The Art of Living: Our Country's Good

Throughout past posts, I have attempted to show how theater has been helping to improve communities around the world. From the United States to Africa, illegal immigrants to at-risk youths, theater advocates have been doing all they can. Now, I believe it is time to let my readers understand how the words of a play have the potential to change society as we know it. For those who live in Los Angeles, this November the University of Southern California's School of Theatre is putting up a show entitled, Our Country's Good. Written in 1988 by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Our Country's Good tells the story of the first officers and convicts who were shipped to Australia from England in January of 1789. To put this in historical perspective, by the late 1780's, the crime rate had severely increased, therefore allowing British law to identify a wide range of offenses as capital crimes. For instance, stealing candlesticks or a loaf of bread was considered a hangable offense. Yet, judges were reluctant to send people to death for such minor offenses. So they were instead exiled to the colonies on the island of what was known as New South Wales, now Australia, with Royal Marines resentfully serving as jailers. Under the direction of their Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, some of the colonies' convicts acted in George Farquar's The Recruiting Officer, directed by 2nd Lieutenant Ralph Clark, which was used to humanize and civilize the prisoners. Our Country's Good follows the lives of these ten convicts and officers involved in the play and the hardships they had to endure while being exiled to, as one of the characters describes, "this flat, brittle burnt-out country." This play discusses the class system in the convict camp and presents themes such as sexuality, punishment and the idea that art can act as an ennobling force.

While watching a performance of a play at Wormwood Scrubs, a prison in England, Wertenbaker said that "…in prison conditions, theatre can be hugely heartening and influential and indeed in prison your options are so limited you can become a born-again Christian, a gym-queen constantly working out, a bird watcher or you become passionate about theatre." This is why theater activities have become so popular in prisons over the years. She stated that it seemed as though the convicts had become, even only for the moment, civilized human beings and had taken their work very seriously. The theater director Wertenbaker worked with on Our Country's Good, Max Stafford-Clark, said, "The convicts knew their lines absolutely because they had nothing else to do and they didn't want to waste time with pleasantries, as soon as you came into the room they started rehearsing. The two hours were very intense because the time was so valuable and we saw immediately how doing a play could become absolutely absorbing if you were incarcerated."

Many actors, authors and playwrights believe in the idea that theater can change lives and the way one views the world. One French playwright thought this way. Antonin Artaud believed that theater should affect the audience as much as possible. To achieve this with his work, he used various forms of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound and performance. In one of his essays, Theater and The Plague, Artaud wrote, "In the true theatre, a play disturbs the senses' repose, frees the repressed unconscious, incites a kind of virtual revolution...and imposes on the assembled collectivity an attitude that is both difficult and heroic." I play the character of Mary Brenham (below right), a convict from London. In the story, Mary becomes the star of The Recruiting Officer and begins to shine because of the production. Research has shown me who Mary really was and by learning her heartbreaking story, it became so clear as to why she finally is happy again. Even Liz Morden, a heartless and mean bully, befriends Mary and becomes a human being again. The character's lives change drastically for the better because they are involved in something bigger and greater than themselves. The director of USC's production, Jack Rowe, writes in his Director's Notes for the playbill: "It is her design that the actors play both convicts and jailers-a rich device that places on trial all our assumptions about what 'civilization' means. It is at once a meditation on the redemptive nature of art, a celebration of the power of compassion, cooperation and creativity, and an insightful look into the very nature of theatre." After watching Our Country's Good, a reviewer for the London Times wrote, "All people tend to become what society says they are! In performance the convicts challenge their definition."

As important as theater may be to improving society today, it was not always so. In the 19th century, there were two kinds of supporters: those who believed in art for art's sake and those who believed in the social responsibility of art. According to Larry Shiner's book, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, many did not support the idea of art for art's sake. They supposed that art should embody moral content and should neutralize political content. Shiner says, poet Friedrich Schiller could even write in 1803 that art should “totally shut itself off from the real world.” Many saw art as fundamentally alien to a society propelled by commerce and industry. The rest of society might be dominated by the government and materialism, but art can be a refuge where the human spirit may roam freely.

Wertenbaker's play exhibits true human behavior as we experience it every day. The words give me chills every time I read them or hear them in rehearsals. I can only hope that they may have an effect on someone's life who truly needs help. I can also hope that our production will live up to the lives of who these people were and do them justice. Bertol Brecht once said, and I truly believe, "all forms of art serve the greatest art of all: the art of living." Please come out to support the theater: The USC School of Theatre presents Our Country's Good, a play by Timberlake Wertenbaker-November 6-9, 2008. Buy your tickets at www.usc.edu/spectrum.