The Chicago Conspiracy
http://www.swans.com/library/art14/zig097.html
by Irving Wardle
June 2, 2008
[ed. The following was written as an introduction to The Chicago
Conspiracy production presented by Charles Marowitz at The Open Space
Theatre and published in 1974 by Penguin Books under the title Open
Space Plays. It is reprinted here by kind permission of the author,
Irving Wardle, who was for many years the lead drama critic of The
London Times.]
(Swans - June 2, 2008) Feliks Topolski, our most indefatigable
chronicler of current events, has described the Chicago Democratic
Convention of 1968 as one of the great theatrical experiences of his
life. And if the Convention was street theatre, the ensuing
conspiracy trial was a still more self-conscious dramatic
performance. The defendants were, and are, actors; rebels who settle
for role-playing as the most effective and enjoyable way of screwing
the system. The Yippies have converted Revolution into a form of
show-business, not forgetting the royalties. Even when the trial was
on, they were out on bail snapping up television and lecture
engagements; and one of their first acts after the court's judgment
was to offer Judge Julius Hoffman a starring role in the movie they
planned to make of the case.
Any scripted replay of the Convention or the trial has therefore a
case of its own to answer. Can the theatre add anything independent;
or must it simply take its modest place in promoting the whole
multi-media Yippie carnival?
As it happens, a comparison is available. About a year before its
production of The Chicago Conspiracy, The Open Space staged a
'freedom-collage' by David Mairowitz called Law Circus. Based partly
on Abbie Hoffman's book Revolution for the Hell of It, this featured
the ace shit-stirrer defending himself on the charge of wearing a
shirt made from the American flag. Mairowitz paired this Yippie trial
with a parallel German case involving two members of West Berlin's
Kommune 1 who were accused of practising custard-pie scare tactics in
protest against the Vietnam War. True to his title, Mairowitz
projected the legal chamber as a den of cartoon fanatics clad in
parti-coloured tights and outsize stovepipe hats. It was very funny,
but translated the whole situation into a Yippie dream as remote from
socio-political meaning as the trial of the Knave of Hearts.
Judge Hoffman's court may have been ludicrous, but it was no mere
pack of cards; and the first thing to be claimed for John Burgess's
Chicago script is that it resists any temptation to present the case
through the eyes of the defendants. I have not studied the full
transcript of the proceedings, but what emerges unmistakably from the
stage condensation is a principle of stark contrast which gives every
side its due. There is no question here of the Yippies taking over
the show, whatever their entertainment value.
Sporadic reporting of the case in British newspapers conveyed the
impression of a barbaric legislature grinding enlightened dissent
underfoot. Most notorious, of course, was the binding and gagging of
Bobby Seale in open court. The interesting thing about the Burgess
version (even more striking in performance) is that while the
injustice of this is as clear as ever, one is grateful for anything
that cuts short the torrent of Seale's thunderous self-righteousness.
No one is thereby in danger of mistaking this for a fair trial (any
more than the Federal Government itself, which quashed the
convictions in November 1972 and dropped the incitement-to-riot
charges the following January). On the other hand, no one's judgment
is likely to be fuddled by the rhetoric of martyrdom. And given the
number of would-be martyrs involved (not excluding Judge Hoffman
himself, with his plaintive invitation to the defence to read what
'one of the finest newspapers in the State' had said about his
career), this is all-important to the script's effect.
Like Law Circus, The Chicago Conspiracy draws on some marvellous raw
material: coupling momentous public debate with farce as profoundly
American as the tangling of Captain Spalding and Mrs Rittenhouse. To
that it adds the factor of acute editorial selection, disentangling
clean lines of personal and political conflict from the unwieldy mass
of the four and a half months' hearings. Viewed in long-shot, it is a
drama of individual conscience against the social order. In greater
close-up it shows the variety of forces opposing the state machine:
the old-style good guy liberalism of Dellinger, the clown anarchy of
the Yippies, the Californian mysticism of Ginsberg, and the racial
fury of Bobby Seale. While, at point-blank range, it presents the
personal temperaments behind the public gestures, revealing Judge
Hoffman himself as a bewigged oddball.
Created for a London theatre, The Chicago Conspiracy ranks as a piece
of long-range political pamphleteering. In itself, this form needs
defence. The stage has a responsibility to widen the public
conscience and prolong the life-span of important news stories. But
why not some event closer to home, like Joan Littlewood's (legally
stifled) documentary on Ronan Point, or Bristol's Trials of Oz? Or,
alternatively, a real act of political suppression, like the
Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, whose defendants had to purchase their
martyrdom with something more than quashed sentences and television
engagements.
Charles Marowitz silenced these objections by casting. It often
grates to see professional actors capitalizing on the actions of
living political victims. Marowitz's idea was that if anyone had the
right to speak for the Chicago Eight it was other Americans like Carl
Foreman and Donald Ogden Stewart who had themselves suffered from
their country's political justice. The master-stroke was the casting
of William Burroughs as Judge Hoffman. The transformation of the
author of The Naked Lunch was extraordinary. Expressionless as a
glacier, never raising his voice above a monotone and favouring the
more obstreperous speakers with a mild gaze from his pale-dead eyes,
he became an unnerving emblem of the quietude of power confronting
the belligerence of the weak.
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