Beginning in the mid-1970s, there were numerous productions of The Good Person of Szechwan in the United States that were highly stylized (a trend that would continue into the 1990s). Shen Teh declines to use it, but Shui Ta is not above taking advantage of the situation; he fills in an absurd amount, 10,000 silver dollars. Besides, the meanness of Mrs. Mi Tzu and the decency of Wang—among others—make it difficult to maintain that the play is awash in moral sexual stereotyping. Kleber, Pia. Rather, the parable form enables Brecht to subject such doctrines to pleasurable critique. In a much-quoted essay, Sarah Lennox asserts, “a major virtue of [Brecht’s] mother figure is her willingness to be instrumentalized, serving others while ignoring her own subjective needs.” Anne Herrmann goes further: “By placing the mother in the female subject position, Brecht not only desexualizes her, but also insists on biological differences as they were used and misused by both the sex reformers of the Weimar Republic and the Nazis of the Third Reich.” Of course, Shen Teh occupies this “subject position” for seven-eighths of the play before she becomes a potential mother. Along with the Method mania of the mainstream, these gurus could support a, “ALL THIS INVOKING, DISMISSING, EXTOLLING, AND REVILING HAS OFTEN MISSED THE DEEPEST FEMINIST IMPLICATIONS OF BRECHT’S EPIC THEATER. cast. Yet Shen Teh is not as thoroughly good and kind as charged by those who accuse Brecht of flattening her into an object lesson: early in the scene she’s so absorbed in her infatuation that she fails to notice Wang’s suffering. Each scene illustrates a sin that must be avoided if one is to make a buck—but each of these, of course, is really a virtue. For instance, a person who is unemployed or has serious financial troubles is likely to have more difficulty finding a partner, while a person with a high income will probably be seen as more desirable. And at the same time she demonstrates how she performs another role, which parallels her pointed-to actorly effort: Shen Teh playing Shui Ta. What enables him to move ahead on “the play that gave me the hardest time” is his working out the form that could bring his parallel concerns together: the parable. However, Shui Ta is a realist. War was not officially declared against Japan until late in 1941. At the end of the play, many people she has helped wonder where she has gone to. To that end, Shui Ta is arrested. Wang mentions that Shui Ta has been uncharitable, and the gods are not pleased with the cousin’s actions. On these occasions, the audience is informed of what is going to happen and the characters’ feelings about these events. At the end of the play, he does seem to have some feelings for Shen Teh. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Shu Fu is in love with her, and is rebuffed, but acts only out of this feeling. Poverty drives them all to desperation, and the gods generally seem indifferent to how this affects both the good and the bad. Once again, it is clear that Yang Sun acts as a prostitute, not a lover. Mrs. Yang assures him that she has sent for Shui Ta. When they finally arrive, the monologue stops. Even though Brecht’s image of motherhood here is not exactly sweet and touching—Shen Teh says she’ll treat others like a “tiger and a wild beast”—and even though the image is distanced by an ironic reversal—becoming a bad man enables her to be a good mother—some critics point especially at this scene to nail Brecht with their charge of misogyny. When Yang Sun needs 500 silver dollars to obtain a pilot’s job, he convinces Shen Teh to give him the 200 silver dollars she just obtained from the carpet-dealer and his wife. Sun is delayed—pathetically in terms of our feeling for Shen Teh; comically in terms of the gag of making the flow of wine the celebration’s hourglass—because Yang Sun and his mother await Shui Ta, who, they hope, will bring money. Inside the courtroom, the three gods oversee Shui Ta’s hearing. We in the audience already know this; Yang Sun and his mother aren’t meant to—and don’t—understand what she means. “The Alienated Woman: Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan, in Essays on Brecht: Theater and Politics, edited by Siegfried Mews and Herbert Knust, The University of North Carolina Press, 1974, pp. Source: Clare Cross, for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000. The war in China created a desperate refugee situation in China, similar to that in Europe. Alice Chunyan Zhou and Henry Etzkowitz. If the gods had not given her money, as they were initially inclined not to, Shen Teh would still have been good but not so pressured to do more than she already had been doing. “Brecht Play Is Staged by Eric Bentley,” The New York Times, December 19, 1956, p. 41. Because of this focus, the play does not seem to be intended to be a reflection of the actual social, cultural and political life in China at that time, although the play Wang tells them that Shen Teh is in love with Sun, and has remained good. Shen Teh also becomes pregnant by Yang Sun, and feels she must provide for her child. This is another factor in the creation of the Shui Ta persona, though Shui Ta cannot talk Mi Tzu out of the price. When the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s, Brecht and his works were banned. ." The barbarity turns out to be not that the woman so masquerades, but that, when discovered, she is fired, even arrested, and her job given to “one whose legs chanced to have between them the organ recorded on his birth certificate.” The story treats gender as an artificial construction that serves male dominance, which Brecht seems to regard as an auxiliary to capitalism. Sun overhears the weeping, believes that Shui Ta is holding Shen Teh prisoner in the backroom. In the 1960s, the Beatles sang, “I don’t care too much for money. In a public park, Shen Teh comes upon a young pilot, Yang Sun, preparing to hang himself. In other words, revealing the process by which she takes steps in Shui Ta’s manner and sings in his voice, the actor calls attention to the analogy between her activity and Shen Teh’s. Shen Teh agrees. Barnes, Clive. In exchange for his love, Yang Sun demands a trip to Peking and the price of a bribe for a pilot’s job. More important, our recognition of Shen Teh behind the mask of Shui Ta (and of an actor behind Shen Teh) encourages us to consider other points of view from which Shui Ta (and Shen Teh) might be presented. By separating them from the body to which these characteristics are thought to be fused, the actor reveals how gender behavior is constituted. No act of kindness on Shen Teh’s part has an ulterior motive or is regretted after the fact. She uses them to house those without homes, until scene seven when Shui Ta gets tough and decides to build a tobacco factory business out of stolen property. Then Shui Ta goes into the back room. The song comes nearly halfway through the play, several scenes after we’ve seen Shen Teh disguised as her shrewd cousin. At the same time, if we feel like satisfied backers of a winning team when Shui Ta throws the freeloaders out, it’s because it looks like justice is prevailing, and Shui Drama for Students. Authors; Authors and affiliations; Ronald Speirs; Chapter. Some members of the elderly couple’s family ask if they can leave some ill-gotten tobacco in her back room. What “The Song of Defenselessness” says parallels this stage action. Shen Te is able to pay her rent as a prostitute and could survive economically as a rich man’s life, but her love for Yang Sun turns out to be a luxury she cannot afford. The reason goodness fails, however, is not because of goodness itself. sought to achieve the same ebb and flow of sympathy and antipathy with many of his protagonists—Mother Courage as victim and villain, Galileo as scholar and cheat, Puntila as humanist and misanthrope, Azdak as wiseman and bum. As it stands, the money forces Shen Teh to be consciously, if not detrimentally, good. The one character who wants the most from Shen Teh is Yang Sun. Adapted by Tony Kushner. Shui Ta realizes that Sun does not love Shen Teh. CRITICAL OVERVIEW His act of goodness leads to personal stress. Later Shen Teh gives him her cart to sell so that he can go to a doctor. I sleep alone. This performance-based video follows a single female character, moving in the margins of a modern urban Chinese environment. He wrote, “La Jolla Playhouse’s extraordinary synergy with Bertolt Brecht continues with this superlative presentation, with Lisa Peterson demonstrating why the playwright, directed properly, is timeless.” A 1999 production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival featured a different translation, but was similarly American in its feel. “The Good Person of Szechwan” Review – Cal Shakes Puts Bertolt Brecht to Song. The Good Person of Szechwan is a purely Marxist play that deals with the social conditions of its milieu and how the people who are put in those situations react to it and towards one another. Shen Teh is essentially left to resolve the crisis of her identity on her own. At first the freeloaders dismiss him: “But that was a joke.” But almost at once they come to grant him the authority of his imposing presence. He rejected the bourgeois values of his youth, and had a keen understanding of the differences between Catholics and Protestants. As she speaks, the whole story is acted out. The Good Person of Szechwan contains examples of:. Good Person doesn’t merely declare that a moral life is incompatible with capitalism; it lets us observe this tenet from a variety of angles, and asks us to consider its accuracy, cause, meaning, value. Brecht formed the Berliner Ensemble, which debuted in 1949. However, Shui Ta learns that Yang Sun plans to leave her behind when he takes the job and does not really love her. Brecht famous parable, showing that in aggressive and unjust societies good can only survive by means of evil, was written in 1939-41, while Brecht was in flight from the Nazis in Scandinavia. Three hours, five minutes. In the second half of the play, one reason Shen Teh feels she has to be Shui Ta is because of her troubled relationship with Yang Sun. SOURCES By 1970, when a new professional production in New York City’s Vivian Beaumont Theater opened, Brecht’s ideas had been widely discussed and studied. He is interested in Shen Te only for her money. When three gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person, they encounter Shen Teh, a goodhearted … To deal with the demands created by being good and somewhat prosperous (with the gift from the gods), Shen Teh is compelled to create a heartless, male alter ego, her “cousin” Shui Ta. Evening StandardThree gods come to earth hoping to discover one really good person. The time of the play is not specified, in part because the play is a parable (a story which intends to teach a lesson). Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. As soon as she does, many people take advantage of her kind nature. That love nearly leads her to disaster. The next morning, Shen Teh tells the gods that she cannot make a living though she tries to be good. I said to myself, now I can be a deadhead, and it won’t matter.” Here, Shen Teh switches to verse: “I’m rich, I said to myself. The former owner, Mrs. Shin, begs for rice and money. Show More. Critics did not find. By 1943, some Depression-era legislation was challenged by Congress. We always perceive Shui Ta as an impersonation performed by Shen Teh; simultaneously, we understand that Shen Teh is herself an impersonation created by the actor; therefore, she elicits no more unexamined empathy than does the less affecting Shui Ta, despite her more appealing nature. First he plans to talk only about ideas with her, then have her fall in love with him. When the gods depart, they tell her to continue to be good, and to use the Shui Ta identity only once a month. What happens in their little imitation is complicated. To ensure the success of her business and to secure some hope of being able to do good, Shen Teh invents a male persona, a cousin named Shui Ta. mustn’t see her gentleman or they’ll know what she is.” It should be noted here that Wong refers to what Shen Te is, not what she does. Any critique of Brecht’s use of gender in Good Person must begin with this principle—but few of them do. The American language also reflects the connection between love and sex; today, the term “making love” is most often used as a euphemism for sex. Most feminist readings of the play call for a materialist feminist assessment, but pay no attention to the most significant materialist fact: that the play is meant to be performed, in epic style, on a stage before an audience. In the same year, Brecht worked with some of the Good Person themes in a short story called “The Job, or In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou fail to earn thy bread.” The story is based on a true account of a woman who posed as her husband after he died, in order to take a job promised to him. They do not marry because Shui Ta does not come to their wedding and pay out 300 silver dollars. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht. Brecht, he wrote, “invigorated the modern theater by establishing a stage technique which does away with theatrical illusion and appeals directly to the imagination and the intellect.”. The Yangs also seem to have some money, though not enough for Yang Sun to buy his pilot’s job. Translated by Wendy Arons. In addition, she sues Yang Sun for breach of marriage and is able to force him to work off the money she has already given him. A master in embodying both good and evil in his characters, Brecht allows the audience to decide for themselves what is right or wrong. Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this The Good Person of Szechwan study guide. She is a prostitute who give the gods lodging in her home when no one else will. While some of the songs in The Good Person of Szechwan address the audience in a direct fashion, especially Shen Teh’s “Song of the Defencelessness of the Good and the Gods,” there are several instances in which the actors directly speak to the play’s viewers. As Shui Ta attempting to sell Yang Sun to Mrs. Mi Tzu, Shen Te abandons emotion and treats love as a business transaction. Exceptions and Rules: Brecht, Planchon and The Good Person of Szechwan, Peter Lang, 1987. The gods want her to be good, but cannot tell her how to stay that way. This equilibrium is maintained through a sly paradox of acting: Shen Teh’s character, in conventional theatrical terms, is “unbelievable”—could anyone really be so naive, we have to ask in the face of her unmitigated generosity toward the exploitative freeloaders. Like Benedick’s stating the-obvious remark, “This looks not like a nuptial,” in Much Ado About Nothing, Shen Teh’s line pulls the scene away from the precipice of melodrama. Another is tone. Wang hides, fearing their wrath. The sale makes Shin a pauper, and she demands rice and money from the prostitute. Lin To is the carpenter who built the shelving and fixtures in Shen Teh’s tobacco store. 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