Erwin Piscator (1893-1966)

Historical Overview

Theory and Practice

Analysis

Productions and Theatrical Projects

Quotations

BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Important modernist theatre director. German.

Theatre as a conscious and theorised response to needs of particular historical moment.

Theatre assumes an agitational and propagandistic function.

Although Germany was relatively stabilised economically in the mid-twenties, still a sharply polarised society.

Piscator was conscripted into the German army during WWI: two years at front line.
On return, he became involved with marxist members of Berlin Dada movement.

Reacting against:

Naturalism

"In view of the urgency of present-day problems the products of Naturalism seem like bad photographs taken indiscriminately by bourgeois amateurs" (1920, 42).

Symbolism and Expressionism:

Joined the newly-founded German Communist Party (KDP) [1918].

"Whatever is said must be said in a manner which is uncontrived, non-experimental, not ‘expressionistic,' not distorted; it should be determined by simple, straight-forward revolutionary purpose and will" (41)

Period working in Berlin theatres between 1920-1931 will be our focus.

Productions successful, dogged by financial disaster.
Expense involved in productions.
Worked at Volksbühne and own companies.
After 3rd incarnation of his company, jailed for tax dues in 1931.

On release, period making film in Soviet Union in early thirties. By time finished, Hitler in power in Germany.

In 1936 while on visit to Paris, received telegram warning not to return to Soviet Union.
Formalism purges. Imprisonment and execution of artists.

Two years in France, unproductive.

Moved to USA. 13yrs in exile.
Taught at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School of Social Research in New York during the war.
Taguht acting to Marlon Brando, James Dean.

Returned to Germany after the War to direct Freie Volksbühne.
Developed documentary plays by Hochhuth, Kipphardt, Weiss, in tradition he had founded.

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Piscator's political commitment impelled him to seek three qualities in his productions:

totality (represent whole),
immediacy (contemporaneity)
authenticity (force spectators to act on it)

How? The revue form and the development of Epic theatre.

ACTING: development of epic theatre

"[T]he actors have a totally new attitude to the subject of the play they are acting in. The actor can no longer remain indifferent to his role, as he has done up till now, nor can he ‘lose himself' in it, that is, give up all conscious will." (43)

Series of multi-media productions:

"Film projections, the colour organ, the interchange on stage between light and ‘film light,' complete motorization of the stage--through these, and how many other, innovations modern creative science can supplant the ancient peep-show. And what would happen if it were to introduce a wholly new architecture, making the stage a play-machine, a wonder-world, an arena for battling ideas, perhaps even setting the audience on a turntable, dynamically bursting the static illusion of the present stage? I do not say that new techniques will be the saviour of the theatre. I merely say that they can express new dramatic contents by liberating the creative forces of playwrights, directors and actors."(472)

Designed to present complex social and economic forces shaping contemporary society.

"It has probably become clear from what has already been stated that technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery." (244)

Technology necessary for two reasons:

[1] needed to represent contemporary reality (masses)
[2] neededto achieve function of connecting to audience and forcing them to take sides.

1] Contemporary society shaped by the masses:

Shift from individual focus of early expressionism.

The War finally buried bourgeois individualism under a hail of steel and a holocaust of fire. Man, the individual, existing as an isolated being, independent (at least seemingly) of social connections, revolving egocentrically around the concept of the self, in fact lies buried beneath a marble slab inscribed ‘The Unknown Soldier.' (243)
It is no longer the private, personal fate of the individual, but the times and the fate of the masses that are the heroic factors in the new drama. (243)
For us, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a social function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to God, but his relationship to society which is central. Whenever he appears, his class or social stratum appears with him. His moral, spiritual or sexual conflicts are conflicts with society (1929, 243).

2] Utilitarian dramatic aims:

Influence voters, raise class consciousness, clarify Communist policy.
Attempt to establish dialectical relation between the stage and the audience in order to accelerate the transformation of society.

"any artistic intention must be subordinated to the revolutionary purpose of the whole: the conscious emphasis and propagation of the concept of the class struggle" (1920, 41)

The totality of the work is no longer focused on the interpersonal events of the drama,
but rather arises from simultaneous settings,
a "montage of dramatic scenes, film reports, choruses, projections of calendars, pointed allusions" (Szondi 1965, 69).

The figure of the director eclipses the world of the characters by his implicit presence bringing all these elements together.

Development in increasing dominance of director in C20th theatre.

Having said that, often worked with dramaturgical collectives.

More democratic institution.
Equality between producers, and relation to consumers.
Common purpose.
New audiences.

Free treatment of play. Subsumed to intended function of production:

[I]t will be possible to make practically every bourgeois play, whether it expresses the decay of bourgeois society or whether it clearly shows the capitalist principle, into an instrument to strengthen the concept of the class struggle, to deepen revolutionary insight into historical necessities. It will be useful if such plays are introduced by a talk, so as to prevent misunderstandings and wrong effects. In certain circumstances changes can be made in plays (concern for the feelings of the author, is a conservative affair) through cuts, through amplifying certain passages, even by adding a prologue and epilogue in order to make the meaning of the whole more clear. In this way a large portion of world literature can be made to serve the cause of the revolutionary proletariat, just as the whole of world literature can be used for the political purpose of propagating the concept of class struggle. (41)

ANALYSIS

One way of placing Piscator's work is to read it as a response to what has been referred to as the "crisis of drama" (Szondi 1965).

Plays like Hauptman's The Weavers or Gorky's The Lower Depths had attempted to represent the determining role of social conditions in the modern world and to dramatise its political and social structures.

Though successful in this attempt at the level of content, their dramatic form remained predicated on the portrayal of concrete interpersonal relations.

This meant that the dramatists could show these abstract forces only indirectly--insofar as they impacted on the particular lives of their characters--rather than give the forces a full dramatic presence in their own right, thus suggesting a more general condition.

Piscator's response to this situation is to address the discrepancy through the mise en scène--his innovations in the use of theatrical space and new stage technologies make up for the discrepancies in the realm of play-writing.

"I have to ask for better texts from that poor creature, the author," he wrote in his notebook (qtd. Ley-Piscator 1967, 74).

In his book The Political Theatre, he continued:

Perhaps my whole style of directing is a direct result of the total lack of suitable plays. It would certainly not have taken so dominant form if adequate plays had been on hand when I started. (1929, 185)

PRODUCTIONS AND THEATRICAL PROJECTS

Proletarian Theatre

(Oct 1920-April 1921)

Founded with Communist Youth Leader Hermann Schüller (advocate of Soviet Proletkult).
Theatre supported by former Berlin Dada group. Piscator's divergence.
KDP unconvinced that art and propaganda could be reconciled.
5000 group or individual subscribers.
Toured working-class districts, performing on improvised stages in beer-halls and workers' clubs.
Short agitatory sketches or scripted plays--extensively modified by the group in rehearsal to achieve maximum political clarity and relevance to the current situation in Germany. Collective adaptation common feature of his subsequent work.
One act Russia's Day by Lajos Barta.
John Heartfield's use of map for scenery.
Working-class amateur actors.
Intentionally rudimentary style of performance; robust workers against emblematic figures representing world capital, the military high command, the church and the judiciary.
Forget art and build an ensemble on basis of common revolutionary convictions.
Full houses. Free entry for unemployed. Financial difficulties. License not renewed. Forced to close.

Flags

(Fahnen). By Alfons Paquet. VolksbŸhne. 26th May 1924.

Joined Volksbühne as director.
Popular theatre organisation: "Art to the People" (Die Kunst dem Volke).
Theatre still tied to Naturalism. Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann.
They had accepted the play. Anarchism in Chicago. Exploitation of immigrant workers and their struggle for eight-hour working day. Drawn from documentary sources.
Author described it as "an epic drama." Episodic succession of short scenes. Dsblin: "a half-way house between narrative and drama." Brecht not yet in Berlin.
New, well-equipped theatre (10yrs old).
Seated 1,800. Twenty meter revolving stage. Cyclorama, hydraulically-operated rake. Integral adjustable rostra.
Composite set of low cut-off walls on the revolve.
Professional actors.
Co-operation demanded creates community among participants.
Narrator figure (puppeteer) introduced to speak prologue and comment on the characters, with ballad-singer commenting in song.
Idea: to connect stage and auditorium.
Projected portraits of characters on backcloth during prologue.
Projections either side of stage during main action.
Used for documentary illustration (posters, news cuttings, manifestoes) and for cinema-like titles or captions. Anticipated action or undercut stage action (judge's verdict with "The Police threw the bombs themselves").
Success. Becomes regular director.
Leo Lania: emphasis of social and historical background. First Marxist drama. Make forces of materialism tangible and comprehensible.

The Red Revue

(Revue Roter Rummel). By Felix Gasbarra and Erwin Piscator. 22nd Nov. 1924.

KDP asked Piscator to organise a political revue: election campaign of winter 1924/25. (Lost million votes).
Association with Georg Grosz and Felix Gasbarra: new credibility.
Theme: class injustice and inevitable final triumph of communism in Weimar Republic.
Loose montage of scenes. Dozen sketches introduced by communist songs. Concludes with all singing Internationale.
Dance, gymnastics. Actors representing Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg.
Framing of scene by narrator figures who emerge from audience, arguing.
Unemployed Man and Master Butcher: proletarian and bourgeois points of view.
Use of two projectors to illustrate scenes with slides of police repression and portraits of political leaders. George Grosz drawings in the interval.
Popular success. "tens of thousands of proletarians" in a fortnight, according to Die Rote Fahne.
Revue form: embraces wide range of theatrical devices; able to be continually changed and brought up to date.
Important model for German agit-prop movement. Formation of groups all over Germany. By late twenties several hundred. Independent development.
Led to KDP recognising theatre as potent weapon of propaganda. Later began official sponsorship of workers' theatre groups.

In Spite of Everything!

(Trotz Alledem!) By Felix Gasbarra and Erwin Piscator. Grosses Schauspielhaus. 12th July 1925.

KDP asked for pageant for first party conference. Two performances.
3,300 seat theatre. Packed for both, but party didn't want to take financial risk with extending the run.
Developed revue form.
Polemical historical panorama from years 1914-1919, 24 scenes, interspersed with films.
High level of political consciousness in audience. Reinforce factual veracity.
Authentic material. Recorded speeches, news-extracts, photographs and film sequences from WW1.
Plain construction of steps and platforms on a huge revolve, built by Heartfield.
Cast of over two hundred.
Simultaneous live action.
Social Democratic vote on supporting war juxtaposed with film showing the first dead.
Documentary approach. Scene titles. Historical figures and representative proletarians.
Develop relation between stage action and wider social-political reality.

Tidal Wave

(Sturmflut). By Alfons Paquet. Volksbühne. 20th Sept. 1926.

Written with experience of Piscator's new methods in mind.
Text cut and reassembled.
Actors effectively improvising large sections of the play. Ensemble scenes.
Set proper only steps and blocks.
New role to projections.
Seen preview of Eisenstein's Potemkin.
Screen right across back of stage. 6-10 projectors.
Provides moving setting for much of the play.
Piscator: "a living wall," creating "the theatre's fourth dimension. In this way the photographic image conducts the story, becomes its motive force, a piece of living scenery."

Storm over Gottland

(Gewitter Über Gottland). By Ehm Welk. Volksbühne. 23rd March 1927.

Brought relationship with VolksbŸhne to a head.
Struggle in C14th between Hanseatic cities (pioneering capitalist) and communistic league of Vitalians.
Rhetorical old-fashioned dialogue. Four hours long.
Projections in the auditorium.
Long exposition of mediaeval social and political background.
Political comment through film.
Characters filmed walking towards audience, costumes becoming more modern--show inexorable progress of socialism. Lead character identified with Lenin--rewrote part to sound like sober, rational style. Shots of Russia and China.
Soviet star raised over stage.
Volksbühne: incompatible with principle of political neutrality.
But knew he had theatre of his own by then.

Piscator-bühne companies

Original idea: Built own theatre.
2,000 seats. Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.
Total-theater. Designed to meet all Piscator's technical demands. Variable performance areas. 17 slide or cine-projection booths.
Never realised for financial reasons.
Might have provided mass audiences to keep companies afloat later on.
Compromise with bourgeois audiences. Fashionable west-end of Berlin. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. Conventional design.

Hoppla, Such is Life!

(Hoppla, wir leben!) By Ernst Toller. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 3rd Sept. 1927.

Hero saw revolution in emotional terms. Collective rewrite script.
Suicide at end--emphasise subjectivity of his perspective.
Actors consciously representing social class.
Anticipate motivation behind epic acting of Brecht.
Style of acting: "hard, unambiguous, unsentimental"
Opened studio: small-scale productions and courses in acting.
Traugott MŸller's set: 3" gas piping. 36' wide, 26' high, 10' deep, weighs over 4 tons.
Free-standing scaffolding set on revolving stage.
Play suggested cross-section of society: set literalises cross-section.
Multi-storied structure, different acting areas: Symbolise social order.
Prison cells, hotel rooms, radio station.
Mass scenes played in front on main stage area.
Simultaneous film projection from four sources. Translucent backing to stage structure.
3,000 feet of film shot, edited with archive material. Still being spliced when curtain went up.
Film used for both documentary and emblematic effect.
Gauze covering whole stage for prologue.
Opening prologue shows events while protagonist in lunatic asylum, condensed into seven minute montage. General's tunic covered with medals, army in retreat, advancing war, medals ripped off.
Final act: in prison (for trying to assassinate) tap out messages on walls to each other, and messages translated into text flicker silently above their heads from one person to another, till no more comes from protagonist, having committed suicide.
Successful: dual appeal of innovatory staging methods and productions political aims.
Two-month run.

Rasputin, the Romanoffs, the War and the People that Rose Against Them.

By Alexei Tolstoy and P. Shchegolev. Adapted by Piscator, Gasbarra, Lania, Brecht. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 10th Nov. 1927.

Majority of play adapted by dramaturgical collective--turned into a political documentary
Used 30-odd works, history, politics, etc.
Half the characters added--Lenin, Trotsky, German and Austrian emperors
Add new scenes--juxtapose imperial court with military and political events
Intention to create a piece of world history
Muller's great silver fabric covered hemisphere---symbolising the world---turned on revolve
Flap doors opening at different points to reveal scenes and rooms
DSL narrow calendar screen, with running ribbon of dates and events projected
Film projected on globe and on screen above--6,000 feet of film
Film drawn from Soviet archive docu sources
Coincided with 10th anniversary celebrations of USSR
Film prologue again---400yrs of Tsarist rule
End with Nicholas II standing on top of world and Rasputin's shadow looming above
Projected texts on side screens
Ironic juxtaposition again: ministers assure all well once war won, with lists of lost battles
Tsar quotation healthy and invigorating life at the front with shots of corpses
Scene of Tsarina planning arrest of revolutionaries, with film foreshadowing murder of imperial family.
Actress forgot lines when notices huge projection of march of red guard while in boudoir
Impression created: Characters only aware of own individual situation while film sees totality and historical perspective. Voice of fate.
Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm sued for defamation---substituted text of court decision---immediacy
Piscator felt was evidence of success.

The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik.

By Max Brod and Hans Reimann. Adapted by Piscator, Gasbarra, Lania, Brecht. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 23rd Jan. 1928.

Adaptation of episodic comic novel. Greatest popular success
Brecht worked on it
Two treadmills, or endless belts
March to war without moving
Scenes pass by him---people or cut-out objects--represent figures who take no active part
Move past on screen as well
No set in usual sense
Used naturalistic film and satiric cartoons
Georg Grosz collaborated again--cut out marionettes and sequences of cartoon film

Erwin Piscator: Quotations

"The Proletarian Theatre: Its Fundamental Principles and its Tasks" (1920)

The Proletarian Theatre must be run on these lines: simplicity of expression and construction; it must have a clear and unambiguous impact on the emotions of the working class audience; any artistic intention must be subordinated to the revolutionary purpose of the whole: the conscious emphasis and propagation of the concept of the class struggle. (41)

[I]t will be possible to make practically every bourgeois play, whether it expresses the decay of bourgeois society or whether it clearly shows the capitalist principle, into an instrument to strengthen the concept of the class struggle, to deepen revolutionary insight into historical necessities. It will be useful if such plays are introduced by a talk, so as to prevent misunderstandings and wrong effects. In certain circumstances changes can be made in plays (concern for the feelings of the author, is a conservative affair) through cuts, through amplifying certain passages, even by adding a prologue and epilogue in order to make the meaning of the whole more clear. In this way a large portion of world literature can be made to serve the cause of the revolutionary proletariat, just as the whole of world literature can be used for the political purpose of propagating the concept of class struggle. (41)

Whatever is said must be said in a manner which is uncontrived, non-experimental, not 'expressionistic,' not distorted; it should be determined by simple, straight-forward revolutionary purpose and will. (41)

Symbolic vagaries, the intentionally indiscriminate jumble of colours, lines, subjects, distortions, words and concepts are characteristics of the threatened mentality of people who, clinging to the coat-tails of capitalism, have lost contact with the most progressive class, the proletariat. Oh, the bankers were the masters of their age: they let these people / assume what postures they liked. 'Revolution in colour?'--'Why not?' they said, raising their top-hats and patting their fat stomachs. 'Revolutionary in word!' Who's that laughing?
Dada laughed! And thus the whole circus was complete. But Dada, although it realized in what direction up-rooted art leads, is no way out. Bourgeois art has nothing more to say. The whole of cultural life has become a mere formality. 'Form' is everything; but form alone can never be revolutionary. Content makes it that--and a content which has its roots in bourgeois art can only be reactionary today. (42-3)

[A]s a business it is breaking with capitalist traditions, for it is based on a relationship of complete equality between management, actors, stage designers, and all the other technical and business employees. There is also a relationship of equality between all of them and the consumers (that is, the theatre-goers) based on their common interest and desire to work together as a collective. (43)

[T]he actors have a totally new attitude to the subject of the play they are acting in. The actor can no longer remain indifferent to his role, as he has done up till now, nor can he 'lose himself' in it, that is, give up all conscious will. (43)

The other task of the Proletarian Theatre is to spread its educational influence, through propaganda, among those of the masses who are still politically wavering and indifferent . . . . (44)

"Basic Principles of Sociological Drama" (1929)

The War finally buried bourgeois individualism under a hail of steel and a holocaust of fire. Man, the individual, existing as an isolated being, independent (at least seemingly) of social connections, revolving egocentrically around the concept of the self, in fact lies buried beneath a marble slab inscribed 'The Unknown Soldier.' (243)

It is no longer the private, personal fate of the individual, but the times and the fate of the masses that are the heroic factors in the new drama. (243)

For us, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a social function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to God, but his relationship to society which is central. Whenever he appears, his class or social stratum appears with him. His moral, spiritual or sexual conflicts are conflicts with society. . . . [A] time in which the relationship of individuals in the community to one another, the revision of human values, the realignment of social relationships is the order of the day cannot fail to see mankind in terms of society and the social problems of the times, i.e., as a political being. (243)

The excessive stress on the political angle--and it is not our work, but the disharmony in current social conditions which makes every sign of life political--may in a sense lead to a distorted view of human ideals, but the distorted view at least has the advantage of corresponding to reality. (244)

We, as revolutionary Marxists, cannot consider our task complete if we produce an uncritical copy of reality, conceiving the theatre as a mirror of the times. We can no more consider this our task than we can overcome this state of affairs by theatrical means alone, nor can we conceal the disharmony with a discreet veil, nor can we present man as a creature of sublime greatness in times which in fact socially distort him--in a word, it is not our business to produce an idealistic effect. The business of revolutionary theatre is to take reality as its point of departure and to magnify the social discrepancy, making it an element of our indictment, our revolt, our new order. (244)

It has probably become clear from what has already been stated that technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery. (244)

This elevation, which was inextricably bound up with the use of Marxist dialectics in the theatre, had not been achieved by the plays themselves. My technical devices had been developed to cover up the deficiencies of the dramatists' products. (244)

SELECTION OF ERWIN PISCATOR'S PRODUCTIONS

Flags. By Alfons Paquet. Volksbühne. 26th May 1924.
The Red Revue. By Felix Gasbarra and Erwin Piscator. 22nd Nov. 1924.
In Spite of Everything! By Felix Gasbarra and Erwin Piscator. Grosses Schauspielhaus. 12th July 1925.
The Robbers. By Friedrich Schiller. Staatliches Schauspielhaus. 11th Sept. 1926.
Tidal Wave. By Alfons Paquet. VolksbŸhne. 20th Sept. 1926.
Storm over Gottland. By Ehm Welk. VolksbŸhne. 23rd March 1927.
Hoppla, Such is Life! By Ernst Toller. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 3rd Sept. 1927.
Rasputin, the Romanoffs, the War and the People that Rose Against Them. By Alexei Tolstoy and P. Shchegolev. Adapted by Piscator, Gasbarra, Lania, Brecht. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 10th Nov. 1927.
The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik. By Max Brod and Hans Reimann. Adapted by Piscator, Gasbarra, Lania, Brecht. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 23rd Jan. 1928.
Boom. By Leo Lania. Lessing-Theater. 10th April 1928.
The Merchant of Berlin. By Walter Mehring. Theater am Nollendorfplatz. 6th Nov. 1929.
? 218, Women in Distress. By Carl Cred*. Apollotheater. 23rd Nov. 1929.
The Kaiser's Coolies. By Theodor Plivier. Lessing-Theater. 31st Aug. 1930.
Tai Yang Awakes. By Friedrich Wolf. Wallner-Theater. 15th Jan. 1931.