CANGIULLO’S TWO MINUTE FUTURIST PLAY

Francesco Cangiullo (1884-1977) was an Italian author, playwright and painter who after he met the movement’s founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), became actively engaged in the development of Futurism.  The year when this initial meeting took place in Naples was 1910, but Cangiullo’s official entry into Futurism is recorded in 1913.

It was 1915 when Cangiullo wrote his play Detonation (Detonazione). The entire script for this

play appears below:

   

______________________________________________________________________________                                                                        

DETONATION

                                                Synthesis of All Modern Theater

                                                            CHARACTER

A BULLET

Road at night, cold, deserted.

A minute of silence. –A gunshot.    

                                                               CURTAIN

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I believe Detonation was written to provide an example of the criterion for the perfect Futurist Synthetic Theatre drama.  In 1915 the manifesto titled THE FUTURIST SYNTHETIC THEATRE was written by Marinetti, Emilio Settimelli (1891-1954) and Bruno Corra (1892-1976).  The manifesto stressed modernity through sensations, speed, movement and industrial development. The idea was to compress the entire drama into a few minutes while the play created for the viewer multiple situations, sensations, ideas, symbols and facts. The Futurists wanted to destroy the theater inherited from Ancient Greece and replace it with “creating synthetic expressions of cerebral energy that have THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF NOVELTY.”  The Futurists also wanted their theatre to excite audiences who were to forget the monotony of daily life by being swept through a labyrinth of sensations that were combined in unpredictable ways.

The Futurists also had a political agenda for their dramatic presentations. Their aim across all their artistic endeavors was to express themes of war and conflict.  These broad themes were to urge Italy to immediately enter the war since Futurists, like the Expressionists, believed war would provide a social cleansing.

Detonation not only fulfills the philosophic and artistic requirements of the Futurists, but it expresses several of the basic impulses the Futurists wanted audience members to experience. Did hearing a single gunshot during the night in 1915, signal the start of war for Italy? Did it mean war had entered one’s city? Did it make some individuals want to join the battle? Did it make audience members want to hide or flee? This moment of theatre had the potential for audience members to generate many individual reactions.

The Futurists held their theatrical events in large regional cities (Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, etc.) and the performances were widely publicized. The plays and speeches were held outdoors in large public spaces. Martinetti believed that in 1915 ninety percent of the Italian population attended theatrical performances while only the remaining ten percent read books. He wanted audiences to forget the monotony of their lives and become swept away with the novelty, energy and ideas that Synthetic Theater provided.

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Since Detonation appears to possess all the elements desired for successful Synthetic Theatre and the timing for its creation being 1915, I imagine it as the perfect piece to present during the year that Italy entered the conflict one step at a time. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, but on May 3, 1915 it revoked its membership. On May 23, 1915 the Italian government declared war on Austria-Hungary but deferred any declaration regarding Germany; August 20, 1915 declared war on Turkey; October 15, 1915 declared war on Bulgaria and August 28, 1916 declared war on Germany. It was this slow pace of inching in to the major war fronts that frustrated the Futurists and prompted them to keep pushing their agenda to the Italian citizenry.

Were these plays successful in their time? Obviously, the Futurists were never able to destroy conventional theatre as they desired.  I have not read any reviews about these Futurist performances, however, John H. Muse in his book titled Microdramas: Crucibles For The Theater and Time states: “Professional theater critics rarely took the Futurists seriously enough to bother attending their events, so responses come primarily from other newspaper staff.” 

Apparently, the Futurists’ evenings provided curious, thought-provoking free entertainment to keep attracting audiences throughout Italy. However, Professor Muse comments: “audiences complained that performances of the sintesi were too slow.”  This refers to the entire evening of these plays since “the plays were very short and the intervals very long.”  It is hard to hold an audience when the total length of ten plays during an evening was approximately thirty minutes while the length of the entire program was two hours.

This structure for an evening of plays may have occurred from time to time; however, I am under the impression that other Futurist events such as political speeches, visual art presentations, etc. filled the time that it took to set-up the next short play.  It is also possible that the programing for the Futurist evenings may have varied from one city to the next.

The initial movement of Futurism was concluded by the end of World War One. 

REINHARD SORGE’S THE BEGGAR (DER BETTLER)

In 1911, Reinhard Johannes Sorge (1892-1916) wrote The Beggar. Its subtitle is “A Dramatic Mission.”  It is the first full-length Expressionist drama to be published. This occurred in 1912 when S. Fischrt Publisher, located in Berlin, released the first edition. The Beggar received the Kleist Prize in the same year as its publication. 

The Beggar dramatizes several early expressionist elements. During the initial period of expressionism’s development, events in a drama relating to real life experiences are generalized even though they may reflect occurrences from the playwright’s actual life. Sorge’s drama illustrates how the revolutionary expressionists were envisioning the initial step to improve life for humankind. This was believed to be through the demise of the parental generation and eventually through war. The initial group of expressionists believed war was necessary in order to cleanse the world.

During World War One many young expressionists realized that war was not going to help accomplish their ideal society.  Sorge, who was a soldier in the German army, may have changed his original thinking on this issue prior to his death in France on July 20, 1916.  He was mortally wounded during the battle at Albaincourt.

The Beggar is a five-act play; however, the playwright recommended that Act Five not be performed since the action of this drama is contained in the first three acts. When Walter Sokel (1917-2014) and his wife, Jacqueline Sokel, translated the play into English (c.1963), they omitted both Acts Four and Five since these sections of the play consist primarily of lyrical monologues delivered by the protagonist and reportedly are concerned with his spiritual development.

  

The Beggar is set in Berlin. Act One concerns The Poet and how he envisions advancing his career as a playwright. There are scenes that take place in different locations, however Sorge envisioned the change of location to be accomplished almost instantly through lighting changes and utilization of different parts of the stage.  There is a flow from one scene to another that is similar to contemporary theatre.

Throughout Act One successful characters who desire to assist The Poet build his career as a playwright are introduced, but he refuses all their generous offers. He has his own set of ideals which may well have matched Sorge’s personal wishes making this segment of the play appear to be autobiographical.

Act Two is devoted to introducing The Poet’s father as well as his mother and sister.  The insane Father believes he is currently well enough to dismiss his attendant, but later in the act The Father requests The Poet (who is now called The Son) to give him poison. There is also The Girl who appears briefly in each act. She becomes the protagonist’s beloved in just a few short glimpses.

                                    ONE OF STERN'S RENDERINGS FOR THE BEGGAR

 

Act Three is set in the family’s garden. The Son and his mother enjoy the birch tree during this Spring moment. The birch tree is the symbol of new beginnings, regeneration and hope for the future.  When the Father returns home, he has completed his work and is ready to die. The poison business is dragged out a bit, but it is finally successful.  The surprise is that The Mother also knowingly drinks the poison and following her death, Son speaks of her love for him.  Since I read Sokel’s English translation of this play, I cannot address in more detail Acts Four and Five other than what I have mentioned above.

The question in one’s mind at this point may be who is The Beggar? Is it The Father who repeatedly asks his son to give him poison? This seems a logical first guess. However, I do not know of any other play where the protagonist’s name changes in the script the way this one does—The Poet (Der Dichter), The Son (Der Sohn) and The Young Man (Der Jungling) is his name in the last two acts.  Is the protagonist of the play the character to whom the title is referencing? Does The Poet/Son/Young Man continually need to seek his identity and place in life from those who may have a degree of control over him? 

Despite the play’s literary reputation, it was not performed until December 23,1917. It was produced and directed by Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater and starred the expressionist actor Ernst Deutsch (1890-1969) as The Poet/Son. Reinhardt had purchased the rights to stage The Beggar in 1913, but he waited until political conditions in Germany had begun to change. Gusti Adler, Reinhardt’s secretary for twenty years, wrote in his biography,  But do not forget the Chinese Nightengales: Memories of Max Reinhardt, that Reinhardt produced this play when Germany “was in flux, as in a bubbling volcano.”  Adler also mentions that Reinhardt waited to stage The Beggar until he found a method of presenting expressionistic ideas on stage. This is a significant consideration since the acting, scenic/lighting elements, make-up and costume design all required a new style of presentation. The scenery for The Beggar was designed by Ernst Stern (1876-1954) who had been working with Reinhardt since 1906. Stern was one of Reinhardt’s leading collaborators and innovators. As a result, Stern was at the forefront of developing the scenic style for expressionistic theatre productions.

The Beggar became even more famous after Reinhardt’s production.  It was staged in major German cities including Cologne in 1919. The early expressionist plays were not performed outside of Germany until 1922 when The Theatre Guild in New York City undertook a production of From Morn to Midnight by Georg Kaiser (1878-1975).

Although The Beggar was not presented on stage in the United States and England, it was mentioned in numerous newspapers and books published after the war ended. German language newspaper articles in the United States touted the play due to its popularity in Germany on stage as well as its mention in many publications.

The Beggar was not meant to be a conventional theater piece by any stretch of the imagination. It was meant to serve as a communal experience that could begin to bring about changes in how individuals thought about society. Sorge believed it was the artist’s task to change the world and save all suffering human-beings.

PHOTO: J.L. Styan. Max Reinhardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.