Word: author-actor
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...then" one is never certain of what will happen next. While the history books tell linear stories, the reality of time is more akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure series in which the author never knows where his or her narrative venture is leading. The author-actor is him- or herself similarly limited by time and place. In The 18th Brumaire, Marx teaches, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past...
...last third of The World of Lenny Bruce re-creates the shrunken courtroom hell of the beaten man. It is Author-Actor Frank Speiser's indubitable triumph, a coruscatingly impressive display of acting skill. His mind chatters, his hands tremble with terminal withdrawal symptoms. He is a burnt-out case spilling his legal papers and tapes while the cool, disembodied voice of the law tells him that his case is closed. Merely to look at him is to be terribly moved: one beholds the dumb, spent eyes of the fox at the end of hunt...
...inner play is the story of a once-seduced cook who is murdered, of the indifference of her aristocratic employees, and of the romantic trials of the cook's son (a would-be priest). The thick plot involves murder, rape, abortion, white slavery, and class struggle. And yet the author-actor, by continually breaking and repeating scenes and by imposing comic relief, sub-ordinates the plot to his own creative concerns. At the end, the murderer is discovered by coincidence, and the plot is settled...
Until the climactic last half hour, when the actors rescue the plot from the author and make up their own lines, the numerous scenes follow no understandable pattern. But the brutal early scenes have given the characters meaning, and the brief powerful finish generates emotion in the audience. What Anouilh has done is to create a loose play and still jolt the spectators. In short, he plays with the audience. The author-actor states early in the play that "I have always thought we should make the audience and critics rehearse, too." The "Cavern" may refer to the whole theater...
...this, wonders the private, what he really wanted? Piously, he asks the old professor: "Isn't there a place where taking orders stops and personal responsibility begins, where duty turns into crime and can no longer be excused by blaming the leaders?" Author-Actor Remarque replies vaguely: "Each man has to decide for himself." The private goes back to his outfit-for no other reason than that he is afraid he will be shot if he tries to desert. He gets shot anyway by a Russian guerrilla whom he has just saved from execution. His death only begs...