Catastrophe Practice

NICHOLAS MOSLEY

Plays for Not Acting
and
Cypher: A Novel

To
VERITY

Supposing truth to be a woman — what?
Is the suspicion not well founded
that all philosophers, when they have
been dogmatists, have had little
understanding of women?

What meaning would our whole being
possess if it were not this — that
in us the will to truth becomes
conscious of itself as a problem.

NIETZSCHE

Introduction

SKYLITE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

LANDFALL

ACT I

ACT II

CELL

CYPHER

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

A Note on the Author

Catastrophe Practice
was the first book to be written in the series that carries its name. It was a seed for the other books —
Imago Bird, Serpent, Judith, Hopeful Monsters
. It was to be seen as a seed; but a seed is perhaps best looked at after its fruits.

The idea behind
Catastrophe Practice
was: in our lives we are all to some extent actors on a stage; we perform roles in accordance with ‘scripts' that have been given us — by heredity, by upbringing, by society. But there is a part of us that knows that this is not quite the point; that what matters is what, as it were, goes on off-stage.

The characters in
Plays For Not Acting
struggle to convey this to an audience — ‘You know don't you, that we are all for the most part stuck in this or that script; but the fact that we can know this, is not this the point?' This is how there might be being born, nurtured — although we seem unable to talk about this much — some understanding, pattern, of what might be being created off-stage.

In the short novel
Cypher
the actors are seen in what might be called their ordinary lives. Of course they are still actors! But because they are aware of this they carry with them the style — standing back from themselves, watching and listening — of whatever it is that might be being born.

Interwoven with the plays and the novel are four essays, the results of reading to discover what wider backing there might be for these ideas. It seemed that the need for a new form of understanding was not something arbitrarily imposed.

The title ‘Catastrophe Practice' was suggested by a mathematical theory of the 1970s — Catastrophe Theory — which explained how evolution, change, might take place in sudden jumps. So — could not humans practise to be ready for such a jump? The title also arose from the idea that the human race
has in fact reached a point at which old role-playing, old ‘scripts', have become too dangerous: the liking for antagonism, for drama, for tragedy and farce, will have to be balanced by a further style of understanding if humans are not simply to blow themselves up.

Biologists tell us that there is always the chance of hitherto unnurtured seeds turning up. What humans can do is to prepare the ground — material or mental — on which one seed rather than another might grow.

I have made some slight alterations to the original 1979 edition. Now that the further works of fiction in the series, more straightforward in form, have been written, it is natural that there should be some modification to the seed.

Nicholas Mosley
London, 1991

SKYLIGHT
LANDFALL
CELL

To act is to do and to pretend.

What are we doing that is not
pretending when we know that
we are acting?

Anthropologists explain how the rituals and myths of primitive people are expressions of ambiguities that a person feels but cannot readily comprehend — himself as an individual and yet a member of a group, as part of both a natural environment and a culture, as possessing instincts for self-preservation and yet for self-sacrifice for a whole. These impressions are inescapable yet disturbing: the mind tends to be logical yet processes that inform it apparently are not For the mind to be placated as it were — for experience to seem not too much at odds with that which comprehends it — there have to be glimpses of a unity in which such ambiguities can be held This, traditionally, has been a function of art. The myths and totems of primitive people are reconciling expressions of individuality-with-group, of consciousness-with-nature, of sacrifice-with-survival. If there cannot be a direct language with which to try to deal with these things, there can be a code.

In classical ages tragedy dealt with this kind of predicament — the way in which a person felt himself to be both a free and responsible agent and yet at the mercy of the gods — or of his past, or of society. What happened to him was ordained: yet he experienced it as his fault. By the stylised enactment of such predicaments on a stage an audience was comforted: an individual was reassured that his pitifulness was universal. His condition, however, still did not make much sense.

In an age when it was imagined that a man was no longer helpless but the potential master of his fate there was a decline in the force of tragedy but the experience of helplessness remained then melodrama flourished, in which helplessness was acted by actors, and watched by audiences, as something that could not happen to them. There was a division between,
rather than a co-existence within, the actor and that which he was acting; between what a person in the audience saw and what he felt of himself; between people like ‘us' and people like ‘them'. In ages of so-called enlightenment, what audiences were apt to appreciate were characters like automata.

Comedy remained a reassurance, in which helplessness was portrayed, and pretensions of control were mocked, even by characters that seemed sympathetic. But with anxiety allayed by laughter there was still a gulf between the pleasure felt by an audience and the discomfiture shown by characters on a stage; still the division, that is, between ‘us' and ‘them'. Characters in a comedy, to be satisfying, had to be simple, all-of-a-piece; then ridiculousness could be condescended to, discomfiture could give pleasure: realities of feeling had been cut out. But the complexities of feeling of a member of an audience were real: ambiguities were lulled, but remained unassuaged.

Modern playwrights have written in some recognition of this — the gulf between the ways in which people are pleased to see others and the experiences they feel within themselves. There has been a Theatre of Cruelty — by which audiences are supposed to be bludgeoned into an increased sensitivity: a Theatre of the Absurd — in which what is communicated often beautifully (and thus comfortingly) is that people cannot communicate. In all this there is the impression that these playwrights know much more than they say by their craft they presuppose the existence of order and meaning, yet their plays state nothing of that of which this order and meaning consist. The art of their productions, that is, belies their pretensions of meaninglessness. And this in fact seems to be a latter-day predicament people can indeed be articulate about despair: what is difficult to be articulate about is the fact of their articulateness.

Brecht was a playwright who saw something of all this: who hoped that the point of a play might be not to try to reassure audiences but to make them think: to provide not comfort but change. A play, Brecht said, should be a demonstration: it should not be a presentation of characters simple and all-of-a-piece because this falsified reality: a play should be for a
practical purpose and have a meaning. Imagine, Brecht said, there has been a street accident and an eye-witness is trying to explain to bystanders what has taken place. For this to be done properly — for bystanders to be able to make a correct assessment of what occurred — what is patently not required is for the demonstrator to struggle to make his characters simple and self-consistent: if he does — if the bystanders are sufficiently carried away to exclaim for instance ‘What a fine portrayal of a chauffeur!' — then the point of the demonstration is lost, which is not to show off, but to explain an occurrence. A demonstrator should not ‘cast a spell' over his audience: should not ‘transport them from normality to higher realms'. Above all, he should not foster the delusion that the audience is watching anything other than an illusion. A demonstrator ‘never forgets, nor does he allow it to be forgotten, that he is not the subject but the demonstrator . . . the feelings and opinions of the demonstrator and demonstrated are not merged into one'. For a latter-day predicament, Brecht realised — following on from those of primitive and classical ages — was to do not so much with ignorance as with knowledge: not a terror at almost unimaginable contradictions, but an inability to make acceptable sense of what in some ways was known very well — the fact that a person is not simple and self-consistent; he is aware of this himself; the part of him that is aware is different from the part it is aware of; his feelings both of control and of helplessness are valid. But there might be some chance now, in what Brecht called a ‘scientific' age, for these complexities to be comprehended in some unifying form in which men might be able to observe, reconcile, even demonstrate themselves: instead of treating themselves — and thus the world — as either disastrous or absurd.

The practical purpose of Brecht's ‘epic' theatre was, he used to say, the promulgation of Marxism — the furthering of the interests of the working class and the confounding of those of the bourgeoisie. But to anyone seeing or reading Brecht's plays this function is not clear: his working-class characters seem neither less nor more inept than any others. Brecht explained that the hearts he wanted to change were those not of his
characters but of his audience. But there was still the question — How could an audience be changed if what was being demonstrated was that, socially, people did not change? And Brecht saw himself above all as an agent of change: ‘What matters most is that a new human type should be evolving, and the entire interest of the world should be concentrated on his development.' Towards the end of his life Brecht himself seemed to see this predicament; and to suggest that his commitment to Marxism, which could easily be put into words, might be a cover for something quite different, which could not. After his death there was a note found among his papers — ‘An effort is now being made to move on from the epic theatre to the dialectical theatre; we envisage a sizeable transformation.' He did not live to elucidate what this transformation might be. But he left hints. In his last message to his Berliner Ensemble he wrote — ‘Our playing needs to be quick, light, strong. This is not a question of hurry, but of speed; not simply of quick playing, but quick thinking … In the dialogue exchanges must not be offered reluctantly as when offering someone one's last pair of boots, but must be tossed like so many balls. The audience has to see that there are a number of artists working together as a collective ensemble in order to convey stories, ideas, virtuoso feats to the spectator by common effort.' This was more than a statement about technique: it was a statement about what technique should be about — an effort to express the ‘more' that playwrights know but do not readily give substance to — the business of thinking, of imagination, of creativity itself. For it is here, in the recognition of a man's natural and inherent imaginative processes — a glimpse into the way in which he constructs his view of the world — that a man can stand back and see himself; can meet with others who are doing likewise; and thus have some freedom, being both separate from his hitherto controlling impulses and yet in contact with them, with a chance of changing them. And it is by men seeing themselves as all-of-a-piece that there is their solitariness and helplessness. What should be demonstrated in a play, Brecht seemed to suggest, was not a social blueprint for change, because this in fact does not bring change: but rather
the condition through which, with humans, the idea of change exists — its style and substance — because this might bring change, through its recognition. Brecht quoted with approval the example of the Chinese actor who ‘never acts as though there were a fourth wall beside the three that surround him; he expresses his awareness of being observed … observes himself … will occasionally look at the audience and say “Isn't it just like that?” at the same time observing his own legs and arms, adducing them, testing them, finally approving them'. This was the sort of acting, the sort of theatre, suitable for an audience of the ‘scientific' age. It expressed the way in which people did in fact think — might in fact change — within some interaction (difficult to express) between the watcher and the watched; the ‘I' that thinks and the ‘I' that it thinks about; these both being observed, comprehended, from some further point of thinking. And it was by becoming as it were at home there — at this further point — that a person might become at home with others doing the same; rather than everyone being trapped in lonely self-projections. And it was by this becoming-accustomed that there might be the evolution of ‘a new human type'. For the predicament of modern ‘scientific' man was not only (nor even primarily) his alienation from society but this alienation within himself — the split between what he knew, especially about himself, and his ability to come to terms with this knowing. It was this that brought him to lack of communicativeness and despair; and to his cruel but futile rites to allay these. But if a man could no longer be comforted by traditional symbols, perhaps he could still be given hope by symbols from this further point of thinking — symbols which could move back from, look at, the old symbols, as well as that which they had once so helplessly (but now perhaps no longer) been about.