Thus far we have deliberated on Realism
in theatre, within the rubrics of ‘Art for Truth’s Sake’ that seeks to
emphasise on a greater fidelity of real life both to texts and to their staging
as well!
Realism takes under its wings some of its
associated genres that include Naturalism, Social Comedy, Social Realism and their related ilk!
Realism hence focuses on ‘real life’
situations, real people in real life-situations, who have to grapple with
real-life’s daily problems. In short, realism on stage, seeks to focus on ‘what
people do’ and ‘why they do’ it, in a given context, and thereby holding a
mirror up to the audience themselves, by telling them all, ‘Look, this is
exactly what you guys experience in your daily lives. This play is just another
slice off your lives!’ they seem to say!
At the same time, there is yet another
realism that became prominent in theatre during the first half of the twentieth
century - psychological realism.
Psychological realism is essentially
character-driven! So instead of focusing on people at large, psychological
realism focuses on an individual character, and tells us, why they do, what
they do, by seeking to give us all a peek into their inner lives and struggles.
Most of such plays, hence seek to portray the individual vis-à-vis their
society!
One other special feature of
psychological realism is the language used by its characters, a method that was
fine-tuned to perfection at the deft hands of a Miller and a Williams! Added,
amongst this postwar duo, the latter could be said to best exemplify to this
credo! His lines were poetic at most places, with figurative language used by
his characters with such felicity!
Arthur Laurents is one such playwright of
the postwar epoch, who dabbled in psychological realism, with equal gusto and
vigour. His characters exhibit a propensity to emotional turbulences, anxieties
and self-doubts, leading to a lack of self esteem on them!
Arthur in his autobiography titled, Original Story By, I repeat, Original Story By, published in the year
2000, gives us a glimpse into his mind, his myriad themes and his major
preoccupations with psychological realism.
Hence, Arthur’s autobiography could also
be called his manifesto of sorts, as
he delineates the reasons for his character’s flaws, their misery, their
self-doubts etc. Some of his observations are real slices off life that have
such intense import!
But at the same time, Arthur Laurents is
also quite unabashed and brazen on many counts in this highly intriguing, yet
controversial read of sorts!
Well, as autobiographies are wont to do,
Arthur’s too is no exception!
So worthies first: Original Story by hence gives us all a glimpse into the reasons for
his characters’ loneliness, their inner struggles, their troubles, their
chaotic present, etc. Arthur traces them all to the fact that they don’t have
the guts to accept themselves as flawed beings! (flawsome, in today’s
parlance!)
Learning to accept themselves, with their
foibles, and their weaknesses are a single yet a major step towards self-fulfillment
in their lives, he avers. Arthur also attributes personal insecurities of some
of his lead characters, to the prejudiced, biased perspectives of society,
their cliched norms and conventions! (He says this on a personal note, too!) This
conformity to tradition and to age-old laws has taken the sanity and the peace
out of his character, oops characters, he opines!
However, Arthur in a sequel to this, his
autobiography, regrets for some of the things that he had so audaciously given
out in such brass-necked fashion!
In the sequel titled, The Rest of the Story: A Life Completed,
he doles out some apologies as a penitent prodigal son, with more of a sheepish
feel on his brass-necked defiance of the past! Interestingly he had finished
this second part to his memoir, exactly one week before he passed away in 2011.
The introduction to this second part of
his memoir has been penned by David Saint! The last few lines of the
introduction real strike a chord with us all!
Here goes –
David Saint in his Introduction to Arthur
– Arthur Laurents’s – autobiography -
The
third and last time I heard Arthur say he could no longer write was sitting
together in a waiting room at Mt. Sinai a few days before his death.
I
was trying to encourage him to fight this pneumonia, and he said,
“David
. . . my hands are shaking so badly I can’t use the computer, my vision is
blurry, I can’t write anymore. If I can’t write, I can’t live.”
I
knew then he had finished the rest of the story.
The
story was over and so was he.
That was just a vignette from off David
Saint’s introductory words to Arthur Laurents’s second part memoir!
Now over to Arthur Laurents and his
memorable lines from off his second memoir! And dear reader, it would do well
to remember that Arthur penned, this, his second part to the memoir when he was
93 years old! And within one week after he had done working on this, his
memoir, he passed away. Now that’s a literary soul of the highest literary
acumen and prowess!
Here goes a few snatches from Arthur -
This
is clearly a memoir about change. But I don’t want to just talk about change,
especially how I have changed. You have seen some of that in this chapter; you
know who I am today. But I want you to see me as I was and then witness the
changing. To accomplish that, each of the following chapters is going to be
written from the perspective I had when the events took place.
The
next chapter will, in all likelihood, contradict me, who I am today, what I
said in this chapter. The chapter after that may well contradict both, present
a very different man in the next after that. That’s what change does: it
changes your perspective. It changed mine and me. Watch.
Then he adds to say, in Chapter Two to
the book, that,
Memory
is biased. None of us is a Proust, existing in a corked roomful of memories.
Now that’s a point worth a ponder, and
that when it comes from a memoirist of his stature!
Do read this memoir and the first
(controversial) one too, if you really wanna get a feel of Arthur’s tryst with
psychological realism amongst a host of such other life’s ways and sways off
his pen!
To be continued…
image: amazondotcom
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