The Good Person of Szechwan, extract pg 105-108: As a director, discuss how you would stage the extract in order to bring out your interpretation of it for an audience. Your answer should include justified suggestions for the direction of your cast, and for the design of the piece as appropriate to the style of the play.
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mxpcmnwlder (student)
Extract pg 105-108: As a director, discuss how you would stage the extract in order to bring out your interpretation of it for an audience. Your answer should include justified suggestions for the direction of your cast, and for the design of the piece as appropriate to the style of the play.
In this extract, the play reaches its climax, in a typically epic sequence where the audience finally see a collapse of Shen Teh's façade under the pressure of her guilt for not obeying their instruction to be good to others, and instead choosing to follow the precept of being good to oneself. It is in this sequence that Shen Teh finally reveals and explains the reasons behind her falsification of the character of Shui Ta, and due to the very Brechtian nature of this act, as I a director I would want to complement this with a very epic style of acting (Shen Teh is essentially presenting her case, much as an epic actor presents their character).
As the director, I would have the gods sitting on a raised level in this section, in order to show their distanced relationship both with Shui Ta, and the situation in Szechuan (they care fairly little for the actual lives of the people, and merely wish to fulfil their task), and how disconnected they are from reality. In order to achieve this, I would use the put the sofa from Shen Teh's shop, and have it lifted onto the counter, and then use the unit of shelving as a desk. This would be positioned with the Gods' backs to the stage right flat (rather than face on to the audience), in order to open up sight lines for when Shen Teh has to adress the Gods (however I would instruct certain parts of this to be directed to the audience anyway).
In my interpretation, I would want the Gods to be presented in the guise of archetypal Southern American businessmen, who are looking for good people as evidence that the area is worth investment. My reason for wanting to do this is to highlight the reality of how much power the Gods have, as Brecht makes it clear throughout the play that they are comparatively minor beings who answer to higher powers, and who are in fact entirely fallible and flawed in many ways (for example the first god admits 'I know nothing of business' – a fundamental failing for someone in his position). Moreover, America's symbolic status as the heartland of Capitalism, and its history of propagating capitalism around the world fits with the fact that emergent capitalism is clearly apparent in Szechuan, as well as the fact that in spite of their high ideals, good people cannot survive in the capitalist world (which in itself brings into question whether the Gods are good people themselves). In addition to this, I would want each God to speak in an American accent and to have a distinguishing piece of eye-wear; the first would have a rose-tinted monocle, the second a pair of sapphire tinted spectacles, and the third a black-tinted pince-nez, that by this point in the play will be left hanging on a gold chain around his neck (he will have removed it in the previous scene on the line 'our commandments seem fatal'). The reason I would want to do this is to make clear the distinctions between the Gods that I have observed through my reading of the text, through the colouring of the glass. To me it appeared that the first God was the most idealistic of the three, thinking predominantly in abstract, absolute ideals (hence the rose-tinted glass). The second, whilst equally adherent to the idea of the precepts, is more pessimistic, blaming the inherent weakness of man for the lack of goodness in Szechuan (hence the sapphire tint). The third also see's things in a black and white attitude initially, and fails to realise the complexity of applying absolute ideals in the real world; however in the scene prior to this extract, he realises that the world is at fault, not necessarily its inhabitants (hence the black tinted pince-nez, which he is no longer wearing by this point).
