I mean, my God, you know, when you talk about our attitudes toward other people. I mean, I think of myself as just a very decent, good person, you know, just because I think I'm reasonably friendly to most of the people I happen to meet every day. I mean, I really think of myself quite smugly. I just think I'm a perfectly nice guy, you know, so long as I think of the world as consisting of, you know, just the small circle of the people that I know as friends or the few people that we know in this little world of our little hobbies, the theater or whatever it is. And I'm really quite self-satisfied. I'm just quite happy with myself. I just have no complaint about myself. I mean, you know, let's face it, I mean, there's a whole enormous world out there that I just don't ever think about. And I certainly don't take responsibility for how I've lived in that world. I mean, you know, if I were to actually sort of confront the fact that I'm sort of sharing this stage with this starving person in Africa somewhere, well, I wouldn't feel so great about myself. So naturally I just blot all those people right out of my perception. So, of course, of course, I'm ignoring a whole section of the real world!
But, frankly, you know, when I write a play, in a way, one of the things I guess I think I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring myself up against some little bits of reality, and I'm trying to share that with an audience. I mean...I mean, of course, we all know the theater is in terrible shape today. I mean...I mean, at least a few years ago people who really cared about the theater used to say the theater is dead. And now everybody has redefined the theater in such a trivial way that, I mean...I mean, God! I know people who are involved with the theater who go to see things now that, I mean, a few years ago these same people would have just been embarrassed to have even seen some of these plays. I mean, they would have just shrunk, you know, just in horror at the superficiality of these things. But now they say: "Oh, that was pretty good." It's just incredible! And I really just find that attitude unbearable, because I really do think the theater can do something very important. I mean, I do think the theater can help bring people in contact with reality. Now, now, you may not feel that at all. I mean, you may just find that totally absurd.
ANDRE: Yeah, but Wally! Don't you see the dilemma? You're not taking into account the period we're living in. I mean, of course that's what the theater should do. I mean, I've always felt that. You know, when I was a young director and I directed The Bacchae at Yale? My impulse--when Pentheus has been killed by his mother and the furies, and they pull the tree back and they tie him to the tree and fling him into the air, and he flies through space and he's killed, and they rip 'em to shreds and, I guess, cut off his head--my impulse was that the thing to do was to get a head, from the New Haven morgue, and pass it around the audience! You know, I wanted Agawe to bring on a real head, and that this head should be passed around the audience so that somehow people realized that this stuff was real, see, that it was real stuff! Now the actress playing Agawe absolutely refused to do it.
You know, Gordon Craig used to talk about why is there gold or silver in the churches or something, the great cathedrals, when actors could be wearing gold and silver! And I mean, people who saw Eleanora Duse in the last couple of years of her life, Wally, people said that it was like seeing light on stage, or mist, or the essence of something! I mean. Then when you think about Bertolt Brecht, he somehow created a theater in which people could observe, that was vastly entertaining and exciting, but in which the excitement didn't overwhelm you. He somehow allowed you the distance between the play and yourself, that in fact two human beings need in order to live together. You know, the question is whether the theater now can do for an audience what Brecht tried to do, or what Craig or Duse tried to do. Can it do it now? You see, I think that people today are so deeply asleep that unless, you know, you're putting on those sort of superficial plays that just help your audience to sleep more comfortably, it's very hard to know what to do in the theater. [Distant talking heard in the background.] 'Cause, you see, I think that if you put on serious contemporary plays by writers like yourself, you may only be helping to deaden the audience in a different way.
WALLY: What do you mean?
ANDRE: [The background talking seems closer.] Well, I mean, Wally: how does it affect an audience to put on one of these plays in which you show that people are totally isolated now, and they can't reach each other, and their lives are desperate? Or how does it affect them to see a play that shows that our world is full of nothing but shocking sexual events and terror and violence? Does that help to wake up a sleeping audience? See, I don't think so. Because I think it's very likely that the picture of the world that you're showing them in a play like that is exactly the picture of the world they have already. I mean, you know, they know their own lives and relationships are difficult and painful. And if they watch the evening news on television, well, there what they see is a terrifying, chaotic universe full of rapes and murders, and hands cut off by subway cars, and children pushing their parents out of windows! So the play tells them that their impression of the world is correct and that there is absolutely no way out. There's nothing they can do. And they end up feeling passive and impotent.
I mean, look at something like that christening, that my group arranged for me in the forest of Poland, well, there was an example of something that had all the elements of theater: it was worked on carefully, it was thought about carefully, it was done with exquisite taste and magic. And they had in fact created something! In this case it was in a way just for an audience of one, just for me, but they created something, that had ritual, love, surprise, denouement, beginning, middle and end, and was an incredibly beautiful piece of theater! And the impact that it had on its audience, on me, was somehow a totally positive one: it didn't deaden me, it brought me to life!
WALLY: [Pause.] Yeah, but I mean, are you saying that it's impossible, I mean...I mean, isn't it a little upsetting to come to the conclusion that there's no way to wake people up any more? Except to involve them in some kind of a strange christening in Poland, or some kind of a strange experience on top of Mount Everest? I mean, because you know, the awful thing is that if you're really saying that it's necessary to take everybody to Everest, it's really tough! Because everybody can't be taken to Everest! I mean, there must have been periods in history when it would have been possible to "save the patient" through less drastic measures. I mean, there must have been periods when in order to give people a strong or meaningful experience you wouldn't actually have to take them to Everest!
ANDRE: But you do, now! In some way or other you do, now!
WALLY: I mean, you know, there was a time when you could have just, for instance, written, I don't know, Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen! And I'm sure the people who read it had a pretty strong experience. I'm sure they did. I mean, all right, now you're saying that people today wouldn't get it, and maybe that's true, but, I mean, isn't there any kind of writing, or any kind of a play that--I mean: isn't it still legitimate for writers to try to portray reality so that people can see it? I mean, really! Tell me: why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean...I mean: is Mount Everest more "real" than New York? I mean, isn't New York "real"? I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! I mean...I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? I mean, what do you think? You see, I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest, I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way. So that if you're--if your perceptions--I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly, it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd! Because, I mean, it's just--I mean, of course, on some level, I mean, obviously it's very different from a cigar store on Seventh Avenue, but I mean...