|
|
Introduction by Hugh MacDiarmid
"If we may judge by Sir David Lindsay's
Satire of the Thrie Estaitis
, no nation could have shown a fairer promise (than Scotland) of playing a
worthy part in the dramatic recital which is the glory of English literature at
the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. But dis
aliter visum; that promise was irretrievably blasted." So wrote J. H. Millar in
his " Literary History of Scotland," and went on to show what forces had
prevented the development of drama in Scotland. Earlier he had remarked:
"There is scarcely a country on the continent of Europe to-day where the
systematic publication of such diatribes as he indulged in against the existing
order in Church and State would not expose their author to the pains and
penalties of the law. Even in England the public performance of a drama in the
least degree resembling the
Satire
in tone or aim would be absolutely out of the question." Mr. Millar also noted
that Sir David Lindsay " never made a secret of the fact that he wrote for the
commonalty ; and we can picture to ourselves the enthusiasm and delight with
which the most telling scenes and speeches in the
Satire
would be received by an audience drawn from the ranks a people never averse
from subjecting their rulers to the wholesome test of ridicule."
|
A many-sided movement to create a Scottish National Drama and to provide
Scotland with an adequate theatrical service has been making headway during the
past few years. It is fitting that the
Satire
- albeit only in abridged, bowdlerised, and modernised form - is to be put on
at the second Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama. Unless it
is shortened and "purified" out of all resemblance to the original, that will
serve in some sort as a test to show whether Scotland stands where it did in
open contempt of the Powers-That-Be, whether the commonalty to-day will respond
as their predecessors did.upwards of four centuries ago, and whether anything
like the same freedom is accorded to the arts in Scotland to-day as was enjoyed
then. It will not be anything like a complete test none of these issues will
be clearly and challengingly joined in this revival of Lindsay's
Satire
. That is welcome enough in itself.
There can have been precious few, if any, productions of it in Scotland (and
none anywhere else, of course !) since its first performances at Cupar,
Linlithgow and Edinburgh round about 1540. Though we have dramatists in
Scotland to-day of the calibre of " James Bridie," Paul Vincent Carroll, Gordon
Daviot, William Douglas Home, and best of all, Robert MacLellan, none of them
are dealing with "dynamite" - the authorities are not likely to fall foul of
them, or their audiences to riot in protest against them ; in so far as they
deal with live issues, these are of a minor order. This applies to all of
them, except the author of the present play. In so far as we have one, he is
the Sir David Lindsay de nos jours ; Lindsay would have been a greater
dramatist (and the whole history of Scottish drama very different) if he had
been also the Ewan MacColl of the sixteenth century.
MacColl's work is radically different from everything to which modern Scottish
theatre-goers have been accustomed-and modern English theatre-goers, too, for
the matter of that. It deals fearlessly and dynamically with the crucial
problems of our own day and generation. It is forward-looking, and for its
effective production demands the utilisation of all the most advanced
theatrical means. It is the work of one fully aware of, and working for,
1'avant garde in the theatre the world over and, therefore, it is also, like
Sir David Lindsay's, written for the commonalty and certain to appeal to them
tremendously whenever they get a chance to see and hear it. It is not easy for
such a dramatist to come by such a chance in this fourth decade of the
Twentieth Century. MacColl has suffered from political victimisation. The way
has been made hard for him in every connection by the stooges of the status
quo, despite the tributes his work has evoked from George Bemard Shaw and Scan
O'Casey.
Arthur Rimbaud spat contemptuously on almost the whole succession of preceding
French poets. MacColl has expectorated in like fashion against contemporary
English (and Scottish) playwrights ; and, worse still, against London West-End
standards, and the whole confraternity of authors, managers, producers, and
actors of our theatredom of to-day. He did not think it worth-while to appeal
to any ready-made public; with his friends of Theatre Workshop he took his
plays to places that had never had a theatre before, and played to audiences
that had never seen any theatrical Production before-and carried them by storm.
The enthusiasm of these working-class audiences, uncontaminated by any
previous acquaintance with the commercial theatre, little read in bourgeois
literature, and mercifully devoid of all but a minimum of our so-called
"popular education," was an eye-opener. It " blew the gaff " with a vengeance
on all other play-writing and producing in Great Britain to-day-and for an
incredibly long time back.
To couple MacColl's name with Sir David Lindsay's is not absurd. That coupling
is the accurate measure of the distance Ewan MacColl and his colleagues had to
travel back to reconnect with the true tradition of the theatre. It was hard
going, and plenty of enemies were encountered to see that everything possible
was done to aggravate, and nothing to mitigate, the hardships of the
enterprise. Nevertheless, Theatre Workshop played almost without a break for
nearly two years to audiences in Lancashire., Yorkshire, Northumberland,
Cumberland, Westmorland, and, later, Scotland and in Germany. Most of these
engagements were in halls and small theatres which were, in general, unsuited
to their purpose. Yet they got their audiences, and laid the foundation of a
whole new system of acting and production.
To have an experimental theatre of his own in this way has been an immense
advantage to MacColl - just as, per contra, MacColl's work was the staple of
the company's activities. Mrs. Winifred Bannister was right when, stressing
these mutual advantages, she said: "If an experimental theatre - and this
[Theatre Workshop] is the only theatre in this country advancing the theory of
drama through a revolutionary technique - can keep its head above water without
subsidy for a year, it must be said to have unique qualities, especially when
such a theatre has devoted most of its time to playing in industrial centres to
dramatically uneducated audiences. The vital methods of Theatre Workshop make
the average production look like Victorian charades. This young company has
worked hard and made many sacrifices to hew out a new technique of presentation
and production which has the stamp of contemporary life. The lively methods of
this company reflect the determination of the young to pull up the dead wood;
to grow from the seed instead of pruning plants which are better dead."
Ewan MacColl's principal plays to date - and he is still a young man -
are_Johnny Noble, Rogue's Gallery, Blitz Song, Uranium 235, and Operation Olive
Branch - a tale of progressive achievement which establishes him (apart
altogether from his great mission as a revivalist of true theatrical values and
destroyer of false standards - and apart, too, from the related matter of his
literary value, since plays can be effective in production though their purely
literary value may be small) as by far the most important and promising young
dramatist writing in English, or any dialect of English, at the present time.
Of the production of Johnny Noble the more perceptive critics had no hesitation
in saying that it was a perfect example of team work and it was doubtful if
groupings had ever been more naturally achieved (or seemingly so). " Some of
the mass movement here is really beautiful and effective, and the whole play is
extremely moving." Again, of the present play, Uranium 235, the Glasgow Herald
said: " It is described on a publicity sheet as a vivid portrayal of the
history of atomic research and the problems raised by the atom bomb.' That does
less than justice to this moving and beautiful modern morality. That there is
great drama in the discovery of the atom bomb and all it implies is obvious,
but many dramatists Would have been equally obvious in their treatment of such
a theme, in which, no doubt, secret agents and dictators would have been
prominent. Not so, MacColl, to whom the spiritual values are the realities.
The result is an absorbing play, although 'play ' is hardly the right
description. Rather is it an absorbing experience to watch and listen to his
ideas on the stage, expressed by speech, mime, dances, and song. Using this
method, peculiarly suitable to the ideas he has to express, the playwright
tells the story of mankind through the past 2,500 years, his struggle against
stupidity and. ignorance, his misuse of science - 'We searchers after
knowledge, we hunted men,' says one of the characters and his undying spirit.
A noble conception, the work of a man with something to say. 'Uranium 235' has
never a hint of pretentiousness or preciousness, a trap waiting for so many who
use mime and dance in a work of this kind. There is, too, real poetry in the
dialogues and monologues."
From this documentary play dealing with the problems raised by the recent
discovery of methods for utilising atomic energy, and tracingthe history of
thought into the fundamental nature of things from Democritus to the present,
held together by. dramatisation of contemporary events relevent to the theme,
back to the documentary ballad-opera of Johnny Noble, Ewan MacColl has already
covered an immense field in pursuit of his unchanging purpose, and amply
justified the claim of Ian Mhor writing in Reynolds that " the little
Perthshire town of Auchterarder has produced a truly great dramatist." I
entirely agree with him, and, privy as I am to some of MacColl's more recent
work and plans for future development, I have no hesitation in believing that,
if health and harness hold, Ewan MacColl will substantiate that claim during
the next few years by completing a body of work in the field of drama beyond
comparison greater alike in quality and quantity dm that of any other
playwright Scotland has yet produced. I have no doubt of his first-rate
significance for the whole future of drama, or of his great creative
potentialities (apart from stage production altogether) as a writer and
political and aesthetic thinker. This is the first of his plays to be
published. It is an honour to have been asked to write these few words of
introduction, inadequate as they are, to the vitally important work of my
compatriot and friend, and to express the confident hope that the publication
of Uranium 235 will be the forerunner of the appearance of the whole notable
sequence and progressive development of a creative enterprise of which Scotland
has been singularly destitute for four long centuries and is perhaps too dazed
by this sudden unheralded resumption to assess at its true worth, which is
unquestionably very great.
|
