Synopsis of "Midnight Drums"
The Midnight Drum (originally titled Spartacus) was Brecht's second theatrical work at the age of 24. The story takes place on one night, Kragler, who was captured in Africa for four years during World War I, returns to his hometown after the disaster, but faces the situation of his lover Anna waiting for his fruitlessness, under the pressure of his parents, and getting engaged to Muk, who has made a fortune in the war, and the penniless and ghostly Kragler stumbles away from the contempt of everyone and the betrayal of his lovers, and under the catalysis of spirits, he is encouraged to join the "Spartacus" revolutionary movement that is stirring in the streets this night. However, when Anna changes her mind, Kragler must choose between love and revolution. The two versions of the Beijing performance allowed the audience to feel the creation of director Lupin while feasting on Brecht's original stage art.
Kragler finally meets anna, but Anna can hardly recognize him who has been devastated by the war. The pictures in this article are provided by the Goethe-Institut China.
At first, the play was not well received, but in 1922 it was appreciated by The Artistic Director of the Chamber Theatre in Munich at the time, Falkenberg, premiered at the Munich Chamber Theatre, and after the performance was recognized by the audience, winning the Kleist prize, Germany's most important literary award, and becoming one of the most frequently performed plays in its early days.
Brecht also rose to prominence as the theatre's theatre consultant and director-in-residence, and had the opportunity to begin developing a range of revolutionary theatrical concepts. So a hundred years later, also produced by the Munich Chamber Theatre, directed by young German director Christopher Lupin, coupled with the rare double-version ending, it has satisfied the audience's appetite as early as the publicity period. During the performance in Taiwan in March this year, it also caused a hot discussion.
What kind of Brecht will Lupin show us? Did Brecht's aesthetics and explorations still fit into the cultural context of the era? The answers to these questions were finally revealed.
The stage became the scene of Brecht's "separation" teaching
Brecht and his concepts of "dissociation", "breaking the fourth wall" and "epic theater" undoubtedly have great significance for the contemporary theater industry, and the changes in Chinese theater concepts and many practices since the 1980s have also been deeply influenced, and the current active small theater and experimental theater are more based on Bushi. The performance method founded by Brecht is also called the world's three major performance systems together with Mei Lanfang and Stanislavsky. Nevertheless, in addition to Meng Jinghui's adaptation of "The Good Man of Sichuan", in fact, Chinese audiences rarely have the opportunity to see the most original Brecht, and this time "Midnight DrumMing" will directly present us with a living "separation" technique teaching scene at the Tianqiao Art Center.
Narrators & journalists & music performers use musical means to achieve a "distancing" effect.
The so-called "separation" is a subversion of Aristotle's "imitation theory", that is, through a variety of means to pull the audience out of the "addiction" to the story on the frame stage, breaking the invisible "fourth wall" between the audience and the actors, such as the actor suddenly turning from the story, speaking in front of the audience, jumping in and out between the stage and the audience, or directly exposing the prop arrangement, the dressing process, etc., the purpose of which is to expect the audience to maintain an objective and calm attitude towards the story and performance and a certain sense of distance. This leads to critical awareness and reflection. This is also Brecht's own refutation of the hypocritical and boring middle-class living room drama that prevailed since the 19th century.
From the first act, "Midnight Drums" presents a process of continuous evolution and practice of "separation" in theater from the 1920s to the contemporary era. The plot and choreography of the first two acts were deliberately modeled after the 1922 premiere, based on the stage notes, stills, recordings of the performances, and newspaper and magazine reports and commentaries, and the expressionist wood-paneled stage was built, including the family room in the foreground, the tavern and the back scene of the 1920s Berlin cityscape, and a red paper moon hanging high over the city.
Emulated the stage of Brecht's premiere in 1922.
The actors in the play wear headphones, mechanically repeating the lines spoken by the actors who played the same role as them in 1922, and performing each action according to the stage instructions, like a rigid marionette. At this time, the actor is no longer the embodiment and carrier of the role, but the relationship with the character and the storyline is highly withdrawn, leaving only the lines and actions themselves.
At the same time, according to the instructions of the original work, posters handwritten in English, German and Chinese were posted everywhere in the theater, "Don't be too emotional", and constantly prompted the audience to stay away and not to substitute. The comedic effect caused by the "separation" in the performance mostly comes from the use of music, and the bald male actors, who are also the narrators, journalists and music performers, always interrupt the plot and emotional advancement with accompaniments that are not suitable for the plot atmosphere, contemporary popular songs and high-pitched but out-of-tune singing. Both inside and outside the play are generally engaged in the performance, commenting on it, and even some kind of irony.
From the third act onwards, Lupin gradually deviated from Brecht's original work, removing the living room-style set of the first two acts, using the empty stage after the demolition as the background, and the postmodern strong light, thick fog, drums, transparent soft glue costumes and lyrical polyphonic recitations set off a warm and inspiring revolutionary atmosphere. Anna's sentence "get out of the egg" makes the audience's emotions stop abruptly at the highest point, and repeatedly reverses the original plot direction. The actors also used the scene of violent dismantling props and sets to symbolize the act of breaking the state apparatus and even the story structure itself, coupled with another invitational exhibition work "Odyssey" to push the sawmill machine directly onto the stage, which can be described as a vivid presentation of a certain form of contemporary German theater.
The third act of Kragler is encouraged by a revolutionary atmosphere in the tavern.
On another level, the performance of "Midnight Drums" in China, the language barrier and the translation behavior of subtitles, as well as the differences in the real society and context in which the audience lives, itself constitutes a certain "separation" and defamiliarization effect. After the superposition of multiple "separations" and the continuous reversal, ridicule and deconstruction of the previous narrative, Lupin's viewing experience for Chinese audiences, whether or not he has obtained the ultimate conclusion and judgment, is undoubtedly enlightening.
Two endings: "Love" or "Revolution"
In the ending of the original work, Kragler rejects the revolution, refuses to fight for his survival and rights, and becomes a heroic figure like "Spartacus", but chooses love, chooses "comfortable white bed". Brecht allegedly regretted the ending in his later years, so another version of the ending seems to provide a remedy for that regret.
The choice between "love" and "revolution", which is the main contradiction of the play, exists because Brecht has built in a binary opposition structure of "love/revolution". But stripping away the historical context of Brecht's creation, it is not difficult to know that the underlying layers are much more complex.
On the one hand, "love" here is a big bed, an apartment, a warm family life for conservatives, and at the same time refers to the basic humanity and right to life of individuals under the trauma of war. As Kragler puts it, Anna's presence was like "a buzzing fly", the driving force behind his turbulent and brutal life as a prisoner of war. The rejection of revolution actually soaked Brecht's doubts and reflections on the war in the frenzied militancy of Germany at that time, and similar narrative logic, this macroscopic anti-war trend, has continued and penetrated into contemporary cultural works.
Brecht version: Kragler chooses love.
On the other hand, the "Spartacus", who was about to launch a revolution in the newspaper district, was an organization of a working class character, opposed to Anna's family and the bourgeois regime to which Mook belonged. The choice to participate in the revolution, therefore, seems to be isomorphic with Brecht, who has leftist tendencies, and with the class position that is constantly manifesting in the first two acts of the play. But As an ordinary low-level soldier, Kragler, who was easily instigated by "ideas" (especially under extreme sadness and strong alcohol), did not seem to have a clear understanding of the meaning and goal of the revolution itself, and could not help but make people doubt the legitimacy and purity of its revolution.
From this, it is not difficult to see that on the surface, from Brecht's version of "refuse to struggle, return to love" to Lupin's version of "abandon love and rush to struggle", it seems that different choices have been made for the contradiction of "love/revolution", but in fact, what has changed over the past hundred years is the deeper realpolitik context implied by the pair of opposing signifiers.
In director Lupin's view, "choosing revolution" and sacrificing individual happiness for the sake of the collective is not about starting or throwing into war, but is given a contemporary meaning of paying attention to society and actively participating in socio-political action, which to some extent seems to be interpreted as dissatisfaction with the right-wing forces prevailing in Europe and the sharp contradictions of reality.
Actors and crew perform violent demolitions.
In the context of Chinese culture, the audience will naturally have their own interpretation. In the modern and contemporary literary narratives we are familiar with since may fourth, love is not always opposed to the revolution, love often appears as a rebellion against the old society and the old system, as a symbol of freedom and liberation and the revolution, why can't the hotbed of love and the blood of the revolution be obtained at the same time? Didn't Anna stand with the low-level warriors who had nothing to do with her family?
However, no matter what the interpretation, one of Brecht's important propositions is that the theater itself has educational and social functions, and that art should point to the social action of reality. Under the higher concept of "separation", the ending does not seem so important. Keeping a distance and alert attitude toward all choices, fanaticism and immersion are enough to look at and reflect on the surface. And aren't the two versions of the ending itself a gift of choice?
□ Wang Yike (Drama Critic)
Beijing News Editor Wu Longzhen Proofreader Zhai Yongjun