Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Maria
Fashioning the Body Paper #2
Scott Turner Schofield and Brecht’s Notes on Theatre

    In this paper I want to make the argument that many aspects of Scott Turner Schofield’s Play, “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps” were in line with the qualifications Brecht laid out describing his idea of the epic theatre. The play was effective in the ways that Brecht talked about in terms of inciting critical response and helping the audience to see a clearer version of reality by including its complexity. However, at the end of this paper I come to some places where I think the play might not so easily fit on either side of the epic theatre/traditional theatre binary from Brecht’s description. Maybe it’s just an effect of taking this class, but it appeals to me a little bit that Scott’s play resists (or transcends?) this binary in some ways and isn’t easily categorized.
    First I want to examine the story of the play. In his notes, Brecht says that the regular theatre has plot whereas the epic theatre has narrative. He also says that traditional theatre’s story has a linear development whereas the epic theatre moves in curves. Lastly, he talks about how traditional theatre follows an evolutionary development, whereas epic theatre jumps. Each of these statements has to do with the structure that the story, or more appropriately to use his terms, narrative, takes in the theatrical work.
The structure of telling stories which Scott used in his performance fit very well in with the idea of montage or jumping around. Not only were the stories separate montages but there was also at least an implied element of randomness in their order (and possibly even to which stories he got to telling). Scott literally asked us, in the between the stories, which ones we wanted to hear next. Placing the scenes of the play in a random order seems to defy any traditional linear structure or an order which uses them portray growth or evolution. Brecht never said scenes needed to be random in order to produce a work of epic theatre, but the effect is very in line with the epic theatre. Also it promotes the idea of being able to let the scenes stand for themselves. Instead of just being parts of a larger plot they are worthy of being individually included for their complexity within themselves.
     To use an example from Brecht, I feel like each of the scenes in the Good Person of Schezwan illuminated different aspects of Shen Teh’s effort to be a good person but there was not necessarily one point which was the most important. The final scene in the courtroom did not seem more dramatic or intense then some of the other scenes in the play which seemed equally problematic. Even the wedding scene, which might have been the most emphasized scene in other dramatic works, didn’t carry especially more weight to me than the part in the beginning when she had all of the people living in her house, or the scene where her friend burned his hand. However, each of these scenes seemed to have slightly different things to say. Likewise in Scott Turner Schofield’s performance I didn’t feel like there was one story which could easily be pointed to as the most important or moving story for every person in that room and as the climax of the play. They all illuminated different aspects of his experience and described his points more fully.
    In looking at the form of the work I think it’s also important to note the pieces which were not random, the introductions in the beginning and also the story at the end about the kids that he babysat for. It also had the form of having many small narratives within a larger narrative or idea (telling the stories inside the fort). The larger narrative, including the parts where he addressed the audience in between, was slightly difficult to classify and therefore harder measure against a Brecht’s binary between epic and traditional theatre. Was this part still theatre? We did literally build a makeshift kind of a fort, so in reality we were talking with Scott underneath it. Scott seemed to be addressing us in his real life persona in the present time. But these interactions were definitely scripted at parts and at least planned at others, so it must have been theatre to some extent. I think questions about the form of the play, Scott’s character as himself playing himself, and the role of the audience all definitely have relevance to what Brecht was talking about in his work and raise some interesting questions about how we define these types of theatrical moves and whether we can classify them as Brechtian or not.
    Brecht also differentiates between traditional theatre with its “eyes on the finish” versus epic theatre with its “eyes on the course”. He says on page 193 of his Notes on Theatre that the epic theatre “regards nothing as existing except in so far as it changes, in other words it is in disharmony with itself.” I agree that as a general statement about life, Brecht’s concept of nothing existing “in so far as it changes” is a pretty accurate description. Everything in life changes. It’s interesting to contrast this idea of change which Brecht says in inherent in the epic theatre with the concepts of growth and evolutionary determinism mentioned earlier as characteristic of the traditional theatrical model. If Brecht is saying characters and stories don’t evolve or grow by the end. Certainly, he also says that we are meant to learn something from it. Maybe the problem with the idea of growth or evolution is that many people interpret those phrases to be aimed at something. Some right answer maybe? While Scott does project that it is important for people to find their true selves he doesn’t advocate any particular direction, (he even gives shout outs a couple of times to queer femmes who lean closer to the feminine side of the binary), and leaves some actually comfortable room for ambiguity. Perhaps it is those moments where we feel a sense of the disharmony to which Brecht refers which are our greatest clues to the directions we should take in order to be happy (for the moment). Maybe they should be treasured, because without them we might not have anywhere to go (besides a generic so-called right answer, which may not necessarily fit). In fact it is the moments when Scott shares his own disharmony with his body with the way he is socially perceived in the world, and with his identity, which are some of the most insightful, probably more so than any tidy “right answer”.
This talk about right answers leads us to another binary distinction Brecht makes when he says that the traditional theatre presents the characters as alterable instead of unchanging. People change and we also can change the paths we take and possibly the conditions in which we live. Scott showed us many ways in which this was possible from changing the chemistry of our bodies (like by taking hormones) to how we interact socially to how we view things by offering his unique insights, experiments and experiences. Also in the question and answer section at the end he mentioned that not all of the stories are written yet so even the piece itself can change along with Scott as he creates it as he goes.
    If we acknowledge the fact that the world and all of us change it puts us in a better mindset for trying to inspect and understand the reality of our time as opposed to a more generalized (and incomplete and therefore false) sense of reality. How I conceive of Brecht’s ideas about reality and the theatre’s function have a lot to do with how I understand his ideas about pleasure. Brecht says “nothing in the world needs less justification than pleasure” on page 181, he no doubt believes that theatre should be entertaining but he also distinguishes on the same page between weaker (simpler) and stronger (more complex) pleasures created by theatre. On page 183 he says, “It is the inaccurate way in which happenings between human beings are represented that restricts our pleasure in the theatre.” Despite it’s lack of a clear “right answer” such as the binary system of understanding gender, representations of individuality of gender in Scott’s work may resonate with many in the audience as the most accurate representation of gender seen in many works because it doesn’t place gender into a neat binary like it is so often represented and shows the reality of the complexity of the issue.
    Bearing this in mind looking at the table Brecht gives as a model for breaking down his theory it’s kind of charming that at points I have trouble neatly comparing “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps” to some of the binaries that Brecht sets up in describing the traditional versus the epic theatre. For me things become a little murkier when it comes to questions of reality, or truth versus fiction in the work, and also the roles of both Scott and the audience.
    I think it’s interesting and relevant to note the Scott is playing himself especially since Brecht’s comments that the actor should distance himself a bit from the character he plays distance in order to maintain an effect of alienation which causes us to be more critical. I think several aspects of Scott’s approach contribute to such an effect. Although Scott is playing himself he approaches us in a conversational way. This structure reconfirms that as a spectator you are not the same person as him and keeps you from getting so swept up in the character that you lose all sense of yourself and forget you are watching a play. Also using a conversational style of addressing the audience also suggests a structure where we could potentially answer back which aids the idea that we are capable of creating our own thoughts and critical responses to the work.
However, I would be lying if I didn’t say that at times during the stories I felt a completely swept up in Scott’s character. While I certainly had a rational and critical response to what happened in each of the scenes, I want to resist the binary that says I could not do this without feeling or identifying with him at least a little bit. I couldn’t find this quote when I looked again for it in the text but I know somewhere it said that the alienation effect made you cry when the characters laughed and laugh when they cried. I cried when Scott cried, and I laughed when he laughed. Scott also acted the stories out realistically. Of course he was playing himself, but instead of telling the stories in a detached, nostalgic way, he reenacted them fully as though they were happening precisely to him in the given moment. The points in between when he broke out of them and addressed the audience again provided little anchor points of alienation where we were invited to maybe process what just been shown and remember our distanced roles as audience members before we were swept up again in the next story.
    Also, there is the question of how Scott is playing himself when he is acting as himself addressing the audience in present time. No doubt some of this is scripted. But is our whole hearted belief that we are seeing “the real Scott” consistent with Brecht’s ideas about theatre and how an actor should act? Especially when the “real” Scott’s lines are rehearsed? At one point he even takes off all his clothes and stands completely naked. This could be argued is the ultimate example of a lack of costume. But then so much of the piece could be seen as about some sort of performance. Sometimes the “real” Scott is somewhat at odds with the body he is showing us. He alters it. This does go along with Brecht’s ideas are alterable. He dresses differently. He talks about how people used to comment on his short hair cut when he still went by a female pronoun. All of this could lead us to ask if the “real Scott” is in the body, even if it is related to it? And if we can’t pinpoint the so called “real Scott” how could Scott even attempt to alienate himself from something intangible?
    Further, when it comes to the set, the reality and theatrical again merge. Really Scott is having a conversation with us. He is on stage but to some degree we build kind of a “real” fort. There are curtain like drapings above us. At the same time we are inside the fort, Scotts also sometimes builds other forts on the stage so we are simultaneously looking from the outside and the inside, an impossible situation in reality. This impossibility again alienates us a bit from what is happening on stage. However it’s a good example of how the real and not real sometimes tangle or at least have an interesting relationship in Scott’s work. We are simultaneously sucked in, but are also kept at a distance.
It is sometimes problematic to directly ask which side of the epic versus traditional theatre binary Scott stands on with this work because he undoes some of the very concepts and definitions on which these binaries rely. However the piece was as moving and thought provoking and entertaining and effective as how I felt Brecht described the Epic theatre should be. Scott Turner Schofield was absolutely charming and brilliant as himself, selves, as a producer of theatre and an actor. His piece was complex and moving both in content and in form and I feel so lucky that I got to see him come to Evergreen and perform.