Written in 1940, the story is set in Chicago at the end of the Roaring Twenties and it is a political satire of the rise of Hitler and his Nazi party. Arturo Ui, followed and supported by his faithful henchmen, is an insignificant “son of the Bronx” with bad elocution, massive ego and gigantic ambitions who, by engaging through unethical acts, will bring himself and his corrupted party to the absolute sovereignty. (Bryant)
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The choice of the language that the play-writer decides to adopt in this play is extremely unique: we witness a mixture of classic verses together with American slang and street talk. However, as it can be challenging for a non native speaking cast, many words should be simplified, as well as “modernized”; line cutting is also necessary as the script is quite long. As time is often an issue in school plays, our performance should be no longer than one hour. I have decided to represent this play with F7 learners from Band 1 Local Hong Kong Schools, whose English is in between upper intermediate and advanced. Having a strong guidance is crucial for this play; as director, my goal is to have my students breaking the language barrier and give life to every word they say, making a wise use of their body and their voice. The delivery should not be flat, and it should engage the audience which is, mainly, composed by non-native English speaking parents and students. In order to engage them rather than bore them, I would like my students to think of themselves as promising young actors and go beyond the concept of “school play”. In Brecht’s work, the audience has always had an incredible importance; he made his spectators active part of the whole process exhorting them to critical thinking. His actors broke away from the usual acting concept and they tended to be seen like workers intent to demonstrate and go beyond the role they were portraying. (Harris, Baron)
It is also interesting to take a look at how Brecht worked with set and scenic decisions. For examples, arena theatres were often very popular choice, as the audience could sit all around having a full view of what happened on stage. The lights used for his performances were white and strong, and clearly visible to the audience as well as all the machinery set up. Props were transformed in the Epic Theatre, in a way that objects had more than one connotation only: a stick could have become a rifle, a bowl turned to be a hat and so on. (Harris, Baron)
As the project is incredibly ambitious, as director I need to make them understand who they are portraying, the reason why certain creative decisions are taken, the importance of the vocal work focusing on pronunciation, stress and intonation. What I strongly want to avoid is to have my students uttering their lines without actually “feeling’ them; it is important to let them understand that as long as they are engaged and believable, the audience will be, too. Using drama to teach history in a fun, creative way is another goal that I would like to achieve. My students should broaden up their political views and develop critical thinking as well. I have encountered, in my own teaching experience, a big gap in between history and students. Often, an obsolete teaching method can lead pupils to a mechanical way of learning where facts do not get analyzed in depth and where everything fades as soon as their tests are done. History explains us our background; it is crucial to have this idea shared and understood by our students.
2
The play, written in 1940, is set in Chicago at the end of the Roaring Twenties and it is a political proverb of the rise of Hitler and his Nazi party. Every character in this play typifies real people involved in the Third Reich: Arturo Ui (Adolf Hitler) and his supporters Giuseppe Givola (Joseph Goebbels), Emanuele Giri (Hermann Goering) and Ernesto Roma (Ernst Rohm), at the head of the gang, or party, symbolize Nazism, while Old Dogsborough (President Von Hinderburg) portrays right wing conservatism; the Cauliflower Trust reflects the big industry, while the Vegetable Dealers are the Germans. In this play, Brecht uses real historical facts and introduces them in a different format with an American taste; from the Weimer Republic to the suppression of the working movement, from Austria becoming part of the German Reich to the Second World War. The idea that Brecht has, through every line of this satire play, is to illustrate Nazi as very common and yet incredibly dangerous criminals, making the audience understand how they ascended to power. The characters are caricatures from the past, as the narrator in the prologue introduces them to us, and develop themselves as cheap little murderers throughout the play (…………….)
“The good old honest Dogsborough! His hair is white, his dark is black, corrupt old man, you may step back.” When Ui and Dogsborough shake hands and Ui allude to himself as “his son”, Brecht refers to the handshake that Hitler and Hindenburg exchanged. (……….)
“Givola the horticulturist. His tongue’s so slippery he’s know how to sell you a billy-goat for a cow! Short, says the proverb, are the legs of lies. Look at his legs, just use your eyes!”
After the murder of the accountant Bowl, Arturo and his gang, in cahoots with a gang moll named Dockdaisy, put on a scene where she pretends to be Mrs Bowl. Givola introduces her to the audience.
Lies are as short as Givola’s limping leg. (…………….)
“Now to Emanuele Giri, the super-clown. Come out, let’s look you up and down!” Giri, according to Givola, “laughs so loud in season that the plaster comes tumbling from the ceiling”. He is nothing but a clown, as the narrator defines him, and he gives a good proof of that during the trial of Charles Fish:
“Any objection to my eating in Cicero and my digesting in Chicago?” (…………..)
” And lastly Public Enemy Number One Arturo Ui. Now you’ll see the biggest gangster of all times whom heaven sent us for our crimes, our weakness and stupidity!”
The language that Brecht uses for this play is classic verses, a big contrast for poorly educated, common gangsters; Brecht’s intention here is to emphasize the fact that commoners are just mimicking heroes from the classical drama to put on airs. This very high and sophisticated style of lines creates a dramatic response and Brecht uses it to criticize and shatter Nazism even more; for the purpose of parody, he created pompous, uneven, “bumpy” iambic verses mixed with foul language, American slang, Nazi terminology, business terms, old archaic terms and obscenities. Arturo is a mixture of histrionics, drama and contradictions that grows in a crescendo from the very start until his ascent at the power; throughout the play, he threats of murder while weeping; he shed melodrama filled with sarcasm; he is sympathetic towards people’s pain that he created; he shows his respect to the police and the accuses the police of being corrupted. (………..)
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In scene 6 Arturo Ui, willing to make an impression on those crowds who will be listening to him, decides to take elocution and posture lessons from a third rate, pompous actor; the result is a contrast of noble and dignified Shakespearean lines versus gangsters’ obscenities and hostilities that gives a great rhythm and add a lot of comedy to the scene. (………)
I have decided to focus on this scene as it shows us subtly how a little, insignificant “son of the Bronx” develops himself towards omnipotence; in this passage Brecht emphasizes the resemblance of Ui towards Hitler, for which, in reality, he had been taught acting skills from both an actor and a opera singer. (……)
After helping the directors of The Cauliflower Trust who previously have accepted a city loan, Arturo Ui makes his own way to the conquest of Chicago by murder, kidnapping and extortion.
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