Humanities on the Wane

It seems somehow symptomatic that Peter Zeisler’s editorial (“More than a Warning,” Jan. ’85) comparing the ignorance of American theatrical students to the rigorous intellectual preparation of Europeans should blame it all on computer courses and lack of government funding, while ignoring the fact that college theatre programs have been the traditional escape for “talented” students who couldn’t or didn’t want to study all that boring literature and history and language; or that the “new and improved” BFA/MFA training programs have even fewer courses in the humanities than old theatre degrees, and were in fact designed precisely to eliminate the humanities from the course of study.

It seems also symptomatic that the same issue contains a long diatribe by Robert Brustein (“Not Much Ado After All”) in the course of which he manages to: (1) date Cyrano de Bergerac as “Louis Quinze” when in fact the production and the script both clearly begin in the reign of Louis XIII and end very early in the reign of Louis XIV, an error of a mere century; (2) look at costumes designed in the highest of 17th century fashion and identify them as “19th century Spanish” (perhaps because some of them were black?); and (3) dismiss the notion of the hero with but a single flaw as belonging to “comic books or the operettas of Friml and Lehar,” having apparently never heard of Sophocles, Racine, Shakespeare, Dryden, or about 600 years of Aristotelian critical tradition concerning tragedy.

Perhaps the blame for our students’ ignorance lies somewhat closer to home than the National Endowment for the Arts. When our most “professional” training programs are specifically designed to produce performers ignorant of history and literature—and when one of the most respected leaders in the field can make such blatant errors of fact on the same subjects (and not be noticed by his editors)—it would seem that the theatre community as a whole had best be careful about casting the first stone in this particular area.

David Grote
San Francisco

Robert Brustein replies: I am responsible for one error of fact in my Royal Shakespeare Company piece—I wrote Louis Quinze when I meant Louis Treize. Abject apologies. But I will ask the editors of American Theatre to apologize for the error regarding the costumes since they incorrectly transcribed (from my Nov. 26 New Republic article) “seventeenth-century Italian and Spanish adaptations” as “19th century.” As for “the hero with but a single flaw,” perhaps Mr. Grote will apologize for misquoting me. What I actually wrote was “a Superman (not a hero) possessed of a single flaw”—a character I still maintain belongs only in comic books and operettas.

I am amused to find this correspondent suggesting I never heard of critics and dramatists I have been teaching and writing about for 30 years. Since he is in an instructive mood, may I call his attention to the fact that he misreads Aristotelian theory when he talks about “flaws.” “Flaw” is a mistranslation of Aristotle’s hamartia, which is more properly rendered as “error.” This is not a quibble since Aristotle believed true tragedy derived not from character deficiencies (Oedipus’ pride) so much as from errors in judgment (killing Laius at the crossroads)—a result of misconsidered action, not ethical failings. This is why Aristotle, possibly in an effort to counteract the moralistic bias of Plato, placed mythos ahead of ethos when rating the elements of tragedy in the order of their importance. There is no certainty about what either critic would have thought of Cyrano’s nose, but that unfortunate protuberance is neither an error of judgment, in Aristotle’s sense, nor a Platonic character flaw. It seems, rather, like a somewhat cheap appeal for sympathy for the hero of a bombastic romance.

Shake-Up

Thank you for Peter Zeisler’s editorial (“More than a Warning”) in the January American Theatre. It’s important for us out here in the rest of the country to have the written word to show our individual and corporate contributors. Such a forthright and eloquent warning shook some important people up for me.

Larry Carpenter, artistic director
American Stage Festival
Milford, N.H.

In Praise of Continuity

Your account of the differences between Arthur Miller and The Wooster Group (“Miller Halts ‘L.S.D.’ Run,” Jan. ’85) was heartening. Unfortunate as the whole thing may have been, it was handled with a great deal of civility and mutual respect. In light of Peter Sellars’ call in the same issue for a rebuilding of the mainstream, the Miller-Wooster dispute seems notable not least as a sign that such a thing is in the offing. The Wooster Group has been making a practice of “deconstructing” old plays, and its use of The Cocktail Party and Our Town, as well as The Crucible, shows a willingness to acknowledge cultural continuity even in the context of wild experimentation.

Come to think of it, it has been a long time since I have heard artists of the avant-garde trash the traditionalists. These days I am eager to see Sellars get his chance to direct Carousel (as he has expressed a desire to do), and to read a journal such as yours which does not deem it a virtue to be pretentious, doctrinaire or elliptical.

James Harris
New York City

Bad Company?

Your article on Peter Sellars and Des McAnuff (“In Search of the New Mainstream,” Jan. ’85) was quite illuminating. Not only to these two young artistes show themselves to be smug, snobbish elitists, but quite boring elitists to boot. I knew the American theatre was in trouble but I had no idea how bad its condition was. When directors such as Sellars and McAnuff are hailed as hopes for the future, I know that time is indeed short.

John Attanas
Forest Hills, N.Y.

America’s Rep Tradition

To believe that our theatre has not evolved from any European model, as Peter Zeisler suggests in his editorial “The American Connection” (Dec. ’84), is not to know our own history.

The theatre first took root in America with the arrival in colonial Virginia in 1740 of a highly professional company of English actors under the management of Lewis Hallam, which came to be known as the American Company; it was organized like every 18th-century European rep company, and enjoyed a virtual monopoly along our Eastern seaboard for 40 years until it finally took up residence at the Park Theatre in New York.

During the late 18th century, the Federal Street Theatre in Boston and the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia became the American Company’s fierce rivals. In Virginia, Thomas Wade West operated a circuit called the Virginia company that lasted for 20 years. In Rhode Island, a courageous actor-manager named Joseph Harper established and operated theatres in Providence and Newport despite tough and stubborn Puritan opposition.

All of these theatres not only (to use Mr. Zeisler’s phrase) sheltered and nurtured their actors, they also gave our first truly professional musicians and dancers a home, because the 18th-century American theatres housed all of the performing arts.

The tradition of theatres with a permanent repertory company was firmly established by the beginning of the 19th century, and prevailed for a hundred years, until it was eventually supplanted for the most part by the long-run single production upon which the Broadway theatre is based.

The tradition, then, for the “American connection” of which Mr. Zeisler writes already exists. We have only to look at our early history to discover it.

Geddeth Smith
New York City

Turn About’s Fair Play

Your piece about American theatre in the U.S.S.R. (“From Broadway to Gorky Street,” Dec. ’84) left something very important out: It did not mention that, while the U.S.S.R. quite liberally shows U.S. plays, the U.S. shows almost no contemporary Soviet plays!

Felix G. Arnstein
West Orange, N.J.