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MARTIN DUBERMAN
by screaming denunciations at them and (although The Living Theater
is supposed to be deeply concerned with the Individual) by lumping
them all together as "white liberal motherfuckers." Rufus Collins, who
can yell louder and longer than any other member of the company,
really got his lungs going over the fact - not hitherto recognized as a
revolutionary grievance - that "Equity is trying to keep us out!" Judith
Malina then exemplified the troupe's intelligence by shouting almost
simultaneously the contradictory slogans, "Stop the killing!" and "Play
guerrilla warfare!"
As always, The Living Theater rigged the evening in such a way
that it would be able to view whatever happened as self-confirming.
Thus one member of the troupe was careful to justify all that he might
say by announcing, "The answers you hear are a reflection of
your
ques–
tions," while another cleverly insisted, "I am here to show the hysteria
of my mind; what are you going to do about it?" A few brave, naive
members of the audience tried to talk with individuals in the company,
mistakenly assuming that they were interested in dialogue. For their
pains one was called "Jew!" and another, the more all-encompassing
and now traditional "white motherfucker!" Once in a while I felt in
sympathy with the company's rage, because several members of the
audience managed to say quite incredibly stupid things. But The Living
Theater does have a way of bringing out the worst in everybody - not,
a~
they claim, to exorcise so much as to exascerbate.
The exhibitionists in the audience -like those in the company –
had a field day, though it was not clear in either case, what they had
to exhibit. By the end of the evening, a hundred or so people were
standing around on stage watching a few seminude couples have semi–
sex, apparently in the conviction that anything that takes place in a
group is ennobling. I, for one, was reminded of nothing so much as a
very bad party: poor ventilation, lousy music, ugly people, stupid talk.
A party, to be more precise, for sado-masochists.
But proof that the new theater is capable of producing significant
innovations can be, found in the work of The Open Theater.
The Open Theater offered two productions this season, Alfred
Jarry's
Ubu Cocu,
translated by Albert Bermel, and
The Serpent: A
Ceremony,
with "words and structure" by Jean-Claude van Itallie. The
first seemed to me an almost total failure, the second an almost total
success. Joseph Chaikin, the company's founder and guiding genius,
directed
The Serpent
but apparently had nothing to do witIi
Ubu Cocu
- and his presence or absence makes all the difference. Having seen
