"Life itself is struggling, but people are talking about civilization and culture at the moment. It is a strange synchronic phenomenon: on the one hand, life is increasingly collapsing, leading to the current depression of the human heart; on the other hand, people are concerned about the culture, although this culture has never been in tune with life, but whose mission is to guide life. ”
- Aalto
Antonan Aalto
This is the first paragraph of Aalto's preface to Cruel Drama, and I chose to place it at the beginning of my article, because it reveals Aalto's general view of society or social culture, and it is this reflection on the current state of society and the form of drama that is triggered by this reflection on the current state of society and the form of drama. Aalto believed that the most urgent need for society at that time was not to defend culture, but to draw ideas from culture. Aalto himself did this, no doubt, and the idea he drew from culture was "protest" — a protest against the narrow notions that people impose on culture — embodied in drama by criticizing the rigid current drama and pursuing "real drama."
The name "cruel drama" seems to be a little scary to stand up, it makes us instinctively think of blood, violence, cruelty, torture, etc., in fact, the word "cruel" is not directly related to them, it refers to strictness, concentration, immutable, refers to "raw desire, the gravity of the universe and the unchangeable inevitability... Refers to pain beyond the relentless inevitability." This "cruelty" also includes strict requirements for directors and actors and extreme cohesion of stage factors. Brutal drama does not reject bloodshed and violence, but this is by no means its essence. Moreover, cruel drama shows the restlessness of contemporary society and the confusion and pain of people's inner world.
The drama that the Brutal Theatre Company had staged was no longer visible, so I chose a play decades later, "Mueller's Cafe." Although the play is not classified as a cruel drama, I think its expression and the creative concept of the choreographer are very good at explaining Aalto's definition of "cruel drama". So I'm going to talk about the understanding of brutal drama in conjunction with Mueller's Cafe.
Mueller Cafe
(The plague patient) "carries with it all the scars of an absolute, and almost abstract disease, and this state of the patient is similar to that of the actor: emotions make him panic and produce no practical benefit." "The plague patient shouts and gallops, looking for his imagination while the actor is looking for his feelings." I don't see how Aalto portrays this state of the "plague patient" in his plays, but in Café Mueller I seem to see this kind of fascination, where the actors seem to be mentally disoriented after being extremely physically disturbed, and they seem to be cut off from the real world. The confusion of thought and the blurring of reality simultaneously put the actor into a state of mania sleepwalking: the two women in white seem to have entered another world—a world of nothingness without material existence, stumbling. The woman in the foreground was disheveled and painfully soothed her body, but the great pain in her heart could not be relieved, so she had to crash into the wall over and over again; she twisted her body wildly, and rammed through the room full of tables and chairs, making all the audience sweat for her. Doesn't this show that under the pressure of society, people's souls are squeezed to the limit, and finally vented out? Like a potential plague, it suddenly erupts after it has accumulated to its maximum. This is the "real drama" in Aalto's mind, which disturbs the tranquility of the senses, releases the repressed subconscious, and even makes the viewer roar out! Real drama helps people see their true selves, whether that "self" is hypocritical, cowardly, mean, or dazed, helpless, or miserable—like two women in white in a café.
To achieve "real drama", Aalto made an important innovation - adjusting the central role of dialogue in theater, focusing on creating a holistic theatrical language. In the 1930s, European theater attached great importance to the role of dialogue, and even regarded them as the most important parts of theater, making the visual art of theater purely literary. Aalto made a revolutionary point of view: stage language should be independent of the dialogue of discourse, it should include everything on stage - set, lighting, music, action, etc., these languages should first satisfy people's feelings. Thus, "the meaning of the word of language is replaced by the poetry of space". For the real drama is not about telling a story, it is about expressing ideas and spirits, not to make the mind clear, but to motivate people to think. To achieve this, we must break the rigid pattern of the script, and the actors can improvise, and even directly on stage, and direct on stage. This can be said to be vividly expressed in "Mueller Cafe". The whole play does not have a single line, and completely relies on the background music and the actor's body and demeanor language to express the inner world of the characters. Obviously, even without the narration of the lines, we can still understand the relationship between the characters in the play and their respective mental states - the isolation of people in social life, the hard work of maintaining the love relationship but still losing, the dazedness and tension in the chaotic society - we can personally feel the inner squeeze, we sincerely care for the characters in the play, sympathize with them, feel sad for them, and can't help but think of our own situation. I believe that even Aalto himself would be deeply shocked by the show and applauded. This is an extreme manifestation. But at the same time, we must be clear that as far as Aalto's thinking at that time is concerned, he does not want to completely cancel the dialogue in this play, but to adjust its role in the whole play, reduce its dominance, and integrate it into the overall environment of the stage language, after all, the complete stage atmosphere is more able to give people a heavy touch to the heart than the thin language. This "real language" can stimulate every sensitive nerve of the viewer, it first uses rough means to grab the attention of the audience, awaken each of their sleeping cells, and then gradually and delicately deepen, so that they will not miss any subtle emotions. The shock that such a drama brings to us is lasting and profound.
The drama produced in Aalto's cruel troupe always has a mysterious connection with real life, it does not directly copy life, it is not disconnected from reality, it vividly shows the intrinsic problems of the phenomenon of life - or to explain it in words from the book: drama is the "ghost" of life, as if we can also say that life is the "ghost" of drama. It is this connection that makes every audience have a relationship with what is happening on the stage, and everyone can see their own shadow from the play, and this shadow is usually invisible, it is hidden in the depths of everyone's heart, but it is the most real self.
Maybe this is "cruelty", which forces us to look directly at the inner uneasiness and cowardice, dazedness and madness, we are watching the play, but it seems that we are looking at a mirror that directly reflects the heart. Everything that happens on the stage is so dreamy, but so real, we seem to have entered the world of the characters in the play, and it seems that the crazy person on the stage is himself. It is as if we erupt in drama, vent in drama, and be baptized in drama. As Aalto said, "We are in a state of degeneration today, and it is only through the flesh that metaphysics can be reintroduced into the human spirit." The process of watching a drama is a kind of transformation, venting out the "evil" in the heart and purifying the soul.