To Hell With Society

Extract

Both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, the keen discussion about the degree to which the theatre should be socially committed has been confused by the vague, ambiguous, and tendentious use of focal words like “society,” “politics,” “realism,” “humanity.” In England the bid by one group to impose politics on the theatre in a narrow and a party sense under the guise of solicitude for social principles has been made evident on at least two occasions. The first was the shouting in the theatre when The Tenth Chance, an immature first play by a young writer named Stuart Holroyd, was tried out at the Royal Court for a single Sunday night performance. The play dealt with the reactions to persecution in a totalitarian state of three imprisoned men: a rationalist, a religious mystic, and a moronic tough. It shows the tough, lacking in mental resources, breaking first and the mystic, buoyed up by faith in some extra-personal force, outlasting the rationalist who relies unsuccessfully on his vulnerable brain. What Holroyd was getting at was similar to Shaw's aim in Saint Joan and other plays.