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PAR TIS
AN
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problems, the psychodramatist neglects to confront the difficult, often
insoluble problems of the world beyond the home; while the self
is
under careful scrutiny, the society in which that self is defined is
conspicuously absent-no doubt carried off, as in
].E.,
by an off–
stage explosion of the hydrogen bomb. In other words, by employing
Freudian depth techniques, the psychodramatist manages to ignore
Freud's wider insight that the demands of the individual and of the
culture are often in conflict.
The missing society, of course, is never too far away: part of
it remains where it has always been, in the orchestra and mezzanine
of the theater. I think we may conclude that the playwright's silence
about society is partly due to his reluctance to probe the audience in
any painful or tender areas. It is no accident that the only social
manifestations touched on in this drama are anti-Semitism and racial
intolerance, for these are prejudices from which the suburban spec–
tator believes himself free (no dramatist, including Lorraine Hans–
berry, has ever risked failure by questioning this belief). But more
than this, the psychodrama capitulates to the spectator by describing
life the way he likes to see it, not the way it is. With adjustment and
maturity the ideal goals of the drama, the emphasis shifts to the
spectator's theories rather than his actions, while limited and medio–
cre aspirations are elevated to the position of sublime epiphanies. The
psychodramatic hero begins at a point of understanding some distance
below the understanding of the spectator. His final revelation brings
him just up to the spectator's level, and the audience can then leave
the theater in a perfect orgy of togetherness and self-congratulation.
Mirror Talk in Times Square
All these new forms indicate that Broadway, despite its new in–
novations,
is
still producing an art of appeasement, the difference
being that a new kind of audience is now being appeased. The new
American drama is certainly superior to the drama of the 'forties,
but, after all, this period was one of the dreariest in memory. Com–
pared with the 'thirties, contemporary forms seem unusually narrow
and constricted. The tired businessman, for
all
his famous fatigue and
dedication to Philistia, at least had a theater which was various,
energetic, free from self-consciousness, and often highly enjoyable.
The suburban spectator, on the other hand, for all his cultural
as-
