Exception And The Rule

The characters in Exception and the Ruleare named for their professions: Merchant, Guide, Judge, Inkeeper ... and Coolie.

"Coolie"?

Blame Eric Bentley, I suppose. I don't know the original German. But any way you slice it, "Coolie" is a tough bit to swallow. Especially in a play baldly written to be in defense of the underclass, like a Theatre Of The Oppressed written by the oppressor.

One of Brecht's Lehrstücke, this is a simple play, where politics and the Alienation Effect take center stage. How can I tell the Verfremdungseffekt is at work? Because a chorus of actors open and close the play telling us to "find it estranging even if not very strange." I suppose "subtlety" is not one of the charges often leveled against Brecht.

The Lehrstücke were never intended to be for a theater audience, never intended to be anything other than basic. I think there's an argument to be made that as much as Brecht loved "The Worker", he acted as so many socially active intelligentsia do and talked down to them as if they were children. As piece of mature theater, The Exception And The Rule is lacking in almost anything beyond historical significance.

I understand Brecht's place in the development of the modern theater: his influence is everywhere. So much of what we take for granted now is his legacy that we can barely recognize the theatrical conventions he was railing against. But even the theatre's greatest enfant terrible grows up eventually. How do you reconceptualize Brechtianism for today? Like Waiting For Lefty, what was once incendiary now seems dated, and the steadfast adherence to staging techniques that were once revolutionary only serves to ossify him more. I don't know that his classic alienation techniques work for any experienced theater audience anymore - they are old hat, and I imagine Brecht would shudder at the thought that his techniques have become theatrical Scared Writ, honored but no longer expanded upon.

We've reinvented Shakespeare again and again, and even Chekhov now is becoming fertile ground for reinterpretation. When do we free Brecht the dramatist from Brecht from the theorist, and allow him to expand beyond his time and place? Part of that will be the ability to realize what plays were written by which Brecht, and this is a case where the content is purely driven by theorist, except for a wrinkle in the resolution that points to the complexities the playwright will later grow into.