Her marriage to Yang Congress outlawed strikes in industries vital to the war effort. John Fuegi, for example, is right that Shen Teh as a woman is “virtually a personification of feeling while Shui Ta as a man is made virtually a personification of reason or calculation.” But he’s right only up to a point because he doesn’t credit the play with pointing out and using that critical conclusion. Still, Shen Teh gives Wang her cart, one of the last things she owns, so that he can sell it and go to the doctor. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Shu Fu has been admiring Shen Teh and offers the use of some empty buildings to house her homeless guests. After Shen Teh discovers she is pregnant, she becomes concerned with her child’s survival and Shui Ta makes an extended appearance. Translated by Wendy Arons. Since that time, however, many critics have also found the play to be exceptionally long in performance, usually running about three to three and a half hours, which sometimes lessens its impact. The play first appeared in English as The Good Woman of Setzuan (1948; revised 1961) by Eric Bentley and has been translated as The Good Person of Sichuan (1990) by Michael Hofmann, and more recently as The Good Soul of Szechuan (2008) by David Harrower. In the same compact space, the play complicates its representation of love as an economic transaction, and of men’s commodification of women. The play presents a world in which love is always linked in some way to money. in that world. At the end of the play, they serve as magistrates in Shui Ta’s hearing over Shen Teh’s disappearance. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. this in the new production. But this gestus provokes a sense of lament and refusal because the song contains—and displays—the inadequacies of its own argument. We see a performance reenacted with a particular attitude—gloating amusement, like the attitude of fans recounting how their team routed another in a ball game. Her newfound wealth attracts many who want her help. At one level, of course, this is so much flirtatious banter. Wang hides, fearing their wrath. As her neighbours seek to take advantage of her generous nature and new-found fortune, Shen Te invents an alter ego: the ruthless Shui Ta. The major theme being that of survival in a world that is ruled not by goodness of character but by the evil and corruption of the society. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Shen Teh does not have the money, and it is only when she becomes Shui Ta that she can force a lesser fee on him.
Capitalism In Playwright Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person Of Szechwan. Yet there is not one instance of goodness rewarded in Good Person. The text assigns the song to the character Shen Teh, but, as Brecht has written, “When an actor sings, [s]he undergoes a change of function.” This is doubly true here.
Brecht was drawn to this device, no doubt, because it steadfastly requires complex seeing; the double character serves as a focal point for the heightened, self-conscious perception we must engage in the epic theater. But again, even at this curiously romantic moment, Brecht reminds us of the cousin not merely waiting in the wings, but lurking within the performer we hear speaking “in a deep voice.” What’s more, Shen Teh can mention getting rid of her zither as a humorous throw-away; to say that she will have nothing to do with a man requires heightened speech because, not only is her evident attraction for Yang Sun contradicting this pronouncement, but her impersonation of Shui Ta suggests that being rich necessitates having everything to do with a man, even if it’s one she embodies herself. Diamond offers the most sophisticated feminist reading of Brecht to date, but even she stops short of locating the gender-revealing V-effekt in Brecht’s plays. When creditors and beggars come into her shop, it is they who suggest making up a relative so that Shen Teh can put them off. The play was begun in 1938 but not completed until 1941, while the author was in exile in the United States. sought to achieve the same ebb and flow of sympathy and antipathy with many of his protagonists—Mother Courage as victim and villain, Galileo as scholar and cheat, Puntila as humanist and misanthrope, Azdak as wiseman and bum. To that end, Shui Ta is arrested. This book examines the Brechtian influence on Roger Planchon's three stagings of Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan (July 1954; October 1954; December 1958). Shen Teh is in her wedding dress. His best plays crystallize some aspects of the modern consciousness in new dramatic modes; his lesser ones are explicit, didactic, linear and relatively unresonant.”, In the late 1990s, many critics noted that American productions of The Good Person of Szechwan were being adapted to contemporary, familiar settings, World War II (1939-1945) ravaged Europe, and deeply affected life in the United States. Sun’s mother, Mrs. Yang, approaches her, because Sun needs 500 silver dollars to get a pilot’s job. How can we hold onto the belief that Shen Teh is kind and emotional because she is female when we are repeatedly reminded that she is Shui Ta? It’s no doubt possible that such an exercise could be used to reinforce notions of naturalized gender behavior—one can imagine an actor drawing the conclusion that his female colleague observes masculinity better than he does because it is so completely alien to her. First of all, it is clear that Shen Te’s love for Yang Sun, like her goodness in helping her neighbors, will, left unchecked, lead to financial ruin. But we see something more than one character changing into the costume of another. This principle, of course, is an underpinning of epic acting, which reverses the Stanislavskian process by which an actor builds action from character, proposing instead that the actor derive character from action—especially so that character can be shown to be a product of social forces. 190-96. (The mother pronounces pieties in basso profundo.). They give her money which she uses to start a tobacco shop. Brecht's famous parable, written in exile in 1939-41, shows that in an unjust society good can only survive by means of evil. Yang Sun comes to Shen Te’s shop and demands more money. Shui Ta’s actions ensure Shen Teh and her baby will survive, though Shen Teh might not be around as often as she would like. Shui Ta is running the shop when Yang Sun shows up. In a later scene, however, the situation becomes even clearer. “Theater Emory Pulls off Brecht with Bit of Verve,” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 20, 1992, p. D2. Cross is a writer specializing in modern drama. FURTHER READING As Good Person goes on, Shui Ta stays for longer and longer periods of time. But nearly everyone else fears Shui Ta and treats Shen Teh poorly, without much regard to her as a person. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/good-person-szechwan, "The Good Person of Szechwan When three gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person, they encounter Shen Teh, a goodhearted … Theme of the Gods II (piano w/strings) 5. Wang is the impoverished water seller who helps the gods when they first arrive in the city. One, as a reader/audience, feels sympathy for the characters, but not empathy. as the proverb has it: not for a handful of rice but for love!” In other words, sexual activity is acceptable only in connection with love, and neither love nor sex should have anything to do with money. The first English-language production of The Good Person of Szechwan in the United States took place in either Cleveland’s Eldred Theater or Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1948. The Essential Brecht, Hennessey & Ingalls, 1972, p. 133. Shu Fu does nothing to help the man he injured. That love nearly leads her to disaster. Shen Teh prepares to sell her business so she can pay back the carpet dealer. Now that the cold war is over, Communism can no longer serve as the great clobbering epithet for conveniently dismissing Brecht. He turns away with a soft laugh.” This is the only occasion when Shen Teh’s character so boldly peeps through the Shui Ta disguise, where we see Shen Teh acknowledge her performance by momentarily forgetting it. Shen Te's Pursuit of Self-Interest; Comparing Problematic Societies: The Good Person of Szechwan vs Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man On these occasions, the audience is informed of what is going to happen and the characters’ feelings about these events. Most important, the interlude substantiates, through the actor’s combined action of delivering a song and putting on a costume, the play’s elemental disjunction: one actor stirs both our empathy with Shen Teh and our As Shui Ta, Shen Te still trades in love. Bringing about a climate in which goodness can thrive requires a more fundamental change than acting can accomplish. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. He began writing plays as early as 1918 (Baal) and joined communist organizations in 1919. This plan, however, is short-lived. Kleber, Pia. Indeed, as Shui Ta, Shen Teh serves as her own pimp, becoming, as Brecht’s working notes put it, “both goods and salesperson.”. The Good Person of Szechwan (German: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, first translated less literally as The Good Man of Setzuan) is a play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau. ), that we appreciate the comic device of reversal, that we grasp the central contradiction to be expanded upon in the play—that one can’t be good without having means, and acquiring means prevents one from being good. Critics of the 1975-76 productions of the play at La Mama in New York City debated old questions, such as how important The Good Person of Szechwan was in Brecht’s canon. “Trying to Like Eric Bentley,” Saturday Review, January 5, 1957, p. 24. Even a prostitute’s customer, however, is likely to be paying, not only for sex, but also for some emotional intimacy and companionship, in other words, at least the illusion of love. Mrs. Shin has sold her shop to Shen Teh. We in the audience already know this; Yang Sun and his mother aren’t meant to—and don’t—understand what she means. There was much poverty and uncertainty as economic infrastructures were compromised. Once again, the double character ignites our dialectical attention, making us simultaneously more empathetic and more critical. But Brecht’s challenges to social arrangements come through epic process, not through traditional dramatic show-and-tell. As the play progresses, she finds herself slipping into this persona more often and for longer periods of time. Only through, “ONE WAY TO LOOK AT WHAT BRECHT REALLY THINKS OF THE GOOD IN GOOD PERSON IS TO EXAMINE WHO IS KIND TO SHEN TEH.”. This essay will use both words, but with the understanding that the division between them is necessarily artificial. Shu Fu, the barber, has enough money that he can leave Shen Teh a blank check for her charitable works. But most of the people whom she is trying to help take advantage of her generosity. Members of their extended family trickle in throughout the scene, taking advantage of Shen Teh’s goodness. Shen Teh declines to use it, but Shui Ta is not above taking advantage of the situation; he fills in an absurd amount, 10,000 silver dollars. The Good Person of Szechwan (1942. Schoeps, Karl H. Bertolt Brecht, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1977, pp. During his exile, Brecht lived in the United States and in various countries in Europe and continued to write. He wrote, “La Jolla Playhouse’s extraordinary synergy with Bertolt Brecht continues with this superlative presentation, with Lisa Peterson demonstrating why the playwright, directed properly, is timeless.” A 1999 production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival featured a different translation, but was similarly American in its feel. Several things are accomplished by this self-conscious action. she leaves the carpet dealer’s shop, Wang shows her his hand, which has been broken by the rich barber, Shu Fu. Theme of the Gods III (piano w/kendang) 9. The elderly couple were Shen Teh’s first landlords when she moved to the city from the countryside. Authors; Authors and affiliations; Ronald Speirs; Chapter. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. These caricatures, long elevated to the status of unshakable cliche, rely, as do many feminist quibbles with Brecht, on a simplification that culminates in smarmy certainty about the “Brechtian”—a grungy, grudging didacticism produced through a predictable set of stage effects (projected scene titles, bright lights, music hall band, scowling actors). Thus, the parable is distinguished from its theatrical cousins, allegory and symbolist drama, in which what is presented to the audience is meant to stand for something else (and which can easily slide into dreaded expressionism). The American language also reflects the connection between love and sex; today, the term “making love” is most often used as a euphemism for sex. Shin is not fond of Shui Ta, and seems to like Shen Teh more after meeting him. This essay provides a synopsis of, background information on, and critical reaction to The Good Person of Szechwan. The Good Person of Szechwan tells the story of Shen Teh (junior Deepti Ramakrishnan), a kindhearted but penniless prostitute who, after all else in her village have refused, agrees to take in three weary travelers (Carrie Lewis, Judith Lesser and Daniel Malmberg). Shui Ta/Shen Teh has repaid the carpet dealer and his wife, although they have already lost their shop. And it has done so for the same reason that, more generally, Brecht in America has been reduced to two solid misconceptions: that he didn’t want any emotion in the theater and that his plays fail because they don’t convert anyone to Communism (or communism). Worse, the freeloaders refuse to testify for Wang against Shu Fu, which prompts Shen Teh to declare, in verse, “Oh you wretched people! cast. It did not work, and he was drafted in 1918 at the end of World War I. Shen Te, now disguised as Shui Ta, agrees to sell her tobacco shop for three hundred silver dollars, knowing that in addition to losing the shop, she will be unable to repay the old woman, who cannot afford to lose the money. This is a critical biography of Brecht during his time in exile in the United States. Shen Teh is good not because she is female, but because it is her function in the parable to be The Good Person of Szechwan was first produced professionally in New York City in late 1956, shortly after Brecht’s death. These moments also underscore the themes of the play and give Brecht a forum to put forth his political, philosophical, and social ideas. Don Braunagel of Variety hit on one long-term issue with the production. Before the gods, who act as magistrates in the court, Shen Teh admits she is Shui Ta, and tells them it is next to impossible to be good and survive. At the wedding, Yang Sun complains to his mother that Shen Teh has asked for the 200 silver dollars back. The time of the play is not specified, in part because the play is a parable (a story which intends to teach a lesson). The only way to preserve her charitable ambitions and her family is to take on yet another identity. The parable allowed him to unravel complicated things. Eric Ting Eric is … The “Street Scene”-style performance by the freeloaders sharpens our awareness of this bind by placing before us our own emotional reactions to Shui Ta. In some sense, he practiced the association of a double character with the paradox of goodness in his satire on bourgeois morality, The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petit-Bourgeoisie (1933), a collaboration with Kurt Weill. You’re not going to cash it just because you might have to marry him? Walter Sokel calls these “split characters,” but they are more double than split, as we always experience one side of the character through the memory and expectation of the other. Out of generosity, they offer to lend her the 200 silver dollars against her stock, though they do not demand anything in writing. for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago. He served as an orderly in the military hospital in Augsburg. × Close Log In. But that’s not the case with epic acting, which demands that all aspects of character be shown “inquotations.” For, as Janelle Reinelt has argued, “The Alienation effect hollows out and denaturalizes behaviors which are actually socially constructed, enforced through power relations and the myopia which results from habitual positioning within them.” Applying this process specifically to gender, Elin Diamond points out, “by alienating (not simply rejecting) iconicity [the semiotic observation that the actor’s body resembles the character to which it refers], by foregrounding the expectation of resemblance, the ideology of gender is exposed and thrown back to the spectator.” As a result, “gender is exposed as a sexual costume, a sign of a role, not evidence of identity” and “the spectator is enabled to see a sign system as a sign system.” In sum, Diamond asserts, “Understanding gender as ideology—as a system of beliefs and behavior mapped across the bodies of females and males, which reinforces a social status quo—is to appreciate the continued timeliness of the Verfremdungseffekt.”. Wang tells the gods that he has seen Shen Teh in distress in a dream, but the gods are not sympathetic. Similarly, in scene five, right after “The Song of Defenselessness,” Shui Ta sits in the tobacco shop reading the paper. This is just what spectators of the lulling “Aristotelian” theater do, abandoning reason to the heedless, easily manipulated stirrings of the heart. But Shui Ta’s character, the familiar ruthless businessman, is completely believable (because it is so familiar). Theme of the Gods 3. Hewes argued, “there is much in it [his translation] that is awkward.... And lines that might have been funny in the original lose their humor....” Many scholars have commented on the inherent humor in Good Person. And at the same time she demonstrates how she performs another role, which parallels her pointed-to actorly effort: Shen Teh playing Shui Ta. Not work, and workers wanted higher wages he gets the police to arrest him and Shui Ta, not. 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