Producing Classical Drama in the United States
By Arnold Aronson
[Editorial note: The following essay was written in 2005 for a conference in Weimar called “Spieltrieb” (the urge to play), organized on the centennial of Schiller’s death. The conference invited a wide array of distinguished international speakers to consider contemporary problems of producing classical drama. Arnold Aronson’s essay, the only American scholarly contribution, appeared in German translation in the valuable volume of conference proceedings Spieltrieb. Was bringt die Klassik auf die Bühne edited by Felix Ensslin (Theater der Zeit, 2006), but it was never published at the time in English. As the original text recently became available to HotReview, we post it now on the thought that its concerns are still very relevant and should be accessible to readers with no German.]
. . . sweet smiling Memory, goddess of the past . . .
--Schiller, The Robbers 2.1
Hamlet, pondering the relationship between the Player and a character being enacted,
asks the famous question: “What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” [II.ii.558] Hamlet’s
question is really about the psychology of acting, but it might as well be about the place
of so-called classics within contemporary culture. Hamlet never doubts the relevance of
the classical text. For Hamlet, that is, for Shakespeare, there was a direct connection from
antiquity to the living present. The past was a mirror in which the Elizabethans could see
themselves. The same might be said for the Greeks who also re-imagined, re-enacted, and
re-presented ancient myths. But, in looking at the place of classical drama in the early
21st century, we might well paraphrase Hamlet’s question. What is Hamlet to us? Or
Phèdre. Or Mary Stuart or Faust?
The question becomes more acute if asked in the context of American theatre and society.
None of the dramas that are designated as classical partake of American history,
literature, mythology or, arguably, sensibility. If I, as an American, ask, “What is Hecuba
to me?” the inevitable answer must be, “Nothing.” I would contend that the United States
is a country with no history. Unlike the later European revolutions that aimed to remake
society through the substitution of one form of government for another, the American
revolution—or at least the narrative that was created in its wake—sought a rupture with
the past. The post-Renaissance European heritage, and thus the classical foundation of the
Renaissance, was rejected. The American mythos suggests a new society invented from
the raw materials of the “new world,” untainted by the corruption of old. The history of
American culture down to the present can be seen as an ongoing struggle between an
embrasure and rejection of European forms. But because those who would reject the past
were and are ineluctably tied to it, the American cultural narrative is confused—made up
of a pastiche of borrowings from other, usually older, societies. Except for the Native
Americans who were eliminated or marginalized, we are a country of immigrants. We
have no ancient myths except for those of the homes of our ancestors; we have no
connection to the land beyond a few hundred years at best and much less for most people;
and we are a country that constantly reinvents itself, thereby creating a sensibility in
which history is simply that which is older than we are. The repertoire of American
theatres seems to reinforce this lack of connectedness, lack of past, lack of historical
sensibility. The origins of the American nation produced no lasting drama.
Let me begin with a few startling statistics. A survey of American institutional theatre
over the past 10 years reveals an amazing lack of “classical” theatre except for
Shakespeare, the occasional Greek, and the odd Molière here and there. There are
approximately 400 “not-for-profit” theatres in the United States—theatres supported in
large part by state, corporate and philanthropic funding. These range from very small,
community-based operations, to large-scale institutional theatres that comprise the
“regional theatre” circuit and exist in most major cities, and it also includes many of the
companies that constitute “off Broadway.” (Of these 400, no more than perhaps 30 might
be considered significant cultural entities.) These theatres exist in opposition to the
commercial theatres—primarily the Broadway theatres of New York City—that produce
entertainments with the intent of generating a profit. Most of the serious, literary theatre,
certainly most of the classical theatre production in the US, is generated by the not-for-profit
theatres. Over the past 10 seasons, among these 400 theatres, there have been 540
productions of Shakespeare, 26 productions of Greek tragedy (but not a single comedy),
and a rather surprising 43 productions of a select few Molière plays.* But these are the
authors and plays whom any reasonably educated American might have encountered in a
university drama class. Almost anyone with any cultural knowledge will have a passing
familiarity with these names and a few of the plays. Who does not know Oedipus, or at
least his complex, Hamlet and his indecision, or perhaps the hypocrisy of Tartuffe?
But if we move beyond the most classic of the classics, the statistics become sobering.
Taking German classics, it becomes apparent that they are virtually unknown in the U.S.
Opera aficionados and fans of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony know of Schiller, but most
theatre-goers do not. In the past 10 years, these 400 American theatres have presented a
total of six productions of Schiller—five of Mary Stuart and one Don Carlos. (American
regional theatres tend to copy each other; if one produces Mary Stuart, then others may
follow suit.) But surely Goethe, at least Faust, would be popular? A survey of these
same theatres reveals one poorly received, postmodern adaptation of Faust at an off-off
Broadway theatre. That’s it. There was one production of Kleist’s Penthesilea at a minor
theatre and, surprisingly, only one production of Büchner’s Woyzeck, also at a small
theatre. Zero productions of Lessing. Quickly looking elsewhere around the European
canon we find three Racines (and that includes the avant-garde Wooster Group’s
magnificent, but extremely idiosyncratic adaptation of Phèdre), two productions of
Corneille (both being Tony Kushner’s adaptation of The Illusion), seven Calderons, and
nothing of Lope de Vega. (It is worth noting that there is a small off-off Broadway
theatre in New York City—Repertorio Espanol—that produces Spanish classics and new
Spanish-language plays for a limited audience.) One might reasonably assume that
perhaps it has something to do with language. But looking beyond Shakespeare among
the Elizabethan and Jacobean repertoire reveals four productions of Marlowe, one each
for Webster and Jonson, nothing for Kyd, Ford or the rest of that miraculous age. (For
this survey, I am looking at pre-modern classics. Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, for
instance, receive a significant number of productions by American theatre companies.)
It is tempting to cast aspersions on American culture, education, and theatrical taste—an
easy target—but I think something else is at work here.
In the history of Western drama, “classical theatre,” technically speaking, refers
specifically to ancient Greek and Roman theatre. But more broadly, in much of Europe
and Asia it refers either to the foundational drama of the respective societies (noh in
Japan, Sanskrit in India, for example) or the work considered to be the literary pinnacle
of the culture (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson in England, Corneille, Racine, and Molière
in France, Lope de Vega and Calderon in Spain, and, of course, Goethe and Schiller in
Germany). Much of this drama originated at those moments at which the particular
societies themselves were emerging from chaos or coalescing into a nation. Classical
Greek drama matured just as 5th-century Athens was becoming a world power; the drama
of late 16th-century England and mid-17th-century France could occur only as each
society emerged from the Middle Ages and into a strong, centralized, and prosperous
nation. In other words, the theatre is closely identified with the creation of the state or the
establishment of a secure society, often in conjunction with the development of a
flourishing merchant or professional class. The theatre requires a critical mass of
spectators with the time and money to indulge in theatre; and in order for the theatre to
attract them it must not merely entertain (that is the job of fairground and market-square
performance) but engage the audience by functioning as a medium for discourse with
power and official ideology. In a few cases, the theatre may have challenged the status
quo, acting as a mouthpiece for the minority or the opposition to authority—think of
Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro or the plays of Chekhov and Gorky. In such
instances, the theatre was still crucial to the politico-philosophical discourse, playing an
active role in the establishment of a new society. In most cases, however, the theatre
functioned as a site for rehearsing contemporary politics and social struggles while
reinforcing the status quo and advocating the reigning ideologies. Think of Shakespeare
in this context.
One might almost think of this as a version of Jacques Lacan’s parle-etre. Only in this
case it is perhaps a theater-etre: our knowledge of ourselves and our understanding of the
world flow from the way in which it is presented to us onstage.
The playwrights, and the plays that were created in such circumstances, have thus
become cultural monuments—they stand equal to the great political and military figures
of a country’s history and therefore function as indicators of the worth of the nation.
England is a great country, an Englishman might argue, because it could produce
Shakespeare. And because Shakespeare has not merely survived for four centuries, but is
read and enacted around the world, he is equal to, if not greater, than all the kings and
queens he wrote about and served under. Culture surpasses military or even economic
might. The French might make a claim for the equal greatness of Racine or Molière
while Germans advocate similarly for Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. To produce the
plays is to reinforce the superiority of the culture that produced it. It is also to place one’s
self—that is to say, present-day society—in an historical line reaching back to a golden
age and glorious past. At the same time, shifting political realities, the inevitable
transformation of culture and aesthetics, and the fundamental human impulse to question
the structures of the past lead to an interrogation of these classic works. Thus, when a
German theatre company, for instance, produces Mary Stuart or Faust, it is, on the one
hand, celebrating history, culture, and language, while simultaneously critiquing the very
ideas embodied in these plays and thus any current manifestations of those ideologies.
National identity and cultural narratives are foregrounded. There is a sense of
participating in an ongoing discourse that contributes not merely to the life of the theatre
but to the evolution of a specific national or ethnic culture.
In the U.S., however, most such drama is seen as a deictic reference to some vaguely
understood past. But our past includes neither the aristocracies, military heroes, nor
mythological gods depicted in the canon of classics. In fact, the manufactured mythology
and identity that is foregrounded as “American” tends to function in opposition to such
entities. If there is a classical drama in the United States, it is nineteenth-century
melodrama. Though strongly influenced by continental models—notably the works of
Pixèrécourt, Kotzebue, and in particular, Dion Boucicault—it quickly developed a robust
American quality. The emphasis on extroverted emotions, and particularly the focus on
simplistic notions of right and wrong that typify melodrama, fed into the evolving
American narrative of the early 19th century of a simple, agrarian, innocent people whose
purity of heart allowed them to overcome the evils of urban and aristocratic Europe. The
melodramatic form, of course, ultimately became the foundation of the quintessential
American art forms: movies and, later, television. While classical theatre may contain
elements of melodrama (Euripides and Schiller are superb examples), the themes and
structures of much classical theatre is usually at odds with melodramatic structures and
narratives. The thematic and narrative simplicity of traditional melodrama, and its
rootedness in local ambience and time-bound character types, has meant that most such
plays have not fared well over time.
While the centrality of melodrama within American
theatre history, and the close connection between the thematic structure of melodrama
and the emergence of an American narrative, qualify the form as American classicism,
producing them today is usually problematic. On those rare occasions when classical
melodrama is produced, it is most often done with condescension, irony, insincerity, or
camp sensibility; it is considered fun, quaint, and anachronistic and the attitude is often
one of bemused indulgence—much as we respond to the theatrical endeavors of children.
The reception of melodrama is further complicated by its designation as a popular art
form, thus making the cultural elite disdainful of melodrama in whatever guise it takes.
(Although postmodernism, with its attempt to elide the distinctions between high and
low, has allowed a qualified resurrection of popular forms, it rarely does so without a
certain intellectual arrogance.) Thus, for melodrama to assume the mantle of classical
drama would suggest that America’s is founded upon the lowest manifestations of
culture—crude and simplistic entertainment rather than serious art that investigates the
past. But with no serious drama created in the U.S. until after World War I, the impulse,
the need, for classical drama was satisfied through borrowing from other—primarily
European—cultures. But, borrowed classics have at best an ambiguous relationship with
their audience. What may have been mimetic in the original, can only be understood as
ritualistic repetition in its borrowed form.
Thus, in the United States, “classical” becomes an empty genre—a reference to a group
of plays of a certain age, provenance, and cultural stature. To produce these plays, to act
in them, or to view them as a member of an audience is not to partake of a connection to
a shared past; rather it bestows upon the participants a certain cultural cachet. It implies
an intellectual engagement with history and a connection to world culture; it confers an
aura of respectability upon the participants and links them to a rarified fraternity of
cultural elites. Furthermore, if the production of classic drama in certain European and
Asian cultures is a form of mimesis—a recreation of the past—then in the United States it
can be understood only as a form of ritualized repetition, reinforcing the cultural
significance of theatre with little, if any, socio-historical impact.
The U.S., emerging as it did from British Colonial rule, was most immediately and
predominantly influenced by British culture. Throughout the 19th century, and arguably
through much of the 20th century, the educated, the elite, and the economically and
politically powerful were descended from, or willingly influenced by, British
sensibilities. In the language-based arts of literature and theatre, British culture set the
standards.
However, significant portions of the Colonial population were drawn from the
disenfranchised—those seeking escape from the old order or those forcibly ejected from
it. If one adds to this the massive waves of immigration, beginning with the Irish and
Germans in the early 19th century, and of course the forced immigration of Africans, the
result is a majority of the citizenry with alternate models of culture, or at least an
opposition to anything associated with the dominant, primarily British, archetypes of high
culture. It is not surprising, then, that the mid-19th century witnessed a radical split
between high and low art as well as a rift between imported European models and
homegrown American culture. Europe experienced its revolutions of 1848, but the United
States also had a second small but significant “revolution” at about the same time. In May
1849, the infamous Astor Place Riot occurred in which some 20,000 demonstrators
protested the appearance of English actor William Charles Macready while championing
the first great American star, Edwin Forrest. Thirty-one people were killed and hundreds
injured. There were many factors contributing to this fatal riot, but fundamentally it was a
rebellion against the tyranny of European, primarily English, culture and an attempt to
establish an American vernacular, which is to say popular, culture in its place. From this
point on, the chasm between high and low art expanded at an increasing rate.
Memory
Theatre is both an act and a re-enactment. It is done in the present moment and in the
presence of a live audience, so it is immediate; the connection to it is visceral. But it also
re-enacts something of the past. On a literal level, it is a re-enactment of rehearsals which
themselves are the embodiments of an author’s text. The text of most classical theatre—and clearly I am talking about a traditional form of theatre—is itself a re-enactment of an
historical or mythological moment. It is a form of memory. And like all memories, it can
easily be distorted and mis-remembered. Technically speaking, only someone who has
experienced something can remember it. But there is a human desire or need to partake of
the past and therefore to assume and incorporate memories second-hand. Within our
personal lives, there are family stories that are passed on from generation to generation,
so that those persons long removed from the actual event “remember” it. There are public
events which we “remember” even if we were not there. The same is true for societies
and nations. We remember national triumphs or defeats; and, tragically, one community
may remember how they were ill treated by their neighbors and carry this memory with
them for generations, even for centuries. And just as photographs aid in the transmission
of personal and familial memories, so does theatre function in the preservation of national
and ethnic memories.
This raises the question, then: if a classical European or Asian play is done in an
American theatre, what is being remembered? What is being transmitted? I would
suggest that in large part, classical theatre is produced in the U.S. as part of a project to
link American theatre—American culture—to the roots of theater and to older traditions,
thereby conferring respectability on the enterprise and placing the current American
production in a line that can be traced back to Aeschylus. While some immigrant
communities may still retain the cultural memories of the places from whence they came,
most audiences, confronting classical drama are experiencing a more fundamental but
also generic sense of history itself—not the specific historical incident of the play or its
meaning for a particular society, but simply the idea of history or, what I might call,
“pastness.” This photo from a 1998 production of Mary Stuart at the American
Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco shows the characters of Elizabeth I and Robert
Dudley.
Figure 1
The costumes by Deborah Dryden are painstakingly researched and lavishly
created and the reviews suggest that the critics, and presumably the spectators, were
appropriately impressed. But as much as these costumes might represent a particular
historical moment, they are, for most spectators, an ambiguous semiotic indicator of the
past and, perhaps, of the very notion of theatre itself. Audiences, particularly patrons of
cultural institutions, expect that certain forms of theatre, opera, and film will have
costumes that look like this; such productions, in fact, are designated by the term
“costume drama.” It becomes a tautology: as a classic it must have these kinds of
costumes, and because the production has such costumes it must be classic theatre. The
costumes in this photo are ultimately a semiotic code representing historical accuracy for
an audience largely ignorant of the details of period dress. How many spectators would
know, or care, whether the size of the collar, the texture and pattern of the fabric, the
details of the jewelry, or the hairstyles are accurate representations of the dress of the
1580s? For the audience of this production, these indicators may have equally referenced
Katharine Hepburn in the 1936 film, or Vanessa Redgrave in the 1971 film version of the
story, as much as it does any historical figures. Our sense of history has been shaped by
Hollywood. Similarly, it references a range of historical epics produced by British
television and broadcast in the U.S. as an antidote to the lowbrow fare of most commercial
TV. It is not accidental that the umbrella title for the series that showcases classy British
television in the U.S. is “Masterpiece Theatre” with its implications of high art and cultural
significance. The costumes themselves project an aura of culture at its highest level.
This photo from a 2001 production of the same play, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis at the
Court Theatre in Chicago, suggests a more modern approach—a costume, designed by
Kaye Voyce, with an appropriate period silhouette and historical touches, yet one that in
its self-referentiality and self-consciousness is fundamentally modern.
Figure 2
It acknowledges historicity while proclaiming its contemporary pedigree. It says, in
essence, “I recognize the precedents of this play—both historical and literary—but I am
equally aware of my position within the present day.” And of course there is the
postmodern pastiche approach as seen in this 2002 production of Phèdre, again by
Akalaitis and Voyce at the Court Theatre.
Figure 3
This production would like to suggest that there is no difference between past and
present. The pastiche of contemporary costumes—some prosaic, some more formal with
a slight reference to the past—proclaim the play’s modernity and thus relevance. The past
is present and the present is past. But this image in particular highlights the problems
faced by American productions of so-called classics. We have no historical memory of
monarchs; despite the volatile and deadly results of politics, we tend to have a low
opinion of our leaders and treat them as the punchline for jokes; the supposedly
egalitarian spirit of American democracy eschews class and the trappings that go with it.
Thus, the hierarchies and power structures implicit in the play are poorly understood or
imperfectly received by audiences. So, Phèdre’s dress, though suggesting a certain
elegance, is simultaneously parodic. The costume, hair, and bodily pose semiotically
render lust, degradation, madness, and the debasement of nobility, but at the same time it
mocks these emotions and social indicators. Hippolytus can, apparently, be understood
only as a rebellious teenager in a tee shirt. It is as if we can understand these characters
only as current-day party-goers, denizens of the chic clubs or hip neighborhoods to be
found in New York, London, or Paris. Interestingly, by placing Hippolytus in this
costume the director and designer seem to be referencing one of the classic iconic images
of American theatre: Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A
Streetcar Named Desire. But if this was, in fact, their intention, to what point? It typifies
much misguided American postmodernism in its seemingly random juxtaposition of
images whose relevance is minimal at best. It suggests either that all images are equally
significant, or else a belief that the tension or energy created by the fusion of iconic
images will render something new and noteworthy.
There is another factor that must be taken into account in examining the American
approach to classics. The American drama that has become the foundation of our
theatre—our classics—is psychologically based: the plays of Clifford Odets, Tennessee
Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, even Edward Albee, up through Sam Shepard and
David Mamet all emanate from a psychological exploration of characters who are, at least
on the surface, prosaic individuals. This paradigm, of course, is reinforced through
television and film. Thus, approaches to the classics often grasp at a kind of
psychological realism, trying to find the psychological and emotional reality of
Clytemnestra, Lear, or Mary Stuart—reducing them to characters out of action movies or
soap operas. While most of the characters of classical drama have a psychological
dimension—that is part of their appeal, after all—there is often a formalism or operatic
quality to the plays that mitigates against a realistic approach that can lead to bathos. By
dressing characters in pedestrian clothing as in so many postmodern renderings, it has the
effect of reducing them from theatrical creations to avatars of ourselves.
The stage itself, however, has abandoned any attempt at pictorial realism. That approach
is too closely associated with late 19th-century realism and melodrama and has been
subsumed by film which can render reality much more literally. Thus, the stage becomes
an emblematic domain at once referencing the past and itself. By acknowledging its
existence as a stage it proclaims its theatricality, yet by use of emblematic images it
references history as in Ming Cho Lee’s stark setting for Don Carlos at the Shakespeare
Theatre of Washington, D.C.
Figure 4
My discussion might seem to suggest that Americans should not do classic theatre.
Insofar as it is done as costume drama and psychological investigation, that would, in
fact, be my recommendation. Such theatre is the embodiment of what Peter Brook
categorized quite accurately as “deadly theatre.” It is nothing but an empty gesture
toward the past and toward high culture. Similarly, much postmodern production is
equally empty—maintaining the original text but problematizing it through contemporary
costume and pastiche scenography. I am not suggesting that classical theatre has nothing
to say to us, however, but what it has to say is based on larger thematics and on its
connection to theatricality at large. So there is one potentially fruitful approach, one taken
most successfully by the Wooster Group in its approaches to American and European
classics such as Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Racine’s Phèdre. What the group, under the
direction of Elizabeth LeCompte, has done is to re-frame the works. The original frames,
of 17th or 19th-century French or Russian theatre, have no meaning in late twentieth or
early 21st-century American theatre. To say they have no meaning is really to say that the
vocabulary of the older theatres is largely incomprehensible. The plays cannot be read in
this now obsolete theatrical language. At best, we understand them semiotically as
classical plays. By finding new physical, narrative, and even technical environments in
which to explore the original texts, characters, and themes, the underlying impulses and
meanings of the playwrights can re-emerge. It is a difficult process and theatres that have
attempted to copy the style and approach of the Wooster Group have often wound up
with results as deadly as historical costume dramas. But in a country with no history, in a
country that now has multiple historical narratives built upon the most diverse population
in the history of the world, straightforward renderings of the classic drama of other
cultures and societies is going to be problematic at best.
Finally, I must return to Shakespeare. Having just argued that the U.S. cannot do classical
theatre, I also cited the statistic of 540 productions of Shakespeare’s plays. I will offer
two explanations. One has to do with education. Shakespeare is the one writer of classical
drama who is taught with any regularity. Students are exposed to some of his work
repeatedly throughout their schooling, his plays are sometimes produced in high schools,
and students are often dragged off to see professional productions (of widely varying
quality). Thus, Shakespeare is seen not so much as a dust-laden relic of the past as a
contemporary, albeit one with difficult language. Then there is the high-low dichotomy.
Even in his own time, part of Shakespeare’s success stemmed from his ability to appeal
simultaneously to multiple audiences and levels of reception. During the 19th century, this
appeal continued with touring productions that played in saloons and mining camps in the
West as well as in legitimate theatres. So even today, Shakespeare is sold as both popular
entertainment and high art. On some level, many American audiences think of
Shakespeare as an American playwright. There are dozens of Shakespeare festivals
across the country, most operating as summer tourist theatres. And many produce as
much non-Shakespearean drama as Shakespearean—so that Shakespeare has become
almost a synonym for summer theatre. The question is, if Goethe were taught in
American schools, and if there were dozens of Goethe festivals across the country, would
he—or any of the others—become equally Americanized?
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* Statistics come from “Theatre Profiles” published by Theatre Communications Group.
http://www.tcg.org/frames/member_profiles/fs_thprofiles.htm
Figure 1. Caroline Lagerfelt and Marco Barricelli as Elizabeth and Robert Dudley. Costumes by
Deborah Dryden. Photo: Ken Friedman.
Figure 2. Mary Stuart at Court Theatre, Chicago. Costumes by Kaye Voyce. Photo: Michael Brosilow
Figure 3. Phèdre at Court Theatre, Chicago. Jenny Bacon as Phèdre, James Elly
as Hippolytus. Costumes by Kaye Voyce. Photo: Michael Brosilow.
Figure 4. Don Carlos at Center Stage, Baltimore. Set by Ming Cho Lee. Photo: Carol Rosegg
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