Ideas and the Theatre; Sex, fun and Jean Anouilh's waltz

The program will be sex fun and the walls of the Toreador are the series ideas and the theater the actual views and voices you will hear. Drama Critics books after Ensign Joan Thomasson nurse John Beaufort and Thyra Samter Winslow authors scholars Eric Bentley Martin as Dworkin Edmund fuller and Kenneth Burke and a summary by Dr. David W. Thompson professor of theater arts at the University of Minnesota. Those who make this series possible. The University of Minnesota radio station am under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. And now here is the producer of ideas in the theater. Q Well Wims critic at large Philip go. For generations now the idea has been that any play presented on Broadway about sex is also about fun. Well the Waltz of the toreador is by the distinguished French playwright John we is quite another matter.

On we as well to the Toreador as was one of the best foreign play of the 1956 57 Broadway season by the New York Drama Critics Circle. This is almost typical French bedroom farce poses an unusual paradoxical view about sex and fun and despair. See if you can determine what that view might be now as Brooks Atkinson dean of America's drama critics reviews the Waltz of the toreador is for us as recorded at the New York Times here is Mr. Brooks Atkinson. Up the roasts of the Toreador ours is a gala more free of French entertainments a French farce that lampoons itself by making a sensible Reebok now and then and that ends on a brisk north of despair in the first scene of the Comedy Central Sun page for measurably mustached is presently dictating his glorious memoirs to any insipid male secretary on a sick bed in the adjoining room

lies the general's invalid Carlos writes suspecting him of committing infidelity is in his mind even if she is dying. Although this is not a chronic situation it becomes one when it appears that her invalidism is a fake but the general rule was that she is hanging on to him for the sake of comfort and security and that for 17 years he has been imagining himself hopelessly in love with the Sterlings been stuck in a surprise as a French farce. The rest of the a toreador hours grows for the familiar or aspersions it concludes with a hacked at CNN in which the insipid mayor secretary heretofore and often is identified as the general's son by a high forgotten illicit as a nation. At the core of the roars of the Toreador I was alive was the despair of Mr. Weaver. Basic attitude understanding is the real source of

unhappiness he says of the end and of those who means it. But the surface of the farce is original bright tart and worldly and the acting is exuberant and comic. The New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson poses several interesting problems in his review of the wall to the Tory adores can understanding really be the source of unhappiness. Can a farce comedy about sex stem from a base of black despair. These I think lead us to our most disturbing paradox here at least in America and certainly in France. And remember this is a French play by a French playwright sex is virtually synonymous with fun Kix life. Isn't this true. Well I pose the question to Eric Bentley. Eric Bentley is perhaps the most published writer on ideas in the theater. Officially he is the Brander Matthews professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University. I

asked Mr. Bentley if he didn't think on we really was saying that understanding might be the source of unhappiness but sex is the source of happiness. This at least sounds French. Here is Eric Bentleys reply. Reading through the text makes people happy in a new way to play. But having said that to myself I then thought yes but the other part of the X statement explains why. Namely that his people usually do think about it and the thinking makes them miserable. The statement means that while this actual experience generates some pleasure reflection upon it destroys the pleasure and makes you miserable. From which it would be. The conclusion would be ideal to be an animal on the assumption that animals don't reflect which I think is probably true that if they would just have sexual pleasure and never think about it. I don't think any of it is a quite fair way is of stating Mr I

knew his position. No they might introduce a discussion of it I think. What he means is that man is per se sad melancholy animal and that while sex brings him momentary relief from that melancholy sometimes not always. Even that is only momentary and when it's reflected on he reverts to his natural character which is of this sad animal the only one of the animals who is sad. The American young people that I've talked about it where do what they get out of it is somewhat contrary to their own upbringing. Perhaps it is the notion that sex makes you unhappy which they have never been taught and they have gathered from Dr Kinsey and so other possibly quite the opposite was the truth whereas here here is this highly face vacated French author. Shows people carrying on like matter which usually and I mean to a comment is treated as a very

good thing to do. But he shows it in the book as having the worst possible result for his he he takes us our view of the results of that tendency of his mind than those sophisticated is at the same time puritanic since he thinks the BS that the frivolity carries sadness with it as a consequence and these people that are kids for instance often think of having a high old time on the Riviera are all miserable according to Mr. Neuilly who lives somewhere near there. This report on life in France has found a bit depressing and by some shocking and you may recall that I mean we had some difficulty in getting before the New York York public at all had several failures. And I remember that on one occasion the New York Times denounced him almost as an un-American activity for for being so pessimistic and so on and said he wasn't forward looking etc. etc.. I think you're right Bethany makes one idea very clear here. Not only may sex

not be synonymous with love life kicks are at least as Mr. Bentley puts it with having a high old time on the Riviera. But sex seems to bear a closer relationship to melancholy and despair. Eric Bentley sees this as a basic view of man. I pursue this idea further with the drama critic of the Christian Science Monitor John Beaufort among other things Mr Ball Ford's analysis will show you why the Waltz of the toreador is not just another French farce about sex. Here now is the drama critic for The Christian Science Monitor. John Ball for I do think of the Toreador Express has been lists and cynicism. But I also think that the touch of humanity that I feel occurs very strongly in a play which in many senses of many respects is very broad and bawdy but the touch of

humanity in the warts of the tornadoes to me is kind of the infinite sadness that has written into the play at the beginning of the wars of the Toreador as you remember or not at the beginning at one point in the play general. It's prophetic and yet not admirable figure says what a farce. It's so bad. And it seems to me that you get in that sentence a kind of summation of the whole theatrical and dramatic effect of the works of the Toreador. Because to me the world of the Toreador was is a play about a man whose great hero really is the fear of being alone. And he has isolated him from life by his own rather foolish behavior. He's

dissipated his life away in a series of sort of tawdry little infidelities which go on and on while he's waiting for the one that he met 17 years ago the famous dance and this illusion that he's carried with him has. Has also carried him through life and the illusion is shattered because the young woman who comes to get there when she arrives she doesn't fall in love with the journal again she falls in love with his young son. And this is the final blow. Poor old general sampai. And this this loss of the ideal is his tragedy. He says to his son when he's giving him the long talk on the deal he says the only way to swim is side by side it. He knows that the truth really

does mean something but he's never found it. But there's compassion in the playwright's recognition of this and and I think that's again part of the value of the play as a play. I think that one point might be made clear about John on always play the Waltz of the toreador is despite our talk this is not an intellectual exercise. I pointed this out to two lady drama critics for their reactions. Thyra Samter Winslow critic for Gotham guide and Jones Allison nurse of the Catholic knows here's the way I put the question to fire a Samter Winslow. Several years ago I heard a dirty joke which I don't think I repeated because it seemed to me in such bad taste and it turns out that this dirty joke is the second act of the Waltz of the toreador is it does this mean that we're getting more sophisticated. I didn't especially like it but I do think we're getting worst of this again I think that's good. And I think play is excepted today would not have been accepted a few years ago because a

few years ago there were a lot of forbidden signs for Bolton. Don't talk about this don't smoke Dynamites around and now we are allowed to talk about many things people talk about the more they recognise things they never recognized before. That doesn't mean they encourage them or approve of them it simply is recognition of them. That's all I think we should recognise everything in its proper place. I think we become much more sophisticated and with sophistication there must be tolerance. That was Thyra Samter Winslow. Another lady drama critic Dr. John Thomas a nurse of the Catholic News had another view of the Waltz of the Toreador as I question whether some of the extremely frank and rather unpleasant treatment of the sex questions couldn't have been subject to a little bit of discreet editing. Whether they whether the right room sell

might consider whether it was absolutely necessary to establish his point to affront sensibilities in that way. I don't think you can say what he doesn't believe but I don't think that he necessarily has to say everything that comes into it then. That was your own fellas and nurse drama critic for the Catholic News. So much for establishing both the crass and the deeper qualities of the Waltz of the toreador is. The major question posed by this place still remains. If sex isn't always fun. Why not. I mean why isn't it. Author philosopher Kenneth Burke suggests a simple but extensive answer. Incidentally I recorded Mr Burke on his New Jersey farm a very pleasant place as the bird song background may indicate. I asked the author of rhetoric of motives the philosophy of literary form and other books. Why should sexual interest in activity lead to sadness and

despair. Kenneth Burke had a good time with his reply. I've been directly influenced by Freud and I still swear by my writing anyway but I do think that the writing ism has led to one. One great danger of misinterpretation. It has led to way over stress upon a sexual motive in the sense of keeping us from seeing how many non-sexual motives are implicit and we cast actual motivations and I am awfully good one I remember one story I wonder the point of were of you know Robert Burns when and in his first love affair. We always think of Bernie. And the immediate hot personal sexual lover and so on. And out here I just pointed out this this lovely girl and I want to get that

discretion I was she might just as well be a dressed up regular there's not a sexual detail connected with that point. She obviously represented a whole side over social judgments. I don't think it is necessarily a matter of a deliberate cover up I think that certain symbols will take on all these extra undeclared. It was contraband uptake on other elements and I think that that's the thing that you do get situation you do get a case of. S. America does all these other elements. And but the other fantasies connected with it is that you people think you're really talking about a very immediate physical situation whereas actually all the time it is all it is. These are social connotations which are really important factor operating there.

How could you be specific more fundamental along these lines as well as the kind of material you get in Kroft Abinger psychopath sexualize because if you examine his case histories of those many perverse sufferers I think you'll find in these histories not a sexual motive at all but what I would call a hierarchal motive almost Social all the matters of social stability already inferiority. Stories of lynching should make clear to watch the hierarchy motive and fantasies in acts of sexual violence. What a gloomy groveling is where I want to tell oneself meaner things about oneself when an enemy could think of would surely be sex based schools. Slaves of got Taji definers of statues to spreaders of women and children's and whatever whatever degree of physical Eros there may be in the motives of such must there not be very many degrees of the hierarchal

here one finds also as the one natural things being sought in unnatural ways. Why then should they be treated as deriving primarily from so natural maps of states as sex. There's a notion of rank. Ironic notion that Mark says wouldn't cause the fetishism of commodities. I think that an equivalence idea at an equivalent ironic idea is needed for us to understand the sexual motive in America. That sexual objects is a fetish just commodity of that sort. When you know you see you see the beautiful blonde with the racketeer presented in the motion picture and yet if you go into the indies are a few other places you will see them. I mean this is not just a motion picture fantasy this is this is one that is played out in life so obviously the. Commodities can be purchased and they do represent almost direct economic value for status.

A man can he does certain things himself and then he can buy a commodity who completes the job warm sees the aesthetic Department. He's a radical PRI receives the aesthetic the plan but the whole point is that aesthetics is not sexy. There's a lot of it but there's a lot of other things and beauty then and sex and all those other elements and the aesthetic divinely she represents are at least elements that I think do involve primarily ideas of US social status of claims to distinction claim to prestige and so on which one gets by owning a partner and that's fine. I think that Kenneth Burke's comments here point out the key to our issue. It seems that the rowel There once was a time when it wasn't very long ago that sex couldn't be discussed at all. Not appears that one can't discuss anything else. This would seem to imply that sex may have reversed its classical Friday in rural. Where sex once was a great problem because it was of the hidden

force and the repression sex is now being used to hide and repress other problems. Kenneth Burke suggests that these are primarily social economic status problems. Authorities scholar Martin has to work in critique for Progressive Magazine sees it another way. Incidentally it's almost impossible to avoid some background sounds when you record people in different places where Kenneth Burke had a bird in the background Martin has to work and has a dog in the neighborhood. Here is Mr. Dorgan. Sex is one of those things that of course is very important to a lot of people. Of course it's more important just like food is to the starving man than it is to someone who is having a satisfactory sexual relationship but the only appetite which Americans I just casually and easily easily Zahavi maybe the sexual one. It's not the only appetite but it's the one that is being deliberately and so constantly propagandized to them as the one the only

one worthy of certain kinds of satisfaction if one is going to prove that one is a man. The point here is whether one simply one proves that one is a man only by one's prowess sexually. What about the woman here every time a statement made about proving. One's masculinity its masculinity a kind of femininity being just as prude in sexual terms by a Marilyn Monroe type characters by Jane Mansfield came from the theater. Well of course I mean what we're dealing with is the question of exhibitionism of the splice. But we do have to however recognize that there is quite a distinction between the masculine and the 7 in just this problem of proving masculinity and femininity. A man has to prove that he's a man in quite a different fashion from the way a woman has to prove a woman can be quite passive

and yet be a woman. But socially on the war on the great level and in the level of the lodge one would be saying that there is tremendous emphasis upon sexual exhibitionism is a manifestation not of sexual a hyper adequacy if you like but of sexual inadequacy and the exhibition itself the overcompensation to use that model as time although one has to be so Don careful in using it because one can explain every little bit of human behavior as a compensation for something or other. The point that I'm making was simply to distinguish men and women. Again this is not so frivolous. Vive la difference of course but yet this has to be done. If sex can bring despair as a playwright on we seems to see in the Waltz of the Tory adores author critic Martin as Dworken probably would attribute

this to the problems and competitions that arise out of wanting to be proved a man or a woman in our particular culture. According to Eric Bentley he would suggest that sex may be the way of hiding our fundamentally despairing nature. Kenneth Burke sees sex as a cover up before social economic and status problems. Now if these various problems are not solved through sexuality and they usually aren't. Here again is more reason why sex can lead to despair. Actually I don't think our authorities or I are being anti-sex here although our approach may be a bit negative. Edmond Fuller an outstanding educator scholar and author of the recent book Man in modern fiction has a more positive view. Here are Edmund Fuller's ideas on this sex fun values versus kicks issue. This preoccupation. I like the word you use the fact that we live for

kicks which is one of the prevailing notions of our time well this is not peculiar to us again I think this I would hesitate to do anything as pontifical as lining up a theory of how these cycles have run. But. This is in part classical hedonism. The idea that pleasure is what we live for and call it kicks for slang or call it focused the pleasure in sex as we're inclined to do now. Nevertheless you can go back through the classical books of such such as the moderns and against the grain are back to paternity as arbiter and home are on back down the line and find the hedonist the person who says we live for our senses and we live for our sensory enjoyment. He is not peculiar to our time. However. I do think it's true that as you suggested in our time the Great. Freedom.

We have in the area of sexual discussion has enabled us to inhibit ourselves and run for cover in the other questions and as for what these other questions are again I think they are the more ultimate questions of Being we we seek to avoid the painful sense of portentous ness and responsibility that is involved in purpose of living by denying purpose and running to anything from drink to sex or mere activity mere frenzy hours as an age of frenzy just as much as it's an age of sex. Now about sex that sex was fun. Now I disagree with that in the sense that fun is not for me a large enough word for sex I would want to say that sex in so far as it is pleasure and I think it is more than pleasure. But sex is ecstasy. No word short of ecstasy would be adequate for any fully realized sense of sex but certainly Sex is an aspect of the most profound

aspect of identity. One finds co-op identity with the beloved in terms of sex and in finding co identity one finds ecstasy and in the ecstasy and Co identity one finds the perpetuation of the race. So these are three and no billing and large ing elements of man which are far too big to be subsumed under any word as casual as the word fun and other words my view is not a puritanical view of the my view is a view of saying shucks I won't settle for anything as small as fun for sex sexes is far greater than and fun. That was author scholar Edmund Fuller. And now for a summary of today's program. Here is the consultant for this series Dr. David W. Thompson professor in the theater arts at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Thompson. John on Wiese play the Waltz of the toreador is a philosophic farce about sex. The discussion we've just heard which stemmed from the play has also been about sex. In

each case sex has emerged less like simple fun than like a pervading force which makes its human actors appear both ridiculous and pathetic. This is sex the real thing and not mere sexiness in its superficial and today highly commercial guises. It is that popular sexiness which hides from us the truth of sex and other basic factors in our lives such as the social and economic problems posed by Mr Burke. The personal problems suggested by Mr Dworken and the religious dimensions intimated in Mr Fuller's apt naming of sex as ecstasy. That play is wildly wildly farcical poignantly touching sometimes gruesome and always shockingly alive is proof that he is near the real thing. His characters may seem to be merely living for kicks but he sees to it that they receive genuine jolts. His paradoxical statement that understanding is the real source of unhappiness proves to be a real paradox in that

it works just as well the other way around and happiness is the real source of understanding. It is after his painful disillusionment that the general's comments on sex and his final amorous play acting with a new made become truly wise. He sees himself as the old fool that he is his own happiness has become the real source of his deepened understanding. If the farcical Waltz of the Tory adores turns out to be quite serious about the supposed fun of sex it is fitting that this discussion had its intelligent seriousness punctuated by moments of antic humor. It's especially fitting that the most natural yet mocking humor came from the twittering birds. There were no bees and the barking dog insects as in other matters. Nature just may have the last word. That was Dr. David W. Thompson consultant for the series and a professor in the theater arts at the University of Minnesota ideas in the

theater. His produced by Philip J O K U O M's critic at large and commentator for this series. Next week a discussion of Freud psychoanalysis and Broadway by Drama Critics books after Ensign John Beaufort and Joan Thomasson nurse scholars Eric Bentley and Edmund fuller authors Garvey Darr and Thyra Samter Winslow and producer Clinton wilder ideas in the theatre is produced by the University of Minnesota radio station KUNM under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center. This series is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters next week. Here are the many of you roid psychoanalysis and Broadway and ideas and the theatre. This is the end the EBD Radio Network.