Postmodern
Drama Post-9/11: Adriano Shaplins Pugilist Specialist and David Hares Stuff Happens
Markus
Wessendorf (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
[Forthcoming in: Drama and/after Postmodernism. (Contemporary Drama in
English 14.) Ed. Christoph Henke and Martin Middeke. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher
Verlag Trier, 2007]
The
idea for this essay first emerged after critical reflection on the ambiguity of
the conference motto (and now title of these proceedings), Drama and/after
Postmodernism. Apart from apparently suggesting two alternative topics for
discussion1) the relationship of drama to postmodernism, 2) drama in the wake
of postmodernismthe slash separating and and after can also be interpreted
to indicate the simultaneous applicability of those rather disparate options,
thereby allowing for the following reading: plays (and since these are the
proceedings of a conference of a Society for Contemporary Drama in English: contemporary plays) may still draw upon and define themselves
in relation to postmodernism, even though that term may no longer adequately
describe the current conditions of certain postindustrial societies. But would
a drama that still relates to postmodernismfor example, by adopting key
features of postmodern aestheticsnot be obsolete under social and cultural
conditions that could no longer be characterized as postmodern? And what
possible relevance could such postmodern plays still have under those changed
circumstances?
From an American perspective, the notion of postmodernism seemed increasingly
anachronistic and irrelevant in the wake of the attacks of September 11. The
initial cultural response to the carnage of that day, shared by popular opinion
at large, was a call for the end of irony by numerous pundits (including Vanity
Fair editor Graydon Carter and Time contributor Roger Rosenblatt). More damaging and
of longer-lasting effect, however, were the consequences of the domestic and
foreign policy initiatives of the White House in response to 9/11: the Patriot
Act, the War on Terror, the Iraq War, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc. The
political concepts, decisions, and actions, as well as the manipulative and
authoritarian tactics of George W. Bushs administrationregarding not only the
Iraq War but also other issues less relevant to the following discussion, such
as global warming, abortion, birth control, the right-to-die, gay marriage, the
separation of church and state, etc.clearly suggest an alarming departure from
what the French philosopher Jean-Franois Lyotard has described and
conceptualized as the postmodern condition of technologically advanced
knowledge societies. This departure certainly calls for a reconsideration of
Lyotards sociological-philosophical concept, at least in regard to its
continuing relevance within an American context, and it also necessitates a
reassessment of postmodern drama in the wake of such a shift (even if the
determining factors of postmodern drama as an aesthetic genre may differ from
those characterizing the postmodern condition). The following pages will deal
with two plays that both combine a postmodern exploration of dramatic form with
a critical representation of the Iraq War as the Bush administrations
displaced retaliation for the attacks of 9/11: Pugilist Specialist by American playwright Adriano Shaplin and Stuff Happens by British dramatist David Hare. Since this
essay responds primarily to predicaments closely associated with the second
Bush administration, it may seem arbitrary that the focus here is not
exclusively on contemporary American drama. Yet, the place of origin of the
dramatic texts under discussion may be of less concern than the question of how
Shaplin and Hare analyze, criticize, and/or deconstruct a theatre of war
largely created by George W. Bush and his advisorswith the strong support of
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Besides, both plays have been performed to
major acclaim in the United States.[1]
Numerous
and often polemical articles in the last few years have reassessed the
appropriateness of postmodernism as a concept to describe the situation in the
United States. In his landmark study The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge from 1979,
Jean-Franois Lyotard defined postmodernism as an incredulity toward
metanarratives (xxiv), by which he meant totalizing stories about the history
and goal of humankind that legitimize cultural practices and forms of
knowledge. For Lyotard, metanarratives or, as he also calls them in his earlier
work, master-discourses provide the basis for judgment in all situations.
Lyotard saw the totalitarianism of modern metanarratives such as Hegels
teleology, Hermeneutics, Marxism, and Capitalism replaced by a postmodern
heterogeneity of language games (xxv), which no longer aimed at providing
systematic theorizations of human society or at prescribing universal remedies,
or metaprescriptions, for its ills.[2] Instead, the rules of these language
games only applied to a particular context and had to be agreed upon by its
present players. The postmodern condition, according to Lyotard, invalidated
metanarratives that aimed at regulating the totality of statements circulating
in the social collectivity (65) and replaced them with a multiplicity of
finite meta-arguments that were limited in time and space (66). While it
could be argued that the policies of the Bush administration are neither driven
by a postmodern vision nor a high regard for heterogeneity, and many critics
even attack the administration for returning to modern metanarratives (liberty,
democracy, capitalism), if not pre-modern master-discourses (manifest destiny,
House on the Hill, messianism), other voices nevertheless emphasize the
postmodern aspects of the Bush presidency. It is particularly the brazen
disregard of his administration for politically inconvenient scientific facts
that is often associated with Lyotards delegitimization of traditional
science.[3] The American
literary scholar Stanley Fish, in this context, blames the recent inclusion of
Intelligent Design in the biology curricula of several American states on
liberal academics, who have made multiculturalism and postmodernism the new
paradigm in research, replacing the traditional contest of ideas (and their
testing by experimental verification) with a pluralistic contest of claims that
all have a right to be heard and taught (72).[4] In other regards, too, conservatives
have been quite successful in appropriating popular(ized) notions of postmodernism
and turning them to their advantagewith the result that what originally
promised emancipation from the demands of Western metaprescriptions now recurs,
in a perverse spin, as a self-legitimization of Americas global reach for
power. The administration of George W. Bush has effectively appropriated and
utilized for its own purposes one of the basic concepts of postmodernism:
namely, the idea that history, identity, class, race, gender, the self, etc.
are constructs and can therefore be re-fashioned. An often-quoted passage
from a New York Times article
by journalist Ron Suskind, in which he describes his encounter with a senior
advisor to George W. Bush, makes this very plain.
The aide said that guys like me were in what we
call the reality-based community, which he defined as people who believe that
solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. I nodded
and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me
off. Thats not the way the world really works anymore, he continued. Were
an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while youre
studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwell act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort out.
Were historys actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we
do.
In
November 2003, the staff of the Harvard-based online publication Perspective published an editorial that clearly
differentiated between the Bush administrations anti-scientific bias (which
might be construed as postmodern but is really the result of a totalitarian
desire to control all aspects of reality) and their unilateral worldview (which
defies the implicit pluralism of postmodernism).
With all his rejection of truth and construction of
alternative realities, Bush might well be said to be Americas first postmodern
president. [] Right? Wrong. [] While the Bush Administration may be
ostensibly postmodern in its rejection of science, it certainly is not
postmodern in its rejection of every other moral, political, and economic
framework other than its own. This worldview, which legitimizes a foreign
policy defined by the mantra with us or against us, is also the basis for the
Bush administrations unapologetic denial of science. In the end, what is most
troublesome is not the possibility that our leaders are abandoning scientific
facts in favor of radical relativism. The real danger [] is that American
leadership will remain so mired in its own absolutism that it becomes divorced
from reality itself.
If
the analysis of the political situation in the United States results in the
conclusion that the Bush administration, despite its seemingly postmodern
aspects, is really a threat to postmodernism, and if, furthermore, the
administrations strict adherence to self-fabricated metanarratives and its
consistent attempts to superimpose these narratives onto multiple other
discourses within American society (media, science, religion, morality, etc.)
clearly reveal absolutist tendencies, what sense does it still make to bring up
the notion of postmodern drama under these conditions? Wouldnt postmodern
drama in this context be anachronistic and, therefore, incapable of reflecting
the conditions of its time, either affirmatively or critically? The first
answer to this may be that the notion of postmodern drama (like that of other
postmodern art forms) cannot be reduced or limited to represent a specific
political formation or era. The German theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte,
for example, grants that postmodern theatre reflects the Zeitgeist of its time, but by this she refers to changed
modes of aesthetic perception and reception since modernism, not larger
historical-political constellations (227). Secondly, since postmodernism, in
Lyotards words, describes a condition of plurality, not a unified
metanarrative, postmodern drama, as one particular language game among a
heterogeneous multiplicity of such games, cannot possibly come to stand in for
the postmodern condition itself. Lyotard even implies that postmodern artistic
experimentation may well and justifiably co-exist with authoritarian conditions
when he mocks a talented theatrologist for whom postmodernism, with its games
and fantasies, carries very little weight in front of political authority,
especially when a worried public opinion encourages authority to a politics of
totalitarian surveillance in the face of nuclear warfare threats (72).
Different from traditional forms of political aesthetics, postmodern art
resists political authority not by producing counter-metanarratives, but by
refusing to engage in metanarratives at all. For Lyotard, postmodern aesthetics
are defined by artistic experimentation that allows the unpresentable to
become perceptible [] in the signifier. The whole range of available narrative
and even stylistic operators is put into play without concern for the unity of
the whole, and new operators are tried (80). However, Lyotards focus on
rendering the unpresentable perceptible provides only one of many possible
strategies for a postmodern aesthetics. With regard to postmodern drama, quite
a large number of new operators have been tried over the last few decades
that have gradually added up to a set of recognizable characteristics.
[F]ragmentation, indeterminacy, reflexivity, intertextuality, montage
techniques, temporal conflation [and] randomness (Malkin 17) are some of the
traits that postmodern drama shares with postmodern literature more generally.
And since the discourse on postmodernism itself is marked by a multiplicity of
concepts and theories, postmodern drama has not only been influenced by
Lyotards concern with the unpresentable but also by Jacques Derridas playful
decentering of structures and sign systems, Roland Barthess death of the
author, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattaris rhizomatic structures and
desiring machines, Julia Kristevas chora, Jean Baudrillards simulation and
hyperreality, Frederic Jamesons pastiche of artistic forms, Charles
Jenckss semiotically double-coded aesthetics, and Craig Owenss allegorical
impulse (synthesizing the ideas of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man). One of
the most common features of postmodern drama, however, may be the
self-reflexivity and metadiscursivity with which it displays and deconstructs
the processes of its own signification. According to German theatre scholar
Kerstin Schmidt,
[P]ostmodern drama fulfills a dual function: it
deconstructs drama in the very process of producing drama and, as a
consequence, [] generates its own meta-discourse. In postmodern drama, formal
features are foregrounded to such an extent that unilateral referentiality is
impossible and, in this sense, it becomes a concrete theater in which each
(theatrical) sign is purely metatheatrical, only tells itself, and represents
itself. (35)
While
this definition proves valuable for the debate under discussion, its seemingly
easy transition from postmodern drama to concrete theatre exemplifies a
problematic terminological slippage that is still all too common in scholarly
writings on drama. The terms drama and theatre denote very different fields
of meaning, not less so under the conditions of postmodernism. While both
postmodern drama and postmodern theatreand, for that matter, postmodern dance,
postmodern architecture, etc.share the characteristics mentioned above
(self-reflexivity, metadiscursivity, intertextuality, etc.), these
characteristics manifest themselves in differing ways in each form since they apply
to a literary genre in the first case and to performance methodologies in the
latter. Even though postmodern drama and postmodern theatre may successfully
meet in the occasional production (Robert Wilsons staging of Heiner Mllers Hamletmachine, Richard Foreman directing his
ontological-hysterical plays), the more common occurrence is either the
comparatively conventional staging of a postmodern text (as in most productions
of Tom Stoppard or Sam Shepards work) or the postmodern interpretation of a classical
or modern play (the Wooster Group production of Shakespeares Hamlet, Wilsons staging of August Strindbergs A
Dream Play). Postmodern plays
focusing on the fragmentation and decentering of dramatic sign systems and
structures (such as Hamletmachine,
Suzan-Lori Parkss The America Play,
and Martin Crimps Attempts on Her Life) often inherently require an equally decentered production style,
while those plays primarily exploring temporal conflation, simulation,
pastiche, and double-coded aesthetics (such as Stoppards Travesties and Arcadia, Shepards Fool for Love, and Martin McDonaghs The Pillowman) often dont demand postmodern acting or
directing techniques since they cite and recycle realist plot and character
conventions. Despite the fact that both postmodern drama and postmodern theatre
share the classical avant-gardes as a major influence, they also relate to
and process rather divergent artistic lineages: while the genealogical
precursors of postmodern drama include the Romantic drama of Ludwig Tieck, the
theatricalist plays of Luigi Pirandello, and perhaps even the self-reflective
narrative strategies of Jorge Luis Borges, postmodern theatre adopts and
reworks artistic techniques and strategies from a wide range of performance
traditions, media cultures, and art forms.
The
formal and stylistic experiments of postmodern drama can certainly be
interpreted as acts of resistance not only against the unilateral
referentiality (Schmidt) of traditional Western drama but also against a
hegemonic and imperial cultural and political discourse (for example, in the
form of American exceptionalism, a youre-either-with-us-or-against-us
mentality, etc.). However, in times of rising religious fundamentalism and
political extremism, the foregrounding of the self-referentiality of the
dramatic sign may seem a rather limited and ineffective strategy to postmodern
playwrights who also want to respond to the political situation in their work.
The major challenge for a postmodern drama intent on tackling the pressing
issues of our time is how to combine and integrate a postmodern aesthetic that
playfully explores dramatic form with a dramaturgy that critically engages with
current events without falling into the trap of (re-)producing the master-discourses
of traditional political theatre. The plays that will be discussed in the
following pages answer this challenge in different ways.
Adriano Shaplins Pugilist Specialist is a play about four marines that are assigned the task of assassinating
a Middle-Eastern leader. The 15 scenes of the play cover the first military
briefing of the marines, their lunch at a mess hall, their reconnaissance
training, their final deployment close to the target, and a last-minute change
of plan and immediate execution of this revised plan. The code names of the
target are Big Stach (for Big Moustache) and The Bearded Lady, but
several references in the play indicate that the target in question is actually
Saddam Hussein: The Bearded Lady has doubles, is supposedly delusional and
paranoid, has already survived five previous assassination attempts by the
United States, is located in Mesopotamia (Colonel Johns refers to an ancient
Mesopotamian landscape tapestry [202]), and is compared to Hitler in one of
the letters that the marines receive from fellow Americans back home. Also, the
play provides numerous clues that point to the immediate aftermath of the
American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 as the main time-frame: one of the
characters talks about a righteous intervention (177), and the letters sent
to the soldiers include references to nation building, the Christian war
machine, and charred remains of Iraqi babies (195). Nonetheless, the major
plot element of the playthe attempt of a group of marines to assassinate Big
Stach at one of his palacesdoes not correspond to any factual event of the
early Iraq War: the American Shock and Awe campaign actually started with an
air attack on Husseins Baghdad palace, but the dictator had already gone into
hiding and did not resurface at any of his other palatial residences after
that. Since Pugilist Specialist
was already performed in August 2003 at the Edinburgh International Fringe
Festival, Shaplin must have written the play right at the beginning of the
American occupation. (Saddam Hussein himself was captured by American troops
only four months after the plays Edinburgh run). The major conflict in the
play is between Lieutenant Emma Stein and Lieutenant Travis Freud. Stein is a
proud, tough and sober-headed explosives expert famous for her carefully
organized and executed bombings of enemy sites, whereas Freud is a sniper with
a misogynist attitude and a deep libidinal attachment to his job. While Stein
is an idealist who has joined the military to serve the public good, Freud has
chosen his profession because he loves to kill and considers sniping an art. At
the end of the play, when Freud and Stein have finally entered the targets
mansion to plant the bomb, Freud suddenly receives instruction via radio to
kill Stein instead of the Big Stach. Colonel Johns, who is in charge of the
operation, never expected his team to get so close to the target that they
could really kill him. Johns justifies his change of plan to Lieutenant Harpo
Studdard: I cant let her set that bomb Harpo. [] I cant let her finish this
mission Harpo. We need the target more than we need her. [] No more targets,
no more history (225). After Stein has been shot by Freud, the last scene in Pugilist
Specialist just features an
audio recording of the radio communication among the remaining team members. In
the recorded dialogue, Johns tells Freud to leave the corpse of Stein at the
mansion and finally orders Studdard to switch off the tape recorder. The play ends
with the abrupt cutting off of the tape.
In an essay published in two installments in the early 1980s, American art
critic Craig Owens identified the allegorical impulse as one of the key
characteristics of postmodernism. Quoting Paul de Mans statement that
Allegorical narratives tell the story of the failure to read (Owens 73,
quoting de Man 205), Owens established a close link between the postmodern
aesthetic of Laurie Andersons performance pieces and the problems of
illegibility (72), unreadability (72), and the impossibility of reading (73)
associated with the allegorical mode. Pugilist Specialist relates postmodernisms preoccupation with
reading (74) and its concern with the failure to read the signs (70) to a
military operation of American Special Forces at the beginning of the Iraq War.
These themes not only dominate the actions and interactions that occur in the
plot but also shape the dramaturgy of the play with regard to a potential
audience reception.
Within
the context of the play, none of the marines ever seems to be fully informed
about his or her mission: information is consistently withheld (or
fragmentary), while the marines themselves are under constant surveillance (a
microphone records all of their conversations). Since their operation is only a
small component of a larger theatre of war, the characters lack a broader frame
of reference that would allow them to decode the signs. Their process of
reading remains open-ended, since any possible perspective allowing for a
conclusive interpretation of information would by far transcend the immediate
reality and perception of the characters. At the beginning of the play, for
example, Lieutenant Stein believes that she is the first person to arrive at
the military briefing room, only to find out later that a clandestine
pre-briefing between Lieutenant Studdard and Colonel Johnsthe contents of
which are not revealedhad already occurred in that same space. After Steins
assassination it remains unclear if the change of plan was really Colonel
Johns spontaneous decision, or if Stein hadnt been the primary target of the
mission all alongin retaliation for her leaking sensitive information to the New
York Times after a previous
operation. The problem of illegibility also recurs in other scenes of the play.
During their reconnaissance training, the marines are asked to identify The
Bearded Lady on photographs. However, they have a hard time distinguishing
between Big Stach and his doublesand it becomes apparent that all proposed
methods of identification are inexact since they rely on intuition (Colonel
Johns suggests that the target can be identified by the seductive quality of
his bedroom eyes [193], while Lieutenant Stein claims that the frown lines
are the distinctive mark [194]). In another scene the marines discuss the
semiotics of the standard-issue care packages that are designed for the Iraqi
population. Again, the message conveyed by the content of those packagesOne
protein bar. [] One miniature white flag. A calculator. [] [T]hree condoms
[199], and a cartoon representing Big Stach next to a pile of moneyis far
from simple and can be interpreted in contradictory ways.
LT.
STUDDARD: What do they need condoms for?
LT.
STEIN: Ooo, let me see the cartoons.
LT.
FREUD: Its like: Immigrate to the U.S., and you might need these.
[]
LT.
STEIN: Okay, what is The Bearded Lady doing in this picture?
LT.
STUDDARD: I think that picture speaks for itself.
LT.
FREUD: Its a harmless allegory.
[]
L.
STEIN: Do you think because you drew an arrow from The Bearded Lady to a pile
of money that his people will rise against him?
LT.
FREUD: Most importantly, will they know thats a stack of ones?
COL.
JOHNS: A strong narrative arch is essential to any military victory. You
should
know that.
LT.
STEIN: This narrative arch has poor character development. (199f.)
Apart
from the theme of unreadability, this dialogue also exemplifies another key
aspect of postmodern drama: self-reflexivity. Johns insistence on the
unambiguous readability of the cartoon and his claim that military victory
depends on narratives such as that suggested by the cartoon provides an
ironical contrast to the situation in Pugilist Specialist itself: the cartoon, designed by Americans for
Iraqis, fails to convey an unanimous message even to Johns own subordinates,
while the marines themselves are unaware of any univocal narrative that would
justify their mission. As a result, their operation ends not with a military
victory, i.e., the assassination of The Bearded Lady, but with the killing of
Lieutenant Stein by friendly fire. Lieutenant Freuds claim, on the other
hand, that the cartoon represents a harmless allegory (200) also folds back
metadiscursively and ironically onto the play itself since allegories are not
only far from harmless within the universe of Pugilist Specialist, they are, also, the major reason why the
marines dont succeed in their various reconnaissance missions. Lieutenant
Steins final statement, in addition, self-referentially relates to the
dramaturgical structure of the play (which could, indeed, be interpreted as a strong narrative arch with
poor character development).
The
theme of character development (or lack thereof) also extends to the problem
of readability of character. The characters try to guess at each others
motives and emotional lives behind their rigid military postures. Lieutenant
Stein, in the opening monologue of the play, indicates that women in the
military can only maintain their dignity by not revealing any private
information about themselves (Secret is my armor. Silence is my camouflage.
[160]). At the same time, she herself provokes Lieutenant Freud by telling him
that she knows very well how to read his macho behavior. (You dont fool me
Freud. [] I know you just want to hold hands. [185])
The
stage directions in Pugilist Specialist are very minimal, and locations are exclusively suggested by the
dialog, not indicated by particular objects on stage. Similar to the characters
within the play, the audience of the play is often under-informed. With each
new scene it has to be established all over again where, and how much later
than earlier events, the action is happening. The dialog is often elliptical
and allusive; it becomes only gradually clear, though never explicit, that the
mission of the marines is to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Since the characters
are soldiers, a lot of their dialog is delivered in clipped military jargon,
which also impedes our perception of their individual traits. Lieutenant Stein
invites the audience, right at the end of the first scene, to approach not only
herself but also the entire play as an allegory or riddle that needs to be
deciphered: Loneliness, grief, discipline. Spectacles, testicles, wallet,
watch. Decode that. (160)
There
is also an intertextual dimension to Pugilist Specialist that suggests possible directions of
interpretation. The name of Emma Stein, who claims that Punctuality is my
feminism (159), points both to Jane Austens novel Emma, as well as to Gertrude Stein (Lieutenant Stein
may be a lesbian), while the name Travis Freud refers both to Travis Bickle,
the psychotic protagonist in Martin Scorseses film Taxi Driver, and the pioneer of psychoanalysis. Studdards
first name Harpo, on the other hand, points to the Marx Brothers. The
association between Lieutenant Stein and the playwright of the same last name
is clearly evoked when Lieutenant Freud asks Lieutenant Stein to define
empathy for him, since he is a sniper, not a playwright (196), and the
female lieutenant obliges him by offering a definition of the term. Lieutenant
Freuds link to Sigmund Freud, on the other hand, is emphasized when he claims
to eat unconscious desires for breakfast (179). Similar to the protagonist of
Taxi Driver, Lieutenant Freud
also plots but then fails to assassinate a political leader (in Scorseses
film, the politician is a mayoral candidate for New York City). Regarding the
larger context of the play, though, the connotations of the names fail to
provide meaningful clues for interpreting the characters. Lieutenant Stein
exhibits none of the major traits associated with Austens heroine or with the
famous American writer, nor does Lieutenant Freud demonstrate any behavior that
clearly aligns him with the analytical Viennese doctor or the short-fused
protagonist of Scorseses film. In addition, Harpo Studdard is not funnythe
reference to the Marx Brothers serves less to suggest an analogous relationship
between the four characters of Pugilist Specialist and the four famous comedians; rather, it
emphasizes the striking gap that separates the regimented life of the marines
in Shaplins play from the anarchistic humor and grotesque universe of such
films as Animal Crackers or Duck
Soup. The character names in Pugilist
Specialist only provide limited
readability and function more like arbitrary codes of designation rather than
as revelatory clues to a persons identity.
Shaplins play not only features a fictitious plot that alludes to the early
stages of the Iraq War, but also reflects on the way this war has been
conducted in reality. Similar to the Bush administrations habit of offering up
a new justification for war once the previous one is discredited (Weapons of
Mass Destruction, regime change, spreading democracy in the Middle East, etc.),
the official mission of the marines, namely, to assassinate The Bearded Lady,
is completely redefined by the end of the play to reveal a different
metaprescription altogether: to keep the primary enemy alive under all
circumstances so that a continuation of war will be justified. (Even though
Saddam Hussein has been captured and put on trial, this still seems to be the
major strategy of the Bush administration with regard to Osama bin Laden five
years after the attacks of 9/11.)[5]
David Hares Stuff Happens
also deals with the Iraq War, but from a different angle. The play focuses not
on operations in Iraq itself, but on the backroom deals and political maneuvers
of the Bush administration that made the war possible. Different from Shaplins
elliptical dramaturgy, Hares play represents the political plot that led to
the march on Baghdad by Americas coalition of the willing in a more direct
fashion. Stuff Happens
consists of two acts with twelve scenes each. The play starts with short
glimpses into the formative experiences of the major characters in the 1970s,
then to zooms in on the time period between January 2001 and August 2004. The
key events of that period covered in Hares drama include: The first mention of
Iraq as a potential target at a National Security Council meeting ten days into
Bushs first term, Bushs use of 9/11 as an excuse to bring up Iraq again only
four days after the attacks, the war in Afghanistan in late fall 2001, Bushs
January 2002 speech about the axis of evil, Tony Blairs initiation into
Bushs Iraq plans by the summer of 2002, Bushs speech at the U.N. in November
2002, Colin Powells presentation of dubious evidence of Iraqs WMD at the U.N.
in February 2003, the launch of the war in March 2003, andin a short final
scenethe first one-and-a-half years of the American occupation of Iraq. Even though
the play has 49 characters, the main plot only involves nine protagonists:
George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney,
Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Kofi Annan, and Hans Blix. All public
utterances of the protagonists are quoted verbatim, while their confidential
conversations are dramatizations based on a combination of extensive research
and conjecture. (Hare states in the Authors Note to the first publication of
Stuff Happens: The events
within it have been authenticated from multiple sources, both private and
public. What happened happened. Nothing in the narrative is unknowingly untrue.
Scenes of direct address quote people verbatim. When the doors close on the
worlds leaders and on their entourages, then I have used my imagination.) Stuff
Happens constantly moves back
and forth between different settings and features the role of a narrator-actor
that is played by alternating members of the company, easing transitions
between scenes by providing background information and often introducing as
well as commenting on a characters lines or actions. The chronological
sequence of events is occasionally interrupted by monologues that stand apart
from the main thrust of the play and represent a range of different opinions on
the American push for war. These monologues represent the views of a
conservative British journalist, a New Labour politician, a Palestinian
academic, a British citizen in New York, and an Iraqi exile. Hares own
dramatization of the conflict, however, is far from unbiased. The central (but
flawed) hero of Stuff Happens
is the multilateral internationalist Colin Powell, who first puts his world
reputation on the line to gain international legitimacy for what he considers
Bushs peaceful intentions in putting political pressure on Saddam Hussein,
only to find himself excluded from the major decisions of Bushs inner circle
that lead to the war. Tony Blair opportunistically jumps on Bushs bandwagon
early on to have some impact on the shaping of American foreign policy in the
wake of 9/11, but is soon outmaneuvered by Cheney and Rumsfeld, who care
neither for his New Labour credentials nor his political survival. Bush himself
is represented as an intellectually narrow man of simple but strong convictions,
whose major strength is his unwavering pursuit and use of power. The most
sympathetic of the nine protagonists is clearly U.N. weapons inspector Hans
Blix, who displays a strong sense of humor and appears unintimidated by power.
Stuff Happens presents a
postmodern version of documentary drama. Even though Hare himself claims in the
Authors Note that his play is not a documentary but a history play, he
uses a similar approach as Rolf Hochhuth (The Deputy), Heinar Kipphardt (In the Case of J. Robert
Oppenheimer), and Peter Weiss (Vietnam
Discourse) in their plays from
the 1960s by exploring actual political and/or historical events and by
incorporating factual material into the dramatic text. Different from 1960s
docudrama, however, Stuff Happens
is post-ideological. While the earlier generation of dramatists considered
themselves partisan and often (particularly in Weisss case) attacked fascism,
capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism from an openly Marxist point of view,
the target of Hares play is not a general system of political thought or
government but a specific group of politicians and their actions. (Bush,
Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are certainly depicted as right-wing ideologues, but
the political system represented by them is not identified with their ideology
since it also allows for the contrary positions of Colin Powell.) The questions
that drive Stuff Happens are
exactly those attacked by the angry British journalist in the play, when he
complains of the relentless archaic discussion of the manner of the liberation. Was it lawful? Was it not?
How was it done? What were the details of its doing? Whose views were
overridden? Whose views condoned? (15). Stuff Happens takes issue with why and how the Bush administration went to war in Iraq, but shies away from
larger political generalizations (such as claiming that the Iraq War is an
example of American imperialism).
Also different from many of the earlier docudramas, Hare is rather minimalist
in his use of stylization (there are no verses, songs, or choruses in Stuff
Happens) and only combines a few
elements of Epic Theatre (actor-narrator, Gestus, an episodic sequence of events occasionally
interrupted by individual commentaries on the buildup to war) with realistic
dialog and factual speech. The characters in Stuff Happens are instantly recognizable by key bits of
information that are communicated through different dramatic devices. To take
the first scene with Condoleezza Rice as an example, these details are provided
through stage directions (Condoleezza Rice, splendid, always alone, steps
forward [6]), the background
information provided by the actor-narrator (a ministers daughter from
Birmingham, Alabama [6]), statements by the character herself (Brahms is her
favorite composer because Hes passionate without being sentimental [6]), and
statements by other people reflecting back on her character (Yo-Yo Ma: Do you
think its also this irresolution in Brahms, the tension that is never
resolved? [6]). The sense of immediate familiarity that this Brechtian
indication of Gestus evokes
is further heightened by the realistic dialog employed by Hare. Verbatim quotes
from historical figures and conjectured dialogs between them blend so well that
they almost make for a certain unease: the diegetic narration, as well as the
recognizable factual speeches, suggest a high level of documentary veracity and
objectivity that even affects the readers response to the invented scenes.
Reality and fabrication seem inseparable and suggest a perfectly believable
simulacrum of the stuff that really happened. This effect, however, is
again offset by the metadiscursive elements of the play that serve as constant
reminders of the constructedness of its dramatic representation. This aspect is
even more foregrounded by the material reality of any theatrical production of Stuff
Happens: The narrator-actors,
the frequent and rapid scene changes that only allow for a limited realization
of each locale, and the fact that the actors are never complete look-alikes of
the historical characters they represent ensure that the illusion of a
documentary slice of life is rarely sustained for long. The permanent
oscillation between a simulacrum of historical reality and the metadiscursivity
of the play itself (or, in production, its metatheatricality), however, not
only points to the dramatic (or theatrical) constructedness of such a
simulation, it also suggests that the simulated political reality may already
be a dramatic (or theatrical) construct itself. The invitation to relate the
situation in the play to theatrical production and to compare the group of
politicians in the play to a company of actors is implied by a verbatim line of
Hans Blix at the beginning of the play: I was an amateur actor when I was a
student. Theatre teaches you the value of collaboration, of getting on with
other people (9). Similar to actors performing Stuff Happens, whose
efforts at sustaining the simulation of the represented politicians are
undermined by the material signifiers of theatrical production itself, the
politician-characters within the play also create a simulacrum, namely a
semblance of evidence of Husseins imminent threat, that is finally undone by
the post-invasion reality in Iraq.
One
of the most striking aspects of Stuff Happens, particularly regarding both Hares treatment of
Bushs plotting as a historical play and, inversely, the self-understanding
of the Bush administration as historys actors (Suskind), is the mismatch of
George W. Bush as a leading man considering the theatrical as well as
political arenas of the genre that he purportedly represents. Historys
players (be they protagonists in Shakespeares histories or actual political
leaders in difficult times) are usually expected to match the complexity of the
historic moment intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. Bush as
dramatis persona, in this regard, fails to meet this expectation throughout the
play. The fact that none of the characters in Hares play are intended as
parodies makes it even more remarkable that the Gestus of Bush is primarily indicated by one recurring
stage direction that renders him almost robotic in his lack of intellectual
agility. The stage direction There is a silence (or variations thereof) either indicates the
stunned reaction to a disarmingly unsubtle proposition by Bush (see pages 11,
12, 20, 25), emphasizes his inability to respond spontaneously to someone
elses argument (29, 38, 39, 40, 42, 53), or precedes his own wooden reply to a
question (30). This Gestus
sums up key aspects of Bushs private behavior that have been well documented
in several books on his presidency. Referring to (former Secretary of the
Treasury) Paul ONeills descriptions of his encounters with the president in
Ron Suskinds A Price of Loyalty,
the critic Carol V. Hamilton argues that George W. Bush represents a postmodern
substitute for the traditional notion of character. She writes in Being
Nothing: George W. Bush as Presidential Simulacrum:
Under
the sign of postmodernism, the hermeneutics of depth have been replaced by the
play of surfaces, and the flat celebrity has superseded the complicated
historical figure. [] American media commentators [] overlook, understate, or
make excuses for [Bushs] slipshod syntax, reliance on clichs, and inability
to answer either theoretical or factual questions. They inevitably refer to him
as if he were a real person with a complex sensibility, rather than a simulacrum
entirely composed of sound bites and photo opportunities. [] While in public,
Bush appears to interact amiably with the media, in the center of
governmentaway from public observationhe is disconnected, like an unplugged
machine. []
If Bush plays at privacy in public, he cannot act for real in private,
because he is now in a realm where substance and depth, rather than sheer
surface, are called upon. [] I will speculate that in a post-literate,
hyperreal world, those accretions of historical time and psychological
reflection that produce subjectivity tend to disperse before they constitute a
deep, coherent self. The result can be a personality like that of
Bushintellectually narrow, emotionally shallow, working with an abridged
vocabulary, like a novice in a foreign language class.
Notwithstanding
Hamiltons anti-postmodern bias and her mourning for traditional character
structure, it could be argued that it is less the flat, post-literate
personality of Bush that is scandalous here than a political system and media
culture that still invest him with the attributes of depth, substance, and
heroic leadership.
As postmodern plays that were both written post-9/11, Pugilist Specialist and Stuff Happens succeed quite well in combining a playful
exploration of dramatic form with the tackling of political themes. Instead of
judging the depicted events from a clearly defined political vantage point,
both plays unravel the portrayed campaignsthe special operation to
assassinate The Bearded Lady, alias Saddam Hussein, and the fabrication of a
master-discourse by the Bush administration to make the American occupation of
Iraq seem legitimatefrom within. This, however, is facilitated by the fact
that the worlds depicted in both plays and the means by which they are depicted
have certain postmodern features in common. The unreadability of signs and the
end of metanarratives as key themes of postmodernism are reflected both in the
plot of Pugilist Specialist,
where they figure as obstacles to the marines pursuit of their mission, and in
the plays formal composition and dramatic structure. Stuff Happens, on the other hand, self-reflectively
interrelates the notion of a Bush administration determined to re-fashion the
Middle East in its own image with the plays attempt to model those events into
coherent epic drama: the selective focus on only a few key protagonists and the
obvious melodramatization of the more nuanced historical conflict between Colin
Powell and the other members of Bushs inner circle clearly reveal Hares play
to be a fabrication itself. Overall, though, the postmodern aspects of the
realities that both plays describe have a rather different significance from
those elements that allow the plays themselves to be characterized as examples
of a postmodern aesthetic. While the unreadability of characters, motives, and
overall mission in Pugilist Specialist, as an artistic strategy, confronts the audience not only with
their own desire for closure but also, more generally, with a key aspect of the
postmodern experience, within the military context of Shaplins plot itself
those themes connote surveillance, secretiveness, hierarchical power, betrayal,
and, finally, death. While Stuff Happens implies that Bushs plot to invade Iraq and his ever-changing
justifications for war constitute a simulacrum that is mirrored in the dramaturgy of Hares
plot itself, it is only Bushs simulacrum that has led to disastrous consequences in political actuality. The
discrepancy between the benign function of postmodernism on an aesthetic level
and its negative implications for the realities referred to in both plays
results from a major denial that haunts the military world of Pugilist
Specialist as well as the
self-enclosed universe of the Bush administration in Stuff Happensnamely, the incapability to accept
decenteredness, heterogeneity, and multiplicity as facts of 21st-century
existence. The disintegration of meaning, identity, purpose, etc. leads to the
cynical outcome in Pugilist Specialist because the characters inhabit a world that is unable to confront
the fact that, despite Colonel Johns claim to the contrary, no strong
narrative arch (200) justifies the marines individual actions, their group
mission, or the general operation of American troops in Iraq. The protagonists
of Stuff Happens completely
disregard the language games of political discourse (informed decision-making,
the honoring of contracts and laws, the rules of diplomacy, etc.) in their
creation of a new reality, while insisting that they are merely serving the
most traditional justification of American politics (Rumsfeld: Ill tell you
whats legitimate. [] The authority to act comes from the people. [] Power in
this country doesnt come from its institutions []. [101]). Pugilist
Specialist and Stuff Happens are successful and relevant examples of
postmodern drama in the post-9/11 period because they convincingly employ
postmodernist devices to demonstrate that the actual situation on the ground
depicted in both plays (the planning of the Iraq War by the Bush administration
and the execution of a clandestine mission by American special forces in Iraq)
is still inherently marked by postmodern ambiguity, fragmentation, and
unreadability. The plays also imply that their grim endings result from the
denial of those postmodern conditions, as well as from the ideological
adherence to self-generated metanarratives that are completely out of tune with
the fragile realities that they supposedly serve to legitimize and explain.
[1]Adriano Shaplins Riot Group has
performed Pugilist Specialist
in New York (where it opened at 59E59 Theater in September 2004 before moving
to The Culture Project at 45 Bleecker St. the following November), San
Francisco (Magic Theater, December 2004), and Burlington, Vermont (Flynn Space,
May 2006). The first American production of Stuff Happens opened at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in
May 2005 (dir. Gordon Davidson), followed by a New York production at the
Public Theater in March 2006 (dir. Daniel Sullivan).
[2] Ashley Woodward provides the following
information on Lyotards adoption of Ludwig Wittgensteins theory of language
games. The theory of language games means that each of the various categories
of utterance can be defined in terms of rules specifying their properties and
the uses to which they can be put. [] Lyotard presents a postmodern
methodological representation of society as composed of multifarious and
fragmented language games, but games which strictly (but not rigidlythe rules
of a game can change) control the moves which can be made within them by
reference to narratives of legitimation which are deemed appropriate by their
respective institutions. Thus one follows orders in the army, prays in church,
questions in philosophy, etc., etc.
[3] In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard suggests that scientific research in
the West, instead of being autonomous and universal, has always depended on
political powers and the legitimation of the legislator since the time of
Plato (8). Consequentially, the delegitimization of traditional political
metanarratives also entails the loss of legitimacy for the traditional paradigm
of scientific discourse (with its conditions of internal consistency and
experimental verification [8]). It could be argued that the Bush
administration accepts one of Lyotards key statements at face value (In the
computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of
government [9]) and that it interprets the delegitimization of Western science
in their own favor, by granting legitimacy to discourses that had been
considered unscientific before and by only acknowledging those findings of
scientific research that fit their ideological agenda.
[4] Fish also refers to an interview from
1996, in which the Intelligent Design advocate Phillip E. Johnson admitted his
misappropriation of postmodernism. Im no postmodernist, he declares [],
but Ive learned a lot from reading them. What hes learned, he reports, is
how to talk about hidden assumptions and power relationships, and how to
use those concepts to cast doubt on the authority of science educators and
other purveyors of the reigning orthodoxy. [] [T]he strategy he borrows from
the postmoderniststhe strategy of claiming to have been marginalized by the
powers that beis, he boasts, dead-bang mainstream academia these days (71).
[5] On September 22, 2006 Op-Ed contributor
Lawrence Wright wrote in The New York Times: The fifth anniversary of 9/11 has come and
gone, but there was a conspicuous figure missing from the retrospectives and
commentaries: Osama bin Laden. Al Qaedas founder has clearly been marginalized
even in his own movement []. Meanwhile, Pakistan has negotiated a truce with
tribal chiefs promising to keep troops out of the Waziristan districts, where
the leadership of Al Qaeda may be hiding, and the C.I.A. has closed Alec
Station, the unit devoted to finding Mr. bin Laden. He is the forgotten man.
Primary
Literature:
Hare,
David. Stuff Happens. London:
Faber & Faber, 2004.
Shaplin,
Adriano. Pugilist Specialist. Three Plays. London: Oberon Books, 2004. 155-228.
Secondary
Literature:
Fish,
Stanley. Academic Cross-Dressing: How Intelligent Design Gets Its Arguments
From the Left. Harpers Magazine.
December 2005. 70-72.
Fischer-Lichte,
Erika. Postmodernism: Extension of End of Modernism? Theater Between Cultural
Crisis and Cultural Change. Trans. Josephine Riley. Zeitgeist in Babel: The
Postmodernist Controversy. Ed.
Ingeborg Hoesterey. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1991. 216-228.
George
W. Bush: Americas First Postmodern President? Editorial. Perspective. November 2003. http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/issues/2003/nov/staffed.html
Hamilton,
Carol V. Being Nothing: George W. Bush as Presidential Simulacrum. Ctheory. 13 Jan. 2004. Eds. Arthur and Marilouise
Kroker. http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=427
Lyotard,
Jean-Franois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
.
Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism? Trans. Rgis Durand. The
Postmodern Condition, 71-82.
Malkin,
Jeanette R. Memory-Theater and Postmodern Drama. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1999.
de
Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche,
Rilke, and Proust. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1979.
Owens,
Craig. The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Part 2. Beyond
Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. Ed. Scott Bryson et al. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.
Schmidt,
Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005.
Suskind,
Ron. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the
Education of Paul ONeill. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
.
Without a Doubt. The New York Times. October 17, 2004.
Woodward,
Ashley. Jean-Franois Lyotard (1924-1998). The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/Lyotard.htm
Wright,
Lawrence. The Trials of the Century. The New York Times. September 22, 2006.