Brecht and Artaud Through the Lens of Ardorno

Amanda asks: "Write about how we can change theatre to bring it into the 21^st century, and bring it into the lives of our communities and in turn bring them back again and again.  New Scripts? Perform in streets and barns?"

I would like to approach this question by first looking at the different ways in which Brecht and Artaud react against naturalism. I will then appeal to Theodore Adorno in assessing which approach is most in line with that particular kind of truth proper to theatre. 

Artaud: “If the public does not frequent our literary masterpieces, it is because those masterpieces are literary, that is to say, fixed; and fixed in forms that no longer respond to the needs of the time.” 

Brecht: "We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself." 

The two men differ most in what they see as the "needs of the time." For Brecht, who was deeply influenced by Marxism, man is conditioned by social circumstances. Change, therefore, must be sought in the social context within which man is embedded - the "historical field of human relations." For Brecht, theatre is placed in service to social change. His method for effecting change is the "alienation technique." Here an actor impersonates the character, yet remains himself; the stage represents reality, yet remains a stage. The audience member is thus prevented from identifying too closely with the character. What is important is that the actions and language of the play affect the audience members conscious life instead of the subconscious. This prevents the audience from becoming mere passive recipient of "entertainment." The point is not to wallow in emotion but to reflect critically on the issues that are represented on the stage. 

Artaud, on the other hand, wants theatre to bring man back to a state of original purity; untainted by the over-rationalization of western civilization. Where Brecht appeals to man's critical judgement and intellect (and thus stands within the enlightenment project), Artaud's goal is to reveal the unconscious forces denied by our culture. His "medicine" for the current ills of modern civilization is to furnish "the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, his taste for crime, his erotic obsession, his savagery…even his cannibalism”, (Artaud 92). Healing is achieved when the audience confronts their own collective repressed desires buried in the subconscious. The ills in society cannot be mediated through intellectual analysis but rather, through an acknowledgment of those irrational forces and desires which our civilization has repressed. 

In light of these two approaches, what can we say to Amanda's question, "How can we change theatre to bring it into the 21st century?" Should we follow Brecht in his concern with social-political issues or should we look to Artaud in his emphasis on bringing to light the primitive purity and savagery of the individual which lies buried in the subconscious? Perhaps the question needs to be re-framed out of "either/or" land."

In, Commitment, Theodore Adorno writes about the controversy between “two positions on objectivity”: 1) a work of art this is committed and, 2) a work of art this is autonomous. In the “committed” position, we find both cultural conservatives and liberal progressives who believe that a work of art should “say something.” In the “autonomous” camp, we have those who believe in “art for art’s sake.” I could be misreading him, but it seems to me that you could put Brecht in the committed camp and Artaud in the autonomous camp. 

In the course of his article, Adorno calls these two alternatives into question and offers a more nuanced position. Following the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant, Adorno believes that “fine” or “beautiful” art is characterized by a kind of autonomy in that “the work of art… does not have an end.” However, following Marx, Adorno also emphasizes the fact that art is always embedded within a particular society. He writes: “There is no material content, no formal category of artistic creation, however mysteriously transmitted and itself unaware of the process, which did not originate in the empirical reality from which it breaks free” (p. 190).

For Adorno therefore, in an authentic work of art, there is an unavoidable tension within the socio-historical process from which the work of art arises and to which it belongs. These tensions enter the artwork “through the artist’s struggle with socio-historically laden materials, and they call forth conflicting interpretations” (Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Adorno sees these tensions and conflicts as “contradictions” to be worked out in the piece of art.

It is from this premise that he criticizes those who ascribe to either of the “two positions on objectivity” mentioned above. The work of Brecht for instance, is infected by the deceptions of his political commitment. According to Adorno, Brecht engaged in aesthetic reduction in that his pursuit for political truth gets in the way of his ability to accurately tell the truth. On the opposite front, those who attempt to create works of art ex nihilo and react against empirical reality, are in truth subject to the forces of that reality. Although he doesn't mention Artaud in his article, I wonder if he would criticize him for being a-historical. Artaud appeals to some primal purity but if man is always and already embedded within a social and historical context, the idea that we can ever return to a place of primal purity is nonsense. 

To grasp the “truth” of a piece of artwork, Adorno believed that one must grasp both the internal dynamics of the piece and the dynamics of the socio-political totality to which the artwork belongs.  In other words, the truth content of a piece of theatre is not a metaphysical idea or essence living somewhere outside of the artwork. Neither however, is it merely a human construct: “It is historical but not arbitrary; nonpropositional, yet calling for propositional claims to be made about it; utopian in its reach, yet firmly tied to specific societal conditions.” Truth content is thus the way in which an artwork “simultaneously challenges the way things are and suggests how things could be better, while leaving them practically unchanged” (Sanford Enclyclopedia).

In terms of how we should "change theatre to bring it into the 21st century," I have no idea. I suppose it would have something to do with creating something that brings together the different aspects of humanity which Brecht and Artaud respectively deal with.