using the exact words of their
sources, a trend especially popular in the 1960s with works like In the Matter
of J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Investigation. The 1960s, in fact,
are practically ignored, despite their intense preoccupation with protest drama.
Caryl Churchill gets a full chapter, followed by an array of
other concerned dramatists—too many to list here—and their goals. After
covering the Belarus Free Theatre, a subversive company suffering under an oppressive
regime, Rocamora delves into many other writers, plays, productions, and
issues, including several works that were done in England but never crossed the
pond.
Plays she focuses on are treated in review-like essays that
provide both descriptive and interpretive background as well as production
histories, including cast members and directors, often with brief portraits of
important performance elements. But, even in so concise a 100-year overview,
Rocamora might have mentioned numerous other important crisis-oriented works,
like those of the 1930s, when socio-politically oriented plays dominated so
many stages, here and abroad; think, for instance, of the Living Newspapers and
in-your-face agit-prop projects, not least of them Waiting for Lefty.
While the number of provocative works described, even
briefly, is impressive, the number overlooked is even greater. And, even among
the many plays based on important issues, too many noteworthy titles—some even
more to the point than those included—are ignored. When dealing with plays about
environmental and climate crises, for example, one searches in vain for such recent
works as The Great Immensity and Crude.
Further, one sometimes feels that the crises investigated
are, perhaps, not world-shaking enough for inclusion. For example, while immigration
problems per se demand to be dramatized, problems of immigrant assimilation are
so universal as to be—on the scale of crises—perhaps not so high. And, really,
does The Lehman Trilogy deserve so much attention as an immigration drama
rather than one about the pitfalls of capitalism? Moreover, when it comes to assimilation,
you can go back a century and see the same issues at the heart of shows like Abie’s
Irish Rose and The Jazz Singer, among so many others. Similarly,
lots of space is given to plays about identity politics. Is this really one of
the major crises of our times?
Even with these and other caveats (including the need for
better proofreading to catch the too many typos), this remains a useful book. The
writing is clear and crisp, there’s a thankful lack of academese, and the
author’s ideas are typically wise and well expressed. It’s unlikely that most
readers will be familiar with many of the works discussed, so there’s certainly
much that they will find new even though it might have been better had Rocamora
not spread her net so widely in determining what crises she would cover.
The parameters seem so broad there’s room for practically
any play to find itself in the game if it somehow touches on a potentially
sensitive topic. At the same time, important topics, like the HUAC hearings—think
The Crucible, etc.—get no space. The author might also have mentioned,
if only briefly, how representative theatre[ nations, like Germany, Poland, and France, not to mention Mother Russia (a Rocamora
specialty) have handled crises. A broader vision of the history of how theatre
has responded to crisis over the centuries would likewise have been advantageous.
Crisis: The Theatre Responds offers valuable content on how many playwrights—the majority from the last three decades—have used the drama as a way of expressing and confronting the most pressing issues of the day. Drawbacks and all, those interested in the modern theatre will learn much from it.
