Monday, August 27, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Spike Lee's TV Documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts"
This is a four-hour documentary about Katrina (available to rent from Blockbuster in two seperate parts). What I found particularly interesting was the look it gave me into the lives and personalities of those who were trapped in the city during the flooding and the days afterwards - though on the news there was a tiny bit of discussion regarding the fact that these people were left to fend for themselves in this situation because they are basically social outcasts of various sorts (poor, elderly, disabled, etc), this documentary really captures these people in a more personal and human light, instead of through the distancing and awkward lens of PC journalism.
The official website at HBO
Links to few reviews, posted at BBC
(I drafted this post a whle ago and intended to add clips and reviews this week, but I have no internet access in my hotel room in Nashville unfortunately - but of course if you want to find more to see and read, there is always Google!)
ADDITION By DV: You can find material at Youtube starting here:
The official website at HBO
Links to few reviews, posted at BBC
(I drafted this post a whle ago and intended to add clips and reviews this week, but I have no internet access in my hotel room in Nashville unfortunately - but of course if you want to find more to see and read, there is always Google!)
ADDITION By DV: You can find material at Youtube starting here:
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Weiss's various interpretations of his own work
From a 1966 review by Samuel Weiss (published in Drama Survey issue 5):
Peter Weiss (around the time of Brook's London production): "Personally ... I am for Marat because I think the things he says are the right things to do. And I understand Sade because Sade has the pesimistic view and because Sade ... can see already Stalin in the things Marat says ... . And so my solutions very often are not clear because the world I live in is not clear."
(Sam Weiss also states that "Marat/Sade dramatizes these doubts by splitting the author's [Weiss's] warring attitudes into two seperate characters" - which makes sense in that when Sade argues with his imaginary Marat, he is arguing with himself -this also gives insight into the possible identity of our man who believes he is Sade...?)
____________________________________
From David Roberts' "Peter Weiss, 'Marat/Sade' and the Revolution in the Theatre" (1969):
"a year after the premier of his play, Peter Weiss regretted an over-emphasis on the 'excessive theatrical form' of Marat/Sade, 'which was rather dangerous for some directors who were not sufficiently open to the debate … in so far as they took advantage of everything which could be overdramatically exploited. For instance the wild writhings of the patients, the uproar, this dramatic and threatening atmosphere, which is naturally very effective on the stage, but which hides the essence of the play.’"
Weiss (in interview with Sinn und Form, 1965 – also where above quote was taken from): “What particularly attracted me to the Rostock production [in which Marat is depicted as a socialist hero] was the clarity in the statements of Marat. It is clear enough that there were certain weaknesses in the production … But I do not think it matters in this case, for de Sade usually dominated in the western performances with the result that the emphasis has shifted to him. In Rostock the emphasis lay quite clearly with Marat.”
(What I find most interesting in Weiss’s shift of viewpoints is that he still wrote the play about de Sade, and this is undeniable – Marat is never a real historical figure in this play, he is always confined to the imagination of de Sade, and therefore can never truly take centre stage as a character because he is simply an offshoot of another character… but this can certainly be argued against, I guess…)
Weiss to A Alvarez in November 1964: “I stand only in the middle. I represent the third standpoint which I do not like myself … . I write in order to find out where I stand and so I must bring in all my doubts each time.”
“Weiss looks back at his earlier position in terms of his progression from de Sade to Marat in his interview in Sinn und Form: ‘… I needed a counterpart to Marat and this counterpart I found in Sade, the representative of a world not wholly bourgeois; for Sade was also a revolutionary in his way, but nevertheless a man who was so much the prisoner of his bourgeois viewpoint, that he corresponds to what we now call the representative of the third position. On the one hand he knows and realizes that society must be changed, on the other he has not himself the strength to take an active part in this transformation. He thus corresponds to my own earlier situation, to my own involvement in myself, to my inability to take the step into the outer world.’ The interpretation of Marat/Sade which Weiss now gives reveals him as the judge of the ‘third position’: ‘for me the figure of Sade is perhaps more differentiated than that of Marat because I myself have experienced and know very well the contradictions of Sade. I have constructed this Sade figure in such a way that Sade in fact undermines himself with his own arguments. Because this is the case Sade can be presented as a strong, dominating figure, in the final resort everything which Sade says adds up to the fact that the world he represents is condemned to disappear. As the end he is after all the figure who withdraws which the words of Marat remain and point to the future. It s a very complicated interplay.’”
Again from his conversation with Alvarez: “The ideal for an artist naturally would be to describe the situation in which we live so penetratingly that people when they read it or experience it on stage would say on the way home: ‘This must be changed. It can’t go on like this. We won’t put up with it any longer.’”
Weiss’s 10-point declaration about committed writing (entitled “Necessary Decision” – published in 1965) opens with this statement: “Every word I write and publish is political, that is to say, it aims at contact with large groups in the population in order to attain a certain effect.”
Peter Weiss (around the time of Brook's London production): "Personally ... I am for Marat because I think the things he says are the right things to do. And I understand Sade because Sade has the pesimistic view and because Sade ... can see already Stalin in the things Marat says ... . And so my solutions very often are not clear because the world I live in is not clear."
(Sam Weiss also states that "Marat/Sade dramatizes these doubts by splitting the author's [Weiss's] warring attitudes into two seperate characters" - which makes sense in that when Sade argues with his imaginary Marat, he is arguing with himself -this also gives insight into the possible identity of our man who believes he is Sade...?)
____________________________________
From David Roberts' "Peter Weiss, 'Marat/Sade' and the Revolution in the Theatre" (1969):
"a year after the premier of his play, Peter Weiss regretted an over-emphasis on the 'excessive theatrical form' of Marat/Sade, 'which was rather dangerous for some directors who were not sufficiently open to the debate … in so far as they took advantage of everything which could be overdramatically exploited. For instance the wild writhings of the patients, the uproar, this dramatic and threatening atmosphere, which is naturally very effective on the stage, but which hides the essence of the play.’"
Weiss (in interview with Sinn und Form, 1965 – also where above quote was taken from): “What particularly attracted me to the Rostock production [in which Marat is depicted as a socialist hero] was the clarity in the statements of Marat. It is clear enough that there were certain weaknesses in the production … But I do not think it matters in this case, for de Sade usually dominated in the western performances with the result that the emphasis has shifted to him. In Rostock the emphasis lay quite clearly with Marat.”
(What I find most interesting in Weiss’s shift of viewpoints is that he still wrote the play about de Sade, and this is undeniable – Marat is never a real historical figure in this play, he is always confined to the imagination of de Sade, and therefore can never truly take centre stage as a character because he is simply an offshoot of another character… but this can certainly be argued against, I guess…)
Weiss to A Alvarez in November 1964: “I stand only in the middle. I represent the third standpoint which I do not like myself … . I write in order to find out where I stand and so I must bring in all my doubts each time.”
“Weiss looks back at his earlier position in terms of his progression from de Sade to Marat in his interview in Sinn und Form: ‘… I needed a counterpart to Marat and this counterpart I found in Sade, the representative of a world not wholly bourgeois; for Sade was also a revolutionary in his way, but nevertheless a man who was so much the prisoner of his bourgeois viewpoint, that he corresponds to what we now call the representative of the third position. On the one hand he knows and realizes that society must be changed, on the other he has not himself the strength to take an active part in this transformation. He thus corresponds to my own earlier situation, to my own involvement in myself, to my inability to take the step into the outer world.’ The interpretation of Marat/Sade which Weiss now gives reveals him as the judge of the ‘third position’: ‘for me the figure of Sade is perhaps more differentiated than that of Marat because I myself have experienced and know very well the contradictions of Sade. I have constructed this Sade figure in such a way that Sade in fact undermines himself with his own arguments. Because this is the case Sade can be presented as a strong, dominating figure, in the final resort everything which Sade says adds up to the fact that the world he represents is condemned to disappear. As the end he is after all the figure who withdraws which the words of Marat remain and point to the future. It s a very complicated interplay.’”
Again from his conversation with Alvarez: “The ideal for an artist naturally would be to describe the situation in which we live so penetratingly that people when they read it or experience it on stage would say on the way home: ‘This must be changed. It can’t go on like this. We won’t put up with it any longer.’”
Weiss’s 10-point declaration about committed writing (entitled “Necessary Decision” – published in 1965) opens with this statement: “Every word I write and publish is political, that is to say, it aims at contact with large groups in the population in order to attain a certain effect.”
before Weiss became somewhat obsessed with Brecht... influences on his earlier dramatic ideas
From David Roberts' essay "Peter Weiss, 'Marat/Sade' and the Revolution in the Theatre" (published in 1969 in Komos: A Quarterly of Drama and Arts of the Theatre):
"The connexion between Weiss and Artaud is not simply Peter Brook's, in fact Weiss’s interest in Artaud is much older than his interest in Brecht, who is a surprisingly late influence on him, though now perhaps the most important as Weiss continues his studies of the classics, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. His latest play, the documentary on Vietnam,he describes as strictly Marxist […]. Weiss’s interest in Strindberg, whom he has translated, his acknowledgement of the importance of Artaud’s theatre manifesto of 1933*, his admiration and indebtedness to the surrealist cinema – especially Bunuel and Vigo – confirm that he was originally instinctively drawn to a fantasy world of violence and dream, as his early play, Die Versicherung (The Insurance), written in 1952 but only published in 1967, makes clear. The Insurance is a spectacle of sex and sadism, absurd, obscene, anarchic – its refrain is ‘catastrophes, revolutions’ – presented as a series of film-like sequences (it was originally intended as a film scenario). The first scene, for instance, very soon turns into an orgy, the second shows an operation during which all present undress, the sixth has one of the figures sitting in a bath. When he climbs out his body is seen to be covered with red hair. The scene ends with him howling to the dogs outside.” (emphasis mine)
*This claim (and the one made earlier about Artaud) is unfortunately not supported by any direct evidence, though we can acknowledge the Artaudian influence on The Insurance (note: this is of course Roberts’ description) and even to some extent Marat/Sade, as has been noted (though I’m still not totally sold on it – the play relies too much on language and I think that though there may be some hints of Artaudian influence there, they are distant and possible unintentional – also I am frustrated that many people seem simply to link Marat/Sade with Artuad because it features lunatics – but that’s just my two cents!)
"The connexion between Weiss and Artaud is not simply Peter Brook's, in fact Weiss’s interest in Artaud is much older than his interest in Brecht, who is a surprisingly late influence on him, though now perhaps the most important as Weiss continues his studies of the classics, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. His latest play, the documentary on Vietnam,he describes as strictly Marxist […]. Weiss’s interest in Strindberg, whom he has translated, his acknowledgement of the importance of Artaud’s theatre manifesto of 1933*, his admiration and indebtedness to the surrealist cinema – especially Bunuel and Vigo – confirm that he was originally instinctively drawn to a fantasy world of violence and dream, as his early play, Die Versicherung (The Insurance), written in 1952 but only published in 1967, makes clear. The Insurance is a spectacle of sex and sadism, absurd, obscene, anarchic – its refrain is ‘catastrophes, revolutions’ – presented as a series of film-like sequences (it was originally intended as a film scenario). The first scene, for instance, very soon turns into an orgy, the second shows an operation during which all present undress, the sixth has one of the figures sitting in a bath. When he climbs out his body is seen to be covered with red hair. The scene ends with him howling to the dogs outside.” (emphasis mine)
*This claim (and the one made earlier about Artaud) is unfortunately not supported by any direct evidence, though we can acknowledge the Artaudian influence on The Insurance (note: this is of course Roberts’ description) and even to some extent Marat/Sade, as has been noted (though I’m still not totally sold on it – the play relies too much on language and I think that though there may be some hints of Artaudian influence there, they are distant and possible unintentional – also I am frustrated that many people seem simply to link Marat/Sade with Artuad because it features lunatics – but that’s just my two cents!)
Monday, August 13, 2007
some new old directions in costuming
how very Sad(e) . . . . can you smell these places?
I am not making a moral opinion here: I am bringing to your attention some contemporary aesthetic trends that maybe have a home in our show . . . . ? Let me know your thoughts.
*** check out the article here in The Huffington Post, or here in Feministing.com, here in the Eroszine, to the work of people like Hermann Nitsch - but be forewarned: these are littered with links that will take you to places such as the websites hosted by Necrobabes . . .who knew? And have you all read Frisk
by Dennis Cooper? (there's a film too . . )
*** check out the article here in The Huffington Post, or here in Feministing.com, here in the Eroszine, to the work of people like Hermann Nitsch - but be forewarned: these are littered with links that will take you to places such as the websites hosted by Necrobabes . . .who knew? And have you all read Frisk
by Dennis Cooper? (there's a film too . . ) But then this is Sade . . . and Joma can maybe tell us a bit about Weiss' statement on how the audience should respond to a performance of our play.
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