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Write a critical analysis of
‘A Note on the Play’ & ‘Author’s Preface to Lear’
By Edward Bond
And
‘Aristotle's Coercive System of Tragedy’
By Augusto Boal
in which you compare and contrast the writers’ approaches to and arguments about radical and political theatre.

I am analysing only two elements of these theatre practitioners' work. This unfortunately means that I cannot evaluate their entire perspective on radical/political, theatre but only what stances I can glean from these specific essays. Maybe this will lead to my treating them unfairly. Criticising or praising them for qualities or perspectives that would in the context of all their work be reevaluated or explained more (or less) appealingly. This is the nature of this particular beast. However, in defence of this exercise I must say that each piece of work an author does should be designed to reflect their entire perspective at that moment. If they fail to communicate this or they later change their mind they should be grateful to any inconsistencies or mistakes pointed out.

We are looking at the authors' approaches to radical/political theatre. But first we need to decide what we will take this term to be. I will not define what it means but rather define what I am taking it to mean for the purpose of this essay. It is not necessary for this definition to be one that I would always use, nor a definition that you, the reader, finds to be a reflection of how you view the term. We must take this definition, for the course of this essay, to be correct or we cannot engage with each other.

A definition of radical seems to be enough to cover both:

Favouring fundamental change in political or social conditions.
(Collins Dictionary 1996)

So our definition is that radical/political theatre is theatre that seeks to favour (give weight to the argument of) fundamental change to the dominant ideology (how things are). The purpose of favouring this argument is to try to change the audiences point of view or to, in some other way, encourage the actual act of change.

A surface view of the two sets of writing we will look at makes an analysis of the kind we are undertaking seem problematic. Neither is telling us how to practically make radical (as we shall refer to it) theatre. Bond’s essays attack the status quo, analysing what problems he believes theatre should address. Boal describes, then attacks a particular mode of theatre, showing us (in his opinion) that Aristotelian drama is a form of maintaining the status quo. Bond’s only direct suggestion for methodology is that: it would be immoral for a writer not to reflect the systems inherent problems (as he sees them.) (Bond 1972:3) Boal promises to offer an alternative but in this piece doesn’t. But in engaging with their perspectives, we (as potential radical theatre practitioners) can find ideas on how to practically try to achieve radical theatre. So our analysis will not be of the authors’ methodology but of their rational in order to create our own methodology.

Machines Of Oppression

Both authors see society as being a machine that reinforces itself.

Bond tells us that every member of the state is part of this machine, seeing social forces as the oil that keeps everyone living in acceptable limits. There is almost no way out of this machine that is moral:

The state and commerce have become one inter-related machine that must be kept running at all costs. People can’t fall back on the natural environment when their society is unacceptable to them, as drop-outs in feudal or primitive societies could do, at least for a time. The total-machine is the environment. The self-autonomy of drop-outs in our society is really only the self-autonomy of parasites, and our society is clearly so arranged that its parasites live off the poor not the rich. (Bond 1974:xxix)

Bond wants us to do something about this. And I agree with practically all of his analysis of western capitalist culture. But there is an inconsistency here. If everyone is formed by the machine and all modes of behaviour exist only to further the machine (so a criminal is as complicit in its maintenance as a judge) then isn’t the artist, the social commentator only helping this machine’s maintenance? Perhaps in order for people to feel free when they are not, it is necessary for them to see and read and engage with writers who are revolutionary. In reading this material they feel they are being revolutionary, they feel that democracy works because free speech exists. Or if they are spurred to change, what then? As Bond says we must learn from past revolutions which have just replaced one dictating force with another. But no one has yet. Surely if a writer is part of the machine he can’t change it. Bond seems aware of this problem. He always relates the social forces to individuals and defends the individual’s power to attack social forces. Here the paradox is broken. If we live in a machine which tries to control us but at the same time have the capacity to be aware of what is happening, then we have the capacity to throw a spanner into its works. At least, that is what Bond believes and what I hope (and act as though it were) true. Here is Bond’s argument for the potential of the written word:

Literature is a social act; it is the social expression of thought and uses the social medium of language. Yet a creative act comes through an individual. It is these creative acts that seal the individual with his society. A writer writes what he has experienced and learned (what else could he write about?) but he does not write about himself. What used to be called a soul is really the most public aspect of a human being. An individual only exists through society; outside society he is a monster. To say that a writer writes about ‘himself’ is as meaningless as to say that there could be an expression without its language. Really the subject of all literature is society.
(Bond 1978:xi)

So our potential to change society comes from an awareness of it; from analysis of our situation. And we are defined by our place in society and everything we create is a reflection of society. So I would argue that the only (deliberately) radical theatre must be created by people who are aware of society’s problems and who use theatre designed not just to be about society (as all art is about society) but about changing it.

Bond’s definition of all creative output reinforces Boal's interpretation of Aristotle describing Politics as the sovereign art ; all art is part of a larger art which is politics. (Boal 1979:11) So all art is political. It is only in art that is deliberately political that an author/practitioner can attempt to have any radical affect. You have to use art as a weapon.

Boal sees the same oppressive machine (or at least a similar one) and attacks what he sees as part of it: Tragedy. He goes through Aristotle's system for tragic theatre, building it up and then showing it to work as a form of state oppression. His description of the process that tragedy takes an audience through, is close to Bond’s description of the education system of a state. Both enforce the states moral system and both encourage the members of the state not to think for themselves. I will grapple with what I think of Boal’s conclusions about tragedy later. But for the moment, I will discuss his analysis of Aristotle's attitude to tragedy:

The impurity [in the audience members social attitudes]... must be something that threatens the individual’s equilibrium, and consequently that of society. Something that is not virtue, that is not the greatest virtue, justice. And since all that is unjust is foreseen in the laws, the impurity which the tragic process is destined to destroy is therefore something directed against the laws.
(Boal 1979:32)

On reading this, it will seem that Boal has jumped to many conclusions, but he has previously examined and justified all of this statement. He has also shown that Aristotle's justice is only justice for men who are not slaves. Boal shows us that Greek tragedy was a process of trying to purge an audience of socially unaccepted behaviour, a way of using morality against the people to keep them in line. This is the same problem that Bond is discussing:

Aggression has become moralised, and morality has become a form of violence... Morality stops being something people want and becomes what they are terrified to be without. So social morality is a form of corrupted innocence, and is against the basic wishes of those who have been moralised in this way.
(Bond 1972:7)

The two fold dilemma would appear to be that in order to create social change we need to get people to examine the world and to be able to break through the layers of social control, (We can’t have a revolution because the buses wouldn’t run on time. (ibid :6)), whilst at the same time getting people in to situations where people can ask questions of society: A slave had no reason to question, he/she had no power. Bond shows us a modern version of this dilemma:

Why does a working-class father work in a factory to make bombs to drop on other working men’s children... He is forced to act immorally - and rewarded for doing so - because he has no democratic responsibility for his own life. He can’t ask questions because he’s never allowed to choose answers.
(Bond 1974:xxx)

Both authors seem to want to create theatre that encourages people to think for themselves. They don’t want a theatre that indoctrinates but one that agitates. They are anti-state coercion. Bond describes the goal as provoking self-responsibility:

Self-discipline, in this society, means coercing yourself instead of paying an official to coerce you. It isn’t self responsibility. Self-responsibility always stresses moral understanding, it defines even its certainties by questions. No human being can abdicate this responsibility for the sake of discipline. That doesn’t mean they cannot co-operate. In fact only in this way can co-operation be efficient. The discipline imposed by authority, no matter how subtly, is inefficient. It wastes energy and stops initiative.
(Bond 1974:xxviii)

Tragedy: Repressive or Revolutionary?

Boal concludes that tragedy (or at least anything that follows Aristotle's coercive system of tragedy) is a repressive force:

His system appears in disguised form on television, in the movies, in the circus, in the theatres. It appears in many varied shapes and media. But its essence does not change: it is designed to bridle the individual, to adjust him to what pre-exists. If that is what we want, the Aristotelian system serves the purpose better than any other.
(Boal 1979:47)

Boal is a very clever writer. His essay sucks the reader in, builds up Aristotle's argument and then breaks it. You feel ashamed of starting to agree with Aristotle. He leaves you with almost no choice but too agree with his argument. However, if we step back we can see its flaws. It is interesting that he criticises tragedy for using a protagonist that we admire and see our own opinions reflected in (Aristotle), giving him a socially unacceptable flaw (belief in state control) in whose downfall (critical destruction) we are our ourselves purged of the same flaws (belief in tragedy.) You see that he unwittingly (I hope) uses a tragic style to try to destroy tragedy. He pretends to be encouraging thought whilst priming us to take his system of theatre as the new way. Let’s examine his final conclusion in detail:

...It’s [Aristotle’s System] basic task: the purgation of all anti-social elements. Precisely for that reason, the system cannot be utilized [sic] by revolutionary groups during revolutionary periods... During a “cultural revolution” in which values are being formed or questioned, the system cannot be applied. That is to say that the system, insofar as it structures certain elements which produce a determined effect, can be utilised by any society as long as it possesses a definite social ethos; for it to function, technically whether the society is feudal, capitalist, or socialist does not matter: what matters is that it have a universe of definite, accepted values.
(Boal 1979:46)

This entire passage overlooks, in my opinion, many things. Firstly, tragedy and theatre in general are evolving entities. To suggest that because Aristotle saw tragedy as social control it was, is and will be social control is ridiculous. It also assumes that the universe of a play is the universe of the society. A playwright wanting to critique modern society can form a tragedy that's universe’s accepted values are anti the culture it lives in. In which case the hero’s fall would make the audience think about what they are told to see as good and bad. A tragedy can also be written in such a way that, although it follows the same rules as Aristotle, it also encourages people to think about those rules. Writing style can conceal a message or make it obvious depending on the authors choice.

His statement is also contradicted by three earlier analyses he has made.

1. Empathy

From the moment the performance begins, a relationship is established between the character, especially the protagonist, and the spectator. The relationship has well defined characteristics: the spectator assumes a passive attitude and delegates the power of action to the character. Since the character resembles us (as Aristotle indicates), we live vicariously all his stage experiences.
(Boal 1979:34)

On the surface the concept of empathy seems to back up Boal's attitude that tragedy is coercive. But if we break his analysis of empathy apart we discover that it contradicts it. He assumes that our empathy with a character is passive. I would argue that it doesn’t have to be so. It depends on how the character is written. Identifying with a character, but also intellectually engaging with this empathy is a very powerful way of achieving new areas of self-analysis. If we feel what a character feels and are encouraged to think about why they feel that, then we are also asked to analyse why we feel this. It is here that radical points can be effectively made.

2. Tragedy that criticises its society

Boal actually looks at tragedy that presents a negative set of social standards, where a protagonist is destroyed by a tragic virtue. If this isn’t a type of tragedy that can be utilised as a radical attack, I don’t know what is:

... the... author [of this type of tragedy] hopes that the spectator will be purified not of the tragic flaw of the hero, but rather of the whole ethos of society.
(Boal 1979:44)

You can’t argue that a revolution could use that as a tool. However the word ‘purified,’ still suggests a negative force that encourages people not to think. But if the piece was written in a less exploitative way, it would be a very successful form of radical theatre indeed.

3. Don Quixote

Boal uses Don Quixote as another example of tragedy. However, in my opinion, he doesn’t seem to see that the message taken from Quixote is not: “We are happy and purified of that evil (and dangerous to the status quo) emotion of being chivalrous.” But: “Wouldn't it be better if we were all like Don Quixote”. We haven't received a catharsis that has purged us of negative qualities but a catharsis where we have been encouraged to pay attention to and try to bring out more of our Don Quixote characteristics; a thought provoking and revolutionary tragedy.

Millers Defence Of Tragedy

For a defence of tragedy that carries more weight and is more concise than mine I went to Arthur Miller:

To my mind the essential difference, and the precise difference, between tragedy and pathos is that tragedy brings us not only sadness, sympathy, identification and even fear; it also, unlike pathos brings us knowledge or enlightenment.
(Miller 1949a:9)

Encouraging thought in those who are oppressed, offering them insight into the society and there place within it.

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realise itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of mans freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies...
No tragedy can come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realise himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination.
(Miller 1949b:5-6)

Here is a man who sees in the nature of tragedy implicit revolutionary possibility. The terms he uses are at least in line with Bond’s attitudes and seem to also represent a type of theatre that is opposed to mind control and easy catharsis. I am not as positive as Miller about tragedy. I see it as a tool. It can be used to encourage lack of thought and compliance with the state ideology or as a radical attack on the status quo.

Conclusions

At the beginning of this essay I said that our analysis would not be of the authors’ methodology but of their rationale, in order to create our own methodology. In Boal’s rationale I discovered some interesting new perspectives on radical theatre but I failed to agree with his conclusions. In Bond I found myself almost entirely in agreement, particularly with this statement:

I have tried not to say what the future should be like, because that is a mistake. If your plan of the future is too rigid you start to coerce people to fit into it. We do not need a plan of the future we need a method of change.
(Bond 1974:11)

This is what Boal also seems to be working towards. Whatever the type of theatre that he wants to replace Aristotle’s Coercive System with, I think it is fair to say that he would see it as a method of producing change. However his analysis of theatre seems like a smaller version of predicting the future. It is too rigid and is trying to coerce theatre practitioners to his way. I am almost sure I would agree with his politics but I cannot agree with his attitude. In searching for this method of change we should try every tool we can, from tragedy to abstract art to punk rock. And we should question everything because no matter how right we are we will always be wrong somewhere. We should be open to this. All three male theatre practitioners/writers I have quoted, in their writing, create injustice. They all seem to write from a very male perspective, every example they give uses masculine terms. They enforce the patriarchal status quo even as they denounce it.

We need to use lots of different tools to try to create change but we also have to have our eyes on the public. If we are trying to change attitudes then we need to choose the tools that seem the most likely to have some kind of effect. In order to use these tools, we have to analyse the world around us, be more than just another cog in the machine. We have to expose ourselves to as many different ideas and perspectives as we can to allow our argument too grow and change, to expose any flaws that we don’t know are there. We need to read as many essays, watch as many plays, have as many conversations as we can. We have to be careful not to live life in theory. We have to actively participate in life, learn from being in society as well as reading about it. As Gil Scott-Heron (another political commentator, who used music and poetry as his radical tool) said:

I hope that when I have kids of my own
They really don’t get shook
When I tell them that there are things they’ve got to learn
That can’t be found in books.
(Scott-Heron 1989)

As for what political messages I think should be exposed in a radical form of theatre, well that's another essay entirely. But a good guideline for how (perhaps) people should aim to live (at least, a way that would help you cope with the way society is and encourage you to change it) is this; by Arundhati Roy (to add a woman's perspective to our male pot, but also because it’s right):

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try to understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
(Roy 1996:4)

Bibliography