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CAMBRIDGE, MA April 2 2005--The Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard put on Tony Gusher's "A Bright Room Called Day" (1985) with the help of the Moscow Art Theater (MXAT). We hope this version of the play gets out into the world beyond Harvard Square. Our review will reveal much of the plot.
This is a play about the intelligentsia for the intelligentsia. Tony Kusher says, "I would like my plays to be of use to progressive people. I think preaching to the converted is exactly what art ought to do." Playing in Harvard Square with posters juxtaposing Reagan's patriotism with Nazism, it was inevitable that the audience would be the intelligentsia.
Despite some definite white worker utopian overtones and an incorrect interpretation of the rise of fascism, this play works well for MIM--mostly because the character development and drama of the assorted characters' decisions are helpful.
There are three characters from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the play. One is an artist who makes posters for the revolution. In her circles, she's the only one who has her head screwed on straight, the only one who seems to meet the fascist machine head-on.
Then there are two more communists--"sent by the Central Committee" to talk with the main character, Agnes Eggling. These two comrades fight out the internal conflicts of the KPD in front of Agnes. One interesting part of this is that looking at Agnes Eggling, we question right away how much of that debate she is really able to follow. The dispute in front of her tends to underscore the need for centralism. Conflicts within the Comintern receive an entirely wrong interpretation for those who have not followed the twists and turns of struggle. It becomes a sort of opportunism to play out such questions in front of people who are not going to engage them fully. The play also succeeds in presenting the need for secrecy in the party.
Although we doubt most of the audience will agree, MIM sympathizes more with the comrade who argued that it was incorrect to blame Stalin, the Soviet Union and the Comintern for German failures to organize revolution. The other comrade sent by the Central Committee to talk to Agnes argued that Stalin and the Comintern sacrificed the German revolution. She argued for the German worker dream. Today, we have to realize that that character was in fact a white worker utopian (played by a Black womyn actor). Stalin or no Stalin, Comintern or no Comintern, there has been no German worker revolution in the 60 years since 1945 or the 52 years since Stalin's death. If there had been such a revolution, we would have to go back and look at whether big, bad Stalin sitting in Moscow really could have delayed the revolution in Germany. The history since 1945 including the chance provided in 1945 itself are the proof that something more profound was going on than a few tactical mistakes here and a few there.
In fact, the play rather over-represents the resistance to Nazism while succeeding in depicting the paralysis and ineptitude of the "Left." Every single character does in fact put in two cents for the cause. An actor of some fame slaps a Nazi in time to let a Trotskyist escape a brawl. At the end, even the most ambiguous character, the anarchist gay seems more together than Agnes Eggling.
The gay anarchist character raises an eyebrow for MIM. At the time, gay characters received rather unfavorable treatment by the "Left." The Germans in this play seem rather tolerant by comparison. In any case, the gay anarchist is an example of what MIM now refers to as a "gender bureaucrat." He articulates an ideology of orgasm as the reason not to be in the KPD. It's not so much an explanation of economics that the character wants but a lifestyle of leisure. Our slight difficulty with this presentation is that there are now hundreds of millions of his type and most are heterosexual. People who cannot peg what MIM is talking about with the "gender aristocracy" should see this play and realize that the character really is typical of millions. Gays just stand out more and draw more attention for their minority status. On the other hand, it certainly is interesting to have a gay character in the play. Those of us who find this sort of character frustrating and indirect will make good communists. Those who identify with the gay anarchist have their direction pointed out for them--ineffective lifestyle pseudo-anarchism. Lifestyle pseudo-anarchists often question the wasteful and unnecessary conformity of the status quo, but in the end they are just Liberal props of the social order.
The main character Agnes Eggling put on a play for the German communists but eventually withdrew from activity as she always does according to herself. The play offers an interesting explanation why Agnes Eggling should risk losing the lease to her apartment for the cause. It turns out she survived the whole Nazi ordeal and all her Bolshevik friends left her alone as she asked. She died lonely and unhappy. The KPD artist-activist had told her that she should live for her dreams, and rightly points out that the people of her age will all be remembered for Nazism otherwise.
The historical context of this version of the play was pretty good. Yet, it seems that drama is better for bringing out existential dilemmas behind history better read in history books than plays. Here we have the persynal motivations of various characters--and there are three from the KPD, a Trotskyist and a sexual-liberation- anarchist. Agnes is a typical petty-bourgeois vacillator considering the KPD. Since the MIM view of history does have at least tangential representation in the play and because the play zooms in on the vacillations of the petty- bourgeoisie, we approve it and see in it an example of what other plays can do. Plays are not history books. They can dramatize decisions that need to occur without getting every last historical detail correct.
There is no doubt that the communist circles saw what was coming with Hitler in the early 1930s and let the whole world know. Yet as one of the play's characters says, it could just be that a whole generation of people had not the leaders and ferocity to meet Hitler on his own ground. MIM would only add that the white worker activists in Amerikkka today are even a few shades paler than those of the KPD unable to win. The KPD was far more substantial than what we have for white communists in the majority-exploiter countries today.
Dreams derive from material reality. When we do not assess that reality accurately and confront it fully, we cannot subsequently dream about the right things. The consensus of the historians and older generations is that the social-democrats and communists should have worked together to forestall Hitler. Yet at least in this version of the play, we heard that the social-democrats wanted to make war on the Soviet Union.
To put this in pragmatic language, the German social-democrats lacked the "flexibility" to be a credible partner to the communists--no matter what they did in 1932. Not only had they killed communists in recent years leading up to Hitler's seizure of power, but also the social- democrats spewed imperialist hostility toward the Soviet Union. They could not then turn credibly toward alliance with the Soviet Union and the German communists. After World War II, communists and social-democrats vowed never again, but the resulting strategic fantasy of how Hitler should have been prevented is wrong. For the people locked in the history of that period and a particular fantasy of worker revolution, there is no other solution and the result always tends in one way or another to be more criticism of Stalin as a means of escaping what has happened in Germany and similar countries since 1930; even though Stalin died in 1953 and most of history since 1930 has been after him.
We need to emphasize that people can be dreaming about the wrong things. Hitler also had a fantasy that he convinced the German workers of. If dreams do not reflect the correct material reality, they will lead the people astray. Though it may seem hard-to-swallow for historians and older generations still alive from World War II, we have to confront youth with the whole problem of German history and not sugar-coat it. Only then can we start to dream the dreams we need to have.
Source:
http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/1995/07/bernstein.html