Give the People What they Want

As the history of the performing arts marched forward into the modern era, the atmospheres of 20th Century drama shifted from melodramatic “bombasticism” of Aphra Behn and John Augustus Stone, to social realism and to the “epicness” and simplicity of political playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht and Luis Valdez. Instead of having audiences sit back and relax, the encouragement was to sit up, take notice, and act upon the values and messages for which the play brought forward to it’s audience; to walk into the show with one mindset and walk away from the show as a changed person, with an alternate social or political position. What is to be analyzed here is how Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Luis Valdez’s Quinta Temporada illustrate how the theatre can interact with the programs of social power, in order to provoke the message of how it is the will of the people which ought to stand as most powerful of all other entities (politicians, bureaucrats, etc.).

Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright responsible for such works of epic theatre such as The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Mother Courage & her Children. However, his later work (in this case, The Caucasian Chalk Circle) was written in the aftermath of Nazism and the Second World War. By creating a story which uses the atmosphere of a fallen government, war time atrocities, and the famous trial of King Solomon, to further expose how the only real innocents in times of conflict are those of the poor and the commonality; the masses who simply desire a decent living but must become armed pawns for the select few with status and political power to satisfy their own problems.

In this case, the servant, Grusha, who must become the surrogate mother to The Governess’ son, Michael, after he is abandoned during the collapse of the play’s first government. The audience knows nothing of who she is or where she comes from, but what’s important is that she represent’s the level of this fictional setting’s social hierarchy, who simply wishes to follow orders from the people of higher society just to survive from one day to the next; but by having to care for Michael during this revolution by the Iron Shirts, she realizes that for once in her life, her objectives are not just the short term needs of a pompous aristocrat, but the need to keep him alive is a key to restore peace either for the world around Grusha or a peaceful sense of purpose and motherhood for Grusha. So in a general sense, the commonality are asking for a renewed sense of peace in order to carry on with their lives, but for Grusha, she is unwillingly asking for a sense of purpose as a mother and receives it as a means of escaping from the monotony of a servant’s life.

One of the playwright’s whom later marks the American legacy of Bertolt Brecht is the latino playwright, Luis Valdez. His works were never meant to be done on stage (or at least not at first), at a time in the mid 1960’s and 1970’s where latino farmers and fruit workers sought to become unionized and fight for their civil liberties. Valdez created a style of theatre based on the political tone and lack of subtlety of Brecht, which fit the economic atmosphere of these itinerant farmers seeking to call out their own shots and call something their own in the United States. These plays would be short one-act pieces which satirized the living conditions of fellow farmers and their inability to make money in a system which was set at default to benefit only the rich white landowners who provided the work to these latinos. His 1966 “Los Actos” play Quinta Temporada concentrates on one particular political goal; to join the union and follow the patriotic footsteps of your revolutionary ancestors (Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, etc.) to enact social justice for yourself and your future generations of Latin Americans.

In the case of Worker (or Campesino) in the play, his efforts to scrap up a meager living while working as a farmer for a Boss (Patrón), all the while being screwed over by Don Coyote and the seasons which offer less and less money for his efforts in the fields. Only with the help of such personified elements such as the unions, the churches, la raza, and social justice, which finally allows him to strike back at the Winter, Don Coyote, and the Patron; and by having the audience of the one-act skit, act upon the message of the performance to join the unions, would the common people achieve what they seek; a place to call their own in America and money for their families either in the U.S. or in Mexico.

For through the analysis of these plays lead to the contextualization that both of these texts wish to invoke the social change for the benefit of the general population, but in the case of Brecht, he seeks to provoke the message by telling a legitimate stay which involves the development of individual characters which can be found relatable and identifiable by the individuals of the audience, in order to express the general message of giving the people what they want. In the case of Luis Valdez, his methods are a very alternate approach. The emphasis is on stock characters and personifications of nature to describe the struggle of giving the commoner what they desire.

Works Cited

• Brecht, Bertolt. The Caucasian Chalk Circle. 1947. University of Minnesota Press, 1999, Print. Accessed August 16, 2020.