The Mahatma and the Clown

Recently I watched Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning film Gandhi, an epic film that (along with a phenomenal performance by Ben Kingsley in the title role) presents a great look at how the British Raj functioned in India, and how Gandhi's practice of nonviolent resistance helped to win Indian independence. The depiction of the 1919 Armitsar Massacre, when a British general ordered a brutal attack on unarmed civilians, is particularly relevant to our play. (You can watch the devastating clip on YouTube.)

The film also tipped me off to an interesting historical footnote:

In 1931, when Mahatma Gandhi traveled to London for a Round Table Conference on Indian Independence, he also met with cultural luminaries like George Bernard Shaw and Charlie Chaplin. Professor Madhu Dandawate spoke about the encounter between the political and spiritual leader of India and the world's most famous clown:

Gandhi went to see Charlie Chaplin in a small house in a slum district of London. After their meeting was over, Gandhi asked Charlie Chaplin: "Would you like to see the demonstration of our prayers?" He said: "There is no room for you." Gandhi said: "You sit on the sofa, we will sit down on the floor", and he offered the prayers, Charlie Chaplin wrote. "Gandhi and his men did not feel embarrassed to sit on the floor in front of me but I literally felt embarrassed to sit on the sofa and look down upon Gandhi and his colleagues."

Chaplin's son also wrote about the encounter in his biography of his father:

He [Charlie Chaplin] always felt that the degradation of the very poor is the cruelest of all suffering. I remember how horrified he was by the wretched poverty he saw in India... and how admiringly he spoke of Mahatma Gandhi, who joined with the outcasts when he could have lived a very comfortable life. Gandhi, he said, was not only one of the most brilliant men he'd ever met, but one of the most godlike as well...

Supposedly Gandhi had never seen any of Chaplin's films, but he agreed to meet with the film star when he learned of his humble upbringing in an impoverished section of London.

Performer + Role: Joel Grey in Cabaret

Here's a link to a video of Joel Grey in Cabaret performing "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes"--a great combination of the charming, the ridiculous, and (in the final punch line) the disturbing. The film, based on a Broadway musical, is set in Weimar Germany--the same era in which Brecht wrote Man Equals Man--and it borrows the performance styles of the era.

Like a Brechtian clown, Grey's EmCee does not have a realistic "character" with clear psychological motives; he is a performer who functions wholly within the world of the cabaret, and here he is "playing" a man who is in love with a gorilla. The line between performer (EmCee) and role (man in love with gorilla) is not entirely clear, and neither is the performer's attitude towards that role.

The potentially Brechtian result is that the audience cannot be sure whether this performance is anti-Semitic or a critique of anti-Semitic attitudes. They must wrestle with irony and ideological uncertainty, perhaps thinking about the issue in a new way.

Brecht Quote: Criteria for Judging Acting

Peter Lorre played Galy Gay in the 1931 Berlin production of Mann ist Mann. The critical response to Lorre's new style of acting was mixed, so Brecht defended the actor's choices in a letter to the Berliner Borsen-Courier, 8 March 1931. It contains some specific insights into Lorre's performance, as well as general methods of acting in Brecht's epic theater. Brecht contrasts "dramatic acting," which presumes a consistent character through a linear plot, with Lorre's desire to show a character constantly changing through a variety of different episodes.

A certain capacity for coherent and unhurried development of a leading part, such as distinguished the old kind of actor, now no longer matters so much. Against that, the epic actor may possibly need an even greater range than the old stars did, for he has to be able to show his character's coherence despite, or rather by means of, interruptions and jumps. [...]

The fact that at one point Lorre whitens his face (instead of allowing his acting to become more and more influenced by fear of death "from within himself") may at first sight seem to stamp him as an episodic actor, but it is really something quite different. To begin with, he is helping the playwright to make a point, though there is more to it than that of course. The character's development has been very carefully divided into four phases, for which four masks are employed--the packer's face, up to the trial; the "natural" face, up the his awakening after being shot; the "blank page," up to his reassembly after the funeral speech; final the soldier's face. [...]

As against the dramatic actor, who has his character established form the first and simply exposes it to the inclemencies of the world and the tragedy, the epic actor lets his character grow before the spectator's eyes out of the way in which he behaves. "This way of joining up," "this way of selling an elephant," "this way of conducting the case," do not altogether add up to a single unchangeable character but to one which changes all the time and becomes more and more clearly defined in course of "this way of changing."

Excerpted from "The Question of Criteria for Judging Acting" in Brecht on Theatre, translated by John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 53-57.

Karl Valentin: "The Charlie Chaplin of Germany"

Along with Charlie Chaplin, the other great performer who influenced Brecht in the 1920s was Karl Valentin. Valentin, frequently working with his partner Liesl Karlstadt, made his name as a comic cabaret performer in Munich (where you can now visit the Karl Valentin Museum). Known for his verbal wit, ironic social satire, and sense of the absurd, Valentin created a great impression on the young Brecht.

According to theater lore, when Valentin suggested to Brecht how to depict soldiers in battle, he planted the seed for Brecht's notions of Epic Theater. Walter Benjamin relates the story:

"Brecht in turn quoted the moment at which the idea of Epic Theater first came into his head. It happened at a rehearsal for the Munich production of Edward II (1924). The battle in the play is supposed to occupy the stage for three-quarters of an hour. Brecht couldn't stage-manage the soldiers, and neither could his production assistant. Finally he turned in despair to Karl Valentin, at that time one of his closest friends, who was attending the rehearsal, and asked him: 'Well, what is it? What's the truth about these soldiers? What about them?' Valentin: 'They're pale, they're scared, that's what!' The remark settled the issue, Brecht adding: 'They're tired.' Whereupon the soldiers' faces were thickly made up with chalk, and that was the day the production's style was determined."

The unrealistic, chalky whiteness of the soldiers' faces is often cited as one of Brecht's first uses of an "alienation effect."

Valentin also starred in a short silent film written by Brecht: Mysteries of a Barbershop (1923). [I haven't been able to turn up a copy of this film, but I'll keep at it...]

There are a few clips of Valentin and Karlstadt available on YouTube, but they are rather poor quality (and aren't translated), and I don't think they capture the more ironic tone of their 1920s cabaret acts. These photographs, however, may give some idea of Valentin's stage personae during those years.

A Man's A Man = Man Is Man (1962-1963)

According to the Internet Off-Broadway Database, off-Broadway produced TWO different versions of Man Equals Man in the 1962-1963 season. It seems that both of them were quite successful, running from September to February/March, and an actor in each production received an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance.

A Man's A Man
New Repertory Theatre
Directed by John Hancock
John Hefferman as Galy Gay
Olympia Dukakis as Widow Begbick*
* = 1963 Obie Award for Distinguished Performance

Man Is Man
The Living Theatre
Directed by Julian Beck
Joseph Chaikin as Galy Gay*
Judith Malina as Widow Begbick
* = 1963 Obie Award for Distinguished Performance

Olympia Dukakis has had a long career as an actress on both stage and screen, winning the 1987 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Moonstruck.

The Living Theatre, founded by Julian Beck and Judith Malina (pictured below), is one of the most important counter-cultural theater troupes in American history. Their politics and their aesthetics were deeply influenced by both Brecht and Artaud. To learn more about their long and dramatic career (barricade the theater! arrests! exile!), I recommend the excellent documentary, Signals Through the Flames.


Joseph Chaikin (pictured below) was a brilliant director who founded The Open Theater, a highly influential experimental theater that drew inspiration from the "poor theater" of Grotowski.

Peter Lorre as Galy Gay (1931)

Peter Lorre, who would star in films ranging from Fritz Lang's M and the "Mr. Moto" series to Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, played Galy Gay in the 1931 Berlin production of Man Equals Man.


Lorre as Galy Gay is second from the left. The production was designed by Brecht's frequent collaborator, Caspar Neher.

In discussing Lorre's relationship with Brecht, biographer Stephen D. Youngkin says:

Lorre saw Brecht as one of the two most important writers in the 20th century, the other being James Joyce. This was the pivotal relationship in his life. He not only referred to Brecht as his best friend, but as himself as one of Brecht's actors. Without understanding Brecht, you can't understand Lorre. Some people have found Brechtian elements in Lorre's acting style. Well, I guess you can find anything if you look hard enough. It's a chicken and the egg argument.

When I first interviewed Brecht scholar Eric Bentley, I naturally asked about Brecht's influence on Lorre. He told me it was actually the other way around, that Brecht saw actors he liked, things they were doing – in Lorre's case, the clashing of opposite characteristics, doing two things at once – and formed those aspects into a new style of acting. Lorre was just doing what he had always been doing. It was an incredibly adaptable form. The same style could easily be plugged into different holes and given a new name, a new theoretical label. So, in a sense, Lorre's performances were Brechtian by default, before we – or he – knew the use of the word.

Pop Culture Reference: Peter Lorre's distinctive look and vocal style are still imitated more than 40 years after his death. "The Maggot" in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a direct impersonation of Lorre.