The Brechtian Emotions of Caryl Churchill: Examining Mad Forest

1British playwright, Caryl Churchill, uses the theatre as a medium by which literature may take advantage of not only the textual word, but a performed language as well. When considering the literature of a particular collective conscious—in this case contemporary Britain—scholars should not overlook the performed literature of the time as it may illustrate socio-political and cultural issues within an immediate historical context. Within Churchill’s corpus, the modernism of Bertolt Brecht collides with the postmodern sensibilities of the latter half of the twentieth century. The principal body of her work follows the precepts of Brecht, whose epic theatre seeks to eliminate illusions of emotional catharsis, leaving objectivity to the spectator. In 1990, Churchill, accompanied by students from a London theatre school, visited Romania only months after Ceauşsescu had been deposed. She states that ‘emotions in Bucharest were still raw.’1 Sifting through these emotions resulted in her play, Mad Forest. While the very nature of Brechtian theatre seems to leave little room for emotion, Churchill infuses individual vignettes of her play with a startling combination of deep emotion and serious commentary before carrying the audience back to the role of distanced spectator.

2By analyzing the manner in which Brechtian techniques and emotional response are successfully manipulated by this British playwright, the raw emotions of such an historical event and the need to maintain objectivity are both poignantly illustrated in Mad Forest. A brief summary of Brecht’s theories will identify his methods for alienating the spectator from emotional response. His impact on mid-century British theatre was considerable, and Caryl Churchill was inspired and influenced by these techniques of objectivity and political conviction. A close analysis of Mad Forest reveals Brechtian implications through both the text and implied performance.

3In his ‘Conversation about being Forced into Empathy,’ Brecht cites Horace’s Ars Poetica:

You must enchant and conquer the reader’s breast.
One laughs with those who laugh and lets tears flow
When others are sad. So, if you want me to weep
First show me your own eye full of tears.2

4To this call for cathartic empathy, Brecht responds, ‘I must say there is only one word for such an operation: barbaric.’ (270) For Brecht, the issue was always one of empathy more than mere emotion, with the goal of freeing both audience and actor from the constraints of exploitative and false identification with well-constructed illusions. Only from this point of liberty could the spectator then objectively question the motives of the narrative. As Martin Esslin states, ‘Brecht despised any attempt to try to blur the distinction between art and reality.’3 Three factors of Brecht’s theories of theatre influence contemporary playwrights, like Caryl Churchill, who demand an objective and impersonal gaze from their audiences: the V-effect, historicization, and gestus.

5Almost qualifying as a theorist who wrote plays around his ideas, Brecht is most readily recognized for his Verfremdungseffekt, a technique built into the text designed to hinder the spectator from identifying with the characters and narrative on stage and indulging in emotional gratification. Often translated as ‘alienation effect,’ rather than truly alienate, the V-effect is more an attempt to make the familiar unfamiliar; in the space between what was known and what is new is room for objective discourse, typically socio-political in nature.4 By ‘defamiliarizing’ a word or an idea, the spectator is now able to see it and consider it, instead of blithely accepting its use or meaning.5 The aim is always objectivity, avoiding emotional attachment—to transmute Aristotle’s tenets of ‘teach and please’ to ‘teach and inquire,’ in an entertaining way. Explains Brecht, ‘A representation that alienates is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar.’ (Brecht 192) The methods by which V-effect unsettles the spectator’s emotional connexion to the narrative can be textual, such as titling the scenes or incorporating songs that comment on the play rather than further the storyline, or performative, such as seating actors on stage even when not involved in the scene or exposing the mechanics of the set.

6Frequently, the structure of the playtext itself helps to define a work as Brechtian. A traditional play is designed upon a linear plot, wherein the audience’s emotional sensibilities are guided along from introduction to cathartic climax and resolute end. Brecht eschewed this form as ‘[t]he linear plot relied on suspense and therefore enlisted the desire of the spectator to find out what happened next rather than be astonished at what they were seeing right now.’6 Moreover, by using short scenes with palpable breaks and shifts between them, the audience has less of an opportunity to fall into sentimental stupor. He refers to these short scenes as ‘knotted’ episodes, a device also characteristic of Churchill’s work. (Brecht 201)

7‘We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.’ (Brecht 190) Brecht’s historicization is key in creating an atmosphere where socio-political concerns are unavoidable. Instead of glossing over history and constructing a play that represents the past as being so similar to the present socio-culture that shifts and changes are erased, texts should rely on those differences to keep the spectator impersonally engaged and question the choices that produce the unfamiliar relationships and attitudes. Elin Diamond comments, ‘To historicize is to bring into view the material conditions and human contradictions within a play’s events, enabling the spectator to understand those events as the result of specific conditions and choices which might have been changed, which have changed, which the spectator might change.’7 As in Churchill’s Mad Forest, even the recent history deserves representation of its own period as separate from the present so that questions surrounding its impermanence may be raised, and ‘how’ can shift to ‘why.’

8Another central element of Brechtian theatre may be described as a performative triangle existing between the play, the actor (s), and the audience. Brecht was quite concerned not only with possible empathetic attachment to the characters by the spectator, but by the actor as well. ‘One has to admire the theatre folk who, with so feeble a reflection of the real world, can move the feelings of their audience so much more strongly than does the real world itself.’ (Brecht 187) If the actor believed him/herself to have ‘become’ the character, ‘feeling’ the imagined emotions, then it naturally followed that the audience would empathetically identify. Therefore, he called upon performers to make a concerted effort to separate themselves, to exhibit their own objectivity, and to be aware of watching and being watched so that the audience never has the opportunity to mistake the actor for the character and could then focus on the discourse of the text. The performers should represent the ideas of the play, not offer a representation of an illusory life. Brecht submitted a caveat: ‘this does not mean that if [the actor] is playing passionate parts he must himself remain cold. It is only that his feelings must not at bottom be those of the character, so that the audience’s may not at bottom be those of the character either.’ (Brecht 1934) So he does not suggest that the work become devoid of entertainment and expressed emotion, but the association built between play, actor, and audience be structured in a manner that alienates or marginalises empathy. Esslin comments, however, that this triangular relationship and the acting techniques suggested are entirely unnecessary if irony is infused into the playtext itself, because a well-crafted text should sufficiently serve as a dividing force.8 (Esslin 142) Churchill’s structure to Mad Forest may prove this point, as she particularly emphasizes an internal sense of gaze which would affect the audience more insidiously than actors being overtly demonstrative, and frankly, patronizing, in showing that they are just pretending.

9In a climate marked by political flux, social progress, and searching for a new (non-empirical) national identity, Caryl Churchill began writing plays, with her first major production, Owners, for the Royal Court Theatre in 1972. At present, Churchill has had produced more than twenty full length stage plays, most notably, and most frequently analyzed, Cloud Nine, Top Girls, A Mouthful of Birds, and the more recent Blue Heart. Her general themes relate to socialist politics and feminism, both labels she would avoid while declaring, ‘[I know] quite well what kind of society I would like: decentralized, nonauthoritarian, communist, nonsexist—a society in which people can be in touch with their feelings, and in control of their lives. But it always sounds both ridiculous and unattainable when you put it in words.’ (Reinelt 190) However, if Churchill’s politics alone defined her playwrighting, she perhaps would not have the body of work that continues to be produced.

10Experimentations with structure, temporal space, and language are all indicative of Churchill’s work. Many of her early plays grew from collaborative work with theatre companies in London. These workshop and improvisation sessions instilled a sense of creating new territories with each play, so Churchill has not been bound by any style of structure, though most of her plays do not conform to tidy two acts plus intermission. As playwright Rebecca Prichard asserts: ‘You can say a lot through the structure of the play... it frees you to stay with your characters without getting bogged down in didactic dialogue.’9 So whether the play features music hall songs, confrontational monologues, or ‘knotted together’ episodes, the structure is almost a character in itself, and never arbitrary.

11Couple innovative textual structure with altered temporal space and the audience is clearly being asked to challenge the process of accepting history and truth in commonly received terms. While the outline of the playtexts seems to adhere to before, during, and after key events, the actual shifts in temporal setting are more complex. For example, the first half of her 1979 play Cloud Nine takes place in colonial Africa during Queen Victoria’s reign. In the second half, the characters have aged only twenty-five years; however, the setting is contemporary London. To shift in temporal space in this manner (although this may be her most exaggerated) is to explore the possibilities of how one time frame directly affects another—in the case of Cloud Nine, how Victorian morality still lingers in contemporary Britain. Similarly, Churchill reactivates moments in history by using ‘theatrical representation as a metaphor for how historical truth is produced.’ (Diamond 1997, 99) Intrigued by how received history is enforced by textbooks into accepted truths, she revisits periods of socio-political oppression to rewrite the perspective and question inevitable fates, whether the last major witch hunts in Britain in Vinegar Tom, the women labourers of East Anglia in Fen, or the citizens of Romania in Mad Forest.

12In the spring of 1990, only months after the fall of the Ceauşsescu regime, Caryl Churchill and director Mark Wing-Davey were met in Bucharest by a dozen young actors from London’s Central School of Drama. They remained in Romania’s capital for several intense weeks, working with students there and speaking with Romanians about the radical moments in history which were enveloping their lives. Her play, Mad Forest, is the culmination of the weeks of research and workshopping of ideas with the actors, and attempts to give an objective voice to the tumultuous transformation of lives before, during, and after the revolution. As her Painter states in Part Two of the play: ‘It’s enough to see one person dead to get empty of feeling.’10 (128) Churchill’s task was to recreate just enough of that feeling.

13The narrative of Mad Forest follows the intersecting lives of two families in Bucharest, separated by economic circumstances and muddled by the country’s political ideology. The Vladu family principally represents labourers and falls under the very watchful eye of Ceauşsescu’s Securitate because one of the daughters wishes to marry an American. The Antonescus are professionals, the ‘intellectual class,’ concerned that their only child, son Radu, wishes to marry the other Vladu daughter which would politically complicate their relatively comfortable existence. When the violent events of December 22 erupt, barriers shift, new questions go unanswered, and the families find themselves linked in the confusions.

14As is typical for Churchill, the Brechtian-inspired structure of the play is composed of many short episodes within the three parts of the text, with each episode introduced by a title—first spoken in Romanian, then translated into English and repeated in Romanian, much as a tourist would speak from a phrase book. The effect is twofold: most obviously, it creates that Brechtian distance, encouraging the spectator objectively to relate the title’s phrase as commentary to the scene and effectively revealing the ‘knotting together’ of the text; it also illustrates issues of communication that recur throughout the play. Every thought, every feeling is translated through various filters—generational, political, economic, spiritual—and, in a larger sense, through this very guidebook phraseology since the playwright and production gathered their information in a foreign language. The play’s three parts are in keeping with Churchill’s preferred before-during-after temporal outline. Part One is before the revolution, that is to say, during Ceauşsescu’s regime. Part Two is a collection of overlapping monologues, serving in a documentary form of ‘eyewitness’ accounts of the events surrounding the December revolution. Part Three returns to the two families and the abrupt changes they must now face with a government in flux after the execution of the Ceauşsescus. Throughout, communication and how it does, or does not, function is the connective thread amidst the ebb and flow of confusion.

15The audience is introduced to the Vladu family in the first episode, marked by nonverbal action. Immediately establishing the Brechtian structure to the play, Churchill uses this scene to distance the spectator by defamiliarizing the form of communication and incorporating Brecht’s gestus—as will be illustrated. In this scene, the Vladu parents are engaged in an argument, hidden from listening ears, both the audience members and eavesdropping Securitate, by a blaring radio. The daughters interrupt this dumb-show, presenting four precious eggs for the family. Still suffering in his circumstance (as yet unknown to the spectator), Bogdan, the father, lashes out:

BOGDAN picks up an egg and breaks it on the floor.
IRINA [the wife] gathers the other eggs to safety.
LUCIA and FLORINA [the daughters] keep still.
IRINA turns the radio up loud and is about to say something.
BODGAN turns the radio completely off.
IRINA ignores him and smokes.
FLORINA gets a cup and spoon and scrapes up what she can of the egg off the floor.
LUCIA keeps still. (108)

16There ends the scene. The act of scraping a broken egg off of the floor is an example of gestus—a small, single action that represents a political whole, in this case, the performed act of needing to save a spilt egg demonstrates the class struggle the family confronts, while breaking it illustrates both the frustration with the oppressive state and the ease with which to punish its citizens. Scholar Janelle Reinelt recounts having seen a production of Mad Forest with Berkeley Rep in California. The dropping egg evoked a gasp from the audience.11 Such a reaction demonstrates the ability of Churchill to manipulate the emotion and astonishment of the moment while preventing the spectator from over-identifying with the characters, for this brief scene has ended and space for personal engagement has evaporated. Nevertheless, the taste of that emotion persists.

17The Antonescus, with greater comfort in their surroundings, are more verbal but no more emotional. Wife Flavia shares more with the ghost of her Grandmother than with her own living husband or son:

FLAVIA: But nobody’s living. You can’t blame me.
GRANDMOTHER: You’d better start.
FLAVIA: No, Granny, it would hurt.
GRANDMOTHER: Well.
Silence. (120)

18That following ‘Silence’ is important because the lack of speech as it recurs throughout the play is just as ‘heard’ as the conversation. Many scenes contain no dialogue whatsoever. These silences function much as rests do in music—they allow the notes that came before to linger without permitting the audience to disengage. In them is the created space for impersonal questioning and discourse between the spectator and the play.

19Suppressed emotions and dulled senses are common, even linked, to all characters in one form or another. Lucia Vladu wants to marry an American. This decision affects her parents in their jobs, her sister’s relationship with Radu Antonescu, the Antonescu’s view of how independently expressive they should be, and the Hungarian, Iano, with whom Lucia is secretly involved. Part One closes with Lucia’s formal, and joyless, marriage to her American.

20The audience learns over the course of Part One that these characters are not permitted to express their individual natures and emotions. Under Ceauşsescu’s regime, the individual was subjected to constant surveillance, the knowledge of which led to loud radios that might deter Romania’s ‘Big Brother’ and squelched feelings which might otherwise lead to revolt. ‘To be identified in this society is to be under even closer scrutiny.’12 The Vladu family is obviously under such scrutiny, but it doesn’t take much to draw damaging attention. When queueing for meat, Radu Antonescu ‘whispers loudly,’ ‘Down with Ceauşsescu.’ (111) The reaction around him is a subtle acknowledgment by pretending they have not heard. The woman in front of him begins to look but thinks better of it. The man behind him steps slightly away. ‘Two people towards the head of the queue look round and RADU looks round as if wondering who spoke. They go on queueing.’ (111) No one has given them permission to feel, so even this moment of defiance is met with a self-reflexive impersonality. Again, Churchill uses silence as communication between the play and the audience, creating space for objective discourse.

21Part Two is a departure from the lives of these families. Churchill creates a documentary-like section with everyday Romanians—students, painters, a bulldozer driver, a member of the Securitate—recounting their activities during the days of Revolution. The line of emotional response is much longer than in Part One, but there remains a disconnect. The stage directions instruct: ‘Each behaves as if the others are not there and each is the only one telling what happened.’ (123) As these stories progress, it becomes clear that the witnesses have seen little for themselves, but that is not the point; at issue stands the idea of release. The confusion that settles in about what happened to whom and when is less important during the experience of feeling something, anything. As the Translator relates: ‘It was a wonderful feeling to say those words, Jos Ceauşsescu [Down with Ceauşsescu]... There were no words in Romanian or English for how happy I was.’ (130-1) This stands in stark contrast to the loud whispers of Radu’s that were pointedly ignored in Part One. Likewise, the audience is also given permission to invest emotionally, only slightly mediated by the woven structure of stories intertwining. The unexpected member of this group is the Painter, an artist and intellectual, the only presently staged character to have been personally involved in the revolt. His are the comments of objective response: ‘I was curious to know what I would feel in difficult moments.... I felt empty;’ (134) and closing this part of the play: ‘Painting doesn’t mean just describing, it’s a state of spirit. I didn’t want to paint for a long time then.’ (136)

22After the Revolution, the families are unsure of their shifting roles, unsure of where boundaries remain, and unsure of what exactly happened on December 22. Repeating images from Part One, such as preparing for another wedding, this time Florina and Radu’s, accentuates the differences between before and after the overthrow. Episodes are longer, and silences are few. Instead, there is an inundation of questions.

PATIENT: Did we have a revolution or a putsch? Who was shooting on the 21st? And who was shooting on the 22nd? Was the army shooting on the 21st or did some shoot and some not shoot or were the Securitate disguised in army uniforms?... How could they publish a newspaper so soon? Why did no one turn off the power at the TV? Who got Ceauşsescu to call everyone together? And is he really dead? (142-3)

23Communication is no more facile, in fact it represents the playground in which confusion is exacerbated. This is deftly illustrated in the final scene of the play. Churchill manipulates the utterance to demonstrate that people take care to alienate one another. During the celebration after the wedding, relationships fragment until no one is listening to anyone else, lines overlap, and the entire episode is conducted in Romanian. The spectator is being intentionally shut out of the conversation and sent home with unanswered questions and unreleased feelings.

24Due to Churchill’s carefully Brechtian inspired structure, the audience is kept from personally identifying with the plight of confusion dealt to these characters. Nevertheless, her talent is apparent by the intricate manner in which she constructs the episodes so that emotion is allowed. As Austin E. Quigley suggests, ‘Churchill seems inclined to go further than Brecht in giving priority to individual experience,’ therefore, emotion expressed, which is unique to every person in every reaction, must not be denied.13 The issue is recognizing this playwright’s ability to offer both emotion and objectivity to the spectator so that any empathy felt is tempered by impersonal observation. As Mad Forest demonstrates, the linear plot that Brecht shuns is modified by Churchill, altered into a series of episodes that may produce a linear arc within their own individual space. Therefore, while the whole of the play may not carry an empathy in which the audience can drown, the short scenes do but are then separated by Brechtianesque breaks. Caryl Churchill navigates the juxtaposition between emotion and impersonality by manipulating the very concept of communication, because if communication, utterance itself is defamiliarized through a foreign language, or overlapping speech, or suppression and silence, emotion can take place either without being recognized or disappear altogether, thereby keeping its nature impersonal to the spectator, and the spectator objective regarding the narrative.

25Gertrude Stein once said, ‘The thing seen and the thing felt about the thing seen not going on at the same tempo is what makes being at the theater something that makes anybody nervous.’ (Diamond 1997, 143) A theatre audience expects to be touched emotionally—they are prepared for it the moment that they take their seats. At the same time, however, they are vulnerable. Caryl Churchill takes advantage of this unprotected moment. In her thirty years of writing for the stage, she has emphasized a desire to experiment with form and push the limits of language in order to call into question the socio-cultural environment in which we live. These ideas have been incorporated into new and more challenging dramatic structures at every opportunity. No critic is able to bestow any single label on her. Affected by Brecht, but also others such as Foucault, Euripides, and Pinter, the content of her plays are duly shaped by her astounding command of words. Language—read, spoken, or performed—is only one tool of her communication. Mad Forest illustrates the intersection of language, structure, and emotion in an historicized theatrical reality. Caryl Churchill confessed, ‘Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions.’14 The questions she asks require from her audiences both emotion and objectivity in order to struggle toward conclusions.