Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 73 Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater Laura Bradley University of Edinburgh Abstract: In a landmark judgement in 1923, the English Lord Chief Justice Hewart declared that it was “of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done�” In Brecht’s trial scenes, justice is usually seen not to be done, whether because of rigged trials and witness intimidation ( Arturo Ui ), a legal system biased in favour of the property-owning classes ( Die Ausnahme und die Regel ), or judges’ vested interests ( Der gute Mensch von Sezuan )� Such scenes expose deficits in justice that can only be overcome through sociopolitical change� By encouraging the theater audience to critique the spectatorial competencies exhibited-and the judgments reached-by the characters on stage, Brecht’s trial scenes play a crucial role in his attempts to cultivate critical, socially responsible spectatorship through epic theater� His experiments with onstage spectatorship reached a climax in Die Maßnahme (1930), which invites critical scrutiny of the shortsighted ethical spectatorship of the Young Comrade and the farsighted strategic vision of the Communist Party Control Chorus, an audience present on stage throughout the piece� Die Maßnahme provoked lively disagreements at its 1930 premiere and has continued to do so ever since� Keywords: Bertolt Brecht, spectatorship, epic theater, Die Maßnahme, justice on stage In a landmark judgment in England in November 1923, Lord Chief Justice Hewart announced that it was “of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done” (Rex v� Sussex Justices 259)� In trial scenes in Bertolt Brecht’s plays, however, justice is usually seen not to be done, whether because of rigged trials and witness intimidation, a legal system biased in favor of the property-owning classes, or 74 Laura Bradley judges’ vested interests. The scenes typically expose deficits in justice that can be overcome only through sociopolitical change� This interest in exposing contradictions between law and justice in capitalist societies runs through Brecht’s plays from the late 1920s onwards� 1 In Die Dreigroschenoper , business owner Peachum observes that the law is made exclusively for the purpose of exploiting those who do not understand it or who are prevented by naked misery from obeying it (BFA 2, 290)� As Keith Dickson argues, trial scenes serve Brecht’s epic theater by functioning as a “ready-made alienation-effect” (145). This is because “the reconstruction of past events by witnesses and their interrogators automatically divests them of their dramatic immediacy” (145)� Guy Stern notes that Brecht even creates a “double alienation effect” in some cases, for example by presenting the trial scenes in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis as a play-within-a-play (Stern 71)� Even without the framing device of a play-within-a-play, trial scenes focus on the questions of watching, evaluation, and judgment that are central to Brecht’s epic theater� During a trial, eyewitnesses play the role of spectators-turned-participants, actively filtering and framing their observations and perceptions of the events that form the subject of the case� As Leif Dahlberg points out in his study of representations of the law, “a trial is not put on for passive spectators� Rather, the judge(s) and the lay judges constitute the audience for the juridical drama in the courtroom” (36)� Judges act as both spectators and participants: they watch performances by eyewitnesses and attorneys designed to sway their judgment, at the same time as refereeing the proceedings, intervening with questions, and reaching a verdict� These links between spectatorship and participation are useful for Brecht as he seeks to cultivate critical, interventionist, and socially responsible spectatorship in the theater audience� Even so, scholars who address portrayals of legal proceedings have not paid sustained attention to the roles that onstage spectatorship plays in Brecht’s trial scenes� Dickson focuses instead on Brecht’s Marxist critique of the split between law and justice in bourgeois society (145—61), and Stern only briefly mentions onstage spectators at the trial in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (72)� While K� Scott Baker acknowledges that “courtroom scenes […] have an explicitly theatrical structure, in which argumentative and demonstrative claims by a set of pre-cast role players lead to judgments that are in turn subject to the opinions of an audience,” he is referring to the theater audience rather than the spectators that are present on stage� 2 Yasco Horsman alludes in passing to Brecht’s use of onstage spectatorship (Horsman 92, 106, 109), but focuses firmly on a “cross-legal” reading of Die Maßnahme with the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Moscow show trials� This article provides the sustained focus on onstage spectatorship that has previously been lacking: it Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 75 explores how Brecht’s trial scenes encourage the theater audience to observe and critique the spectatorial competencies exhibited-and the judgments reached-by characters on stage� It culminates in an examination of Die Maßnahme , where Brecht invites critical scrutiny of both the shortsighted ethical spectatorship of the Young Comrade and the farsighted strategic vision of the Communist Party Control Chorus, an audience present on stage throughout the piece� In her analysis of the role of the audience as witness in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II , Meg F� Pearson comments that “witnessing and testimony, whether used in an explicitly legal setting or not, are inextricably entwined with conceptions of judgment and an awareness of how watching matters” (94)� It was for this reason that Brecht used the analogy of a witness to a road accident, reenacting what they saw before an audience of bystanders, as a model for acting and spectatorship in his essay “Die Straßenszene” (BFA 22/ 1, 370—81)� Written in 1938, the essay presents spectatorship as an activity with real-world consequences� The spectator has been paying attention, thinking about what they have seen� They go on to bear witness and to contest alternative interpretations of the accident, knowing that a judgment has to be reached� These activities share a natural affinity with the trial scene: Brecht notes that the witnesses to the road accident know that legal responsibility has yet to be assigned, with all the attendant consequences for those involved. The chauffeur may be dismissed, lose their driver’s license, or be sent to prison; the victim of the accident may face high medical costs, unemployment, and permanent disability, and may even never work again (BFA 22/ 1, 374)� Just as the bystanders in the street scene have all witnessed the accident, many of the trial scenes in Brecht’s plays concern action that the theater audience has witnessed during the preceding scenes� In such cases, the theater audience is made up of informed spectators, who are in a position to contrast the interpretations of onstage witnesses and judges with their own. In her analysis of American films featuring courtroom drama, Carol Clover describes this use of dramatic irony as a “split-knowledge arrangement” (257): the audience may know more than the onscreen-or, for present purposes, onstage-judge� She argues that this arrangement “positions us not as passive spectators, but as active ones, viewers with a job to do” (257)� The theater spectator’s status as a witness carries responsibility, and Brecht typically increases this responsibility by stripping the most powerful spectator-participants in his trial scenes-the judges-of authority� In Der gute Mensch von Sezuan , three gods come to earth ostensibly to investigate whether the world needs to be changed, but with a vested interest in proving that it does not� Although they believe that they have found a good person in the compassionate prostitute and businesswoman Shen Te, she has to resort to inventing and impersonating a ruthless male cousin, Shui Ta, in order to save her fledg- 76 Laura Bradley ling business from ruin. In the final scene, the gods’ role as fraudulent judges is made explicit when they arrive at court wearing borrowed robes and armed with forged certificates (BFA 6, 270). The theater audience is already primed to reject the waterseller Wang’s assessment of them as “sehr gute [Richter]”: it knows from the preceding action that the gods lack the will to use their observational and interpretive skills productively� They have not realized that Shen Te has been masquerading as Shui Ta for months, and they had to rely on Wang to interpret a parable for them in an earlier episode (BFA 6, 241)� In court, the First God attempts to halt Shen Te’s testimony, telling her “ mit allen Zeichen des Entsetzens : Sprich nicht weiter, Unglückliche! ” (BFA 6, 276)� He then tries to brush aside her confession of guilt, dismissing what she describes as evil deeds as merely “Ein Mißverständnis! Einige unglückliche Vorkommnisse! ” (BFA 6, 276)� Here, Brecht’s provocative use of biased, incompetent judges contrasts with the model of spectatorship outlined by Joanne Rochester in her study of trial scenes in Philip Massinger’s plays� Rochester argues: “What the trial does provide is a model of the ideal spectator: the judge, probing appearances, catching nuances and interpreting the speeches in detail, is a figure for the work of the audience” (133)� When Brecht’s judges fail to meet even basic standards of spectatorial competence, let alone fairness and impartiality, the epic theater spectator is expected to step into the breach� In Die Ausnahme und die Regel , the trial scene forms the second half of the play. In the first half, the audience witnesses the events leading up to a merchant’s murder of an unskilled laborer, referred to as a “coolie�” Despite having been consistently exploited and abused by the merchant during their journey through a desert, the coolie offers the merchant his own water bottle. Assuming that the coolie is about to hit him over the head with the bottle, the merchant murders him� In court, the judge watches the testimony of the coolie’s widow and the eyewitnesses alertly, intervening with frequent comments and questions� In this respect, he models a critical, interventionist mode of spectatorship, contextualizing witnesses’ statements and testing his assumptions through new questions� However, as the trial progresses, it becomes clear that the judge’s interventions protect the class interests of the rich. He acts effectively as defending counsel to the merchant, telling him: Hören Sie, Sie dürfen sich nicht weißer waschen wollen, als Sie sind� So kommen Sie ja nicht durch, Mann� Wenn Sie Ihren Kuli so mit Handschuhen angefaßt haben, wie erklären Sie dann den Haß des Kulis gegen Sie? Doch nur, wenn Sie den Haß glaubhaft machen können, können Sie auch glaubhaft machen, daß Sie in Notwehr gehandelt haben� Immer denken! (BFA 3, 254) Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 77 The judge is coaching the defendant in the middle of the trial, and the merchant goes on to adapt his testimony accordingly� He exchanges smiles with the judge; this admission of complicity stems from their shared membership of the same class, and it is clearly designed to provoke a theater audience that has witnessed the merchant’s brutal murder of the coolie� The irony is that the judge is not breaking the law: he is, after all, reminding the merchant to tell the truth� The court accepts the merchant’s argument of self-defense, not because it was justified by the coolie’s actions or intentions but because of the context of class oppression� It was more reasonable for the merchant to assume that the oppressed coolie intended to use the water bottle to hit him over the head, than to think that the coolie was offering him a drink. The judge is merely expressing a bias that is entrenched in the legal system� Here Brecht follows Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who argue in Das kommunistische Manifest : “Die Gesetze, die Moral, die Religion sind für [den Proletarier] ebenso viele bürgerliche Vorurteile, hinter denen sich ebenso viele bürgerliche Interessen verstecken” (45)� These interests are on naked display in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny , where bar-ownerturned-judge Leokadja Begbick negotiates bribes openly in court before releasing a man accused of murder, only then to sentence the penniless Paul Ackermann to death for failing to settle his debts with her (BFA 2, 377; 381)� In Der kaukasische Kreidekreis , however, Brecht presents a judge who has a social gaze that privileges the lower classes. When Azdak first appears on stage, he sees straight through the attempts of the Grand Duke-who has been deposed and is on the run-to pass himself off as a beggar. Even though the Grand Duke is dressed in rags, Azdak recognizes that his clipped speech, unblemished hands, and the way in which he eats are those of a rich man� Indeed, he tells him “Schmatz nicht wie ein Großfürst oder eine Sau” (BFA 8, 59)� When Azdak subsequently comes to play the accused in a mock trial scene before an audience of mercenary soldiers, he uses his observations of the Grand Duke to parody not only his conduct but that of his entire class� This performance is designed to show the onstage audience of mercenaries where their class interests lie, and to expose the similarities between the Grand Duke and the Fat Prince, who is paying their wages� 3 It changes the course of the action: rather than approving the appointment of the Fat Prince’s nephew as judge, the mercenaries give the position to Azdak himself� In Act V of Der kaukasische Kreidekreis , the two threads of the play-within-aplay come together� Azdak is charged with ruling which mother has the rightful claim to the child Michel: the Governor’s wife, who abandoned Michel during the turmoil of the palace coup, or the maid Grusche, who rescued him and brought him up� Azdak provides the theater audience with what feels-in the context of the action-like a just ending, when Grusche is allowed to claim her adoptive son as her own� However, this judgment stands in blatant contra- 78 Laura Bradley diction to the law of Grusinia, and so Brecht uses the trial scenes in Act IV to foreground the improbable coincidences and contortions needed to produce a semblance of justice in a legal system skewed in favor of the rich� Azdak is a Rabelaisian judge: he takes bribes openly, sits on the law books instead of reading them, and clinks bottles together instead of using a judge’s hammer� He judges cases two at a time, mixing up details in a manner that is designed to confuse the onstage and offstage audiences. His decisions are legally wrong, but they compensate-awkwardly and imperfectly-for systemic social injustice� Once again, Brecht argues that the system needs to be changed� The Prologue presents the theater audience with an alternative model: a Soviet society in which justice is decided by the people, with a legal expert acting as facilitator� This prologue can be read as an attempt to recuperate what Cornelia Vismann describes as “die versammelnde und versöhnende Kraft des gerichtlich gehegten Dings” (21) in Germanic law, whereby representatives of the community gathered together to resolve legal disputes� Indeed, Vismann observes that the “Richter” were not judges in the modern sense of the term, even though this would be the usual translation� They were charged solely with organizing the Thing (trial), and the task of reaching a judgment resided with the “Urteiler” (Vismann 20)� Here, a parallel becomes evident between the judges and the role of the legal expert sent only to facilitate the discussion in Brecht’s Prologue, and with the fact that the two collectives themselves arrive at a decision� Brecht’s Das Verhör des Lukullus provides another example of popular involvement in justice� After his death, the Roman general Lukullus is tried in the underworld by lay judges drawn from the lower classes: a courtesan, a fishwife, a baker, a peasant, and a slave who used to be a teacher (BFA 6, 97—98)� Rather than emphasizing their keen social gaze, as in the case of Azdak, Brecht presents these dead judges as blind� Like the blindfolded goddess Justitia, they are incapable of being swayed by the sight of power and splendor: Sie sitzen auf einem hohen Gestühl Ohne Hände, zu nehmen und ohne Münder, zu essen Unempfindlich für Glanz die lange erloschenen Augen Unbestechliche, sie, die Ahnen der Nachwelt� (BFA 6, 98) Unusually, Brecht avoids the “split-knowledge arrangement” in Das Verhör des Lukullus � The lower-class judges on stage can be trusted to question Lukullus and to expose the cost of his wars of conquest� Even so, the original version of the text-conceived as a radio play in 1940-ends with the announcement that the court will withdraw to discuss its judgment, leaving the theater audience to fill in the gap. When Brecht’s collaborator Paul Dessau composed the music for the opera version in 1949—1951, he prompted Brecht to supply a new ending, Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 79 in which the judges unequivocally condemn Lukullus (BFA 6, 141—43)� Despite this change, the opera aroused controversy in the GDR at its premiere in March 1951, prompting both Brecht and Dessau to rework it for the revised version Die Verurteilung des Lukullus (see Lucchesi, Das Verhör in der Oper )� In other plays, the “split-knowledge arrangement” prompts the theater audience to evaluate the testimony of the onstage defendants and witnesses critically, in the light of its own knowledge of the preceding action� Brecht’s concern here is not simply to expose individual failings on the part of the witnesses onstage, which could be attributed to lapses in morality, to laziness, or to incompetence� Rather, his concern is to expose the structural inequality in a legal system that is skewed towards the property-owning classes� In Der gute Mensch von Sezuan , eyewitnesses offer different readings of the preceding action, depending on their class viewpoint. The rich barber and house owner defend Shui Ta as an upstanding businessman and criticize his spendthrift cousin, Shen Te; in contrast, the waterseller Wang, carpenter, and old couple point to the cost of Shui Ta’s actions, praising Shen Te� In Die Ausnahme und die Regel , the merchant edits the truth regarding his treatment of the coolie� And in Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui , a satire in which Brecht parodies the rise of Adolf Hitler, Giri-standing in for Hermann Goering-denies involvement in the arson attack on Hook’s warehouse, even though the theater audience has seen his men carry the cans of petrol across the stage� In each of these plays, characters are discouraged from speaking out against the injustice and oppression that they have witnessed� Even when they disregard these warnings, voicing testimony that the theater audience knows to be true, their voices are not heeded� This is evident, for example, in Die Ausnahme und die Regel , when a guide testifies against the merchant. As Vismann argues, “es genügt schließlich nicht, die Stimme zu erheben, um das Subjekt zu werden, das als Träger von Rechten in die Welt tritt� Sie muss auch gehört werden von der Instanz, die diese Rechte garantiert” (115)� Brecht’s point is that the courts do not guarantee the rights of the coolie, only those of the merchant� In Arturo Ui , lone individuals are willing to testify to crimes that they and the theater audience have witnessed, once they have nothing material left to lose� In each case, the witnesses are brutally silenced� During the hearing about the corruption allegations against the supposedly upstanding politician Dogsborough, the witness-Bowl-is shot dead offstage, on the steps of the courtroom, before he can testify (BFA 7, 48). Later, during the trial over the arson attack on Hook’s warehouse, Hook is beaten up so that he can no longer testify to the attack that both he and the theater audience have witnessed� The judge ignores the gangsters’ blatant intimidation of the defense and jury� Even though the judge has seen Ui’s bodyguards boo and adopt a threatening attitude towards Hook, his defending counsel, and the press, he overlooks their intimidation and charges the defense with contempt of court 80 Laura Bradley (BFA 7, 65—66; 70)� The scene functions as an analogy for the Reichstag Fire Trial although, as Dickson points out, Brecht’s satire “reflects the grosser abuses of the law after the constitution of the Volksgerichtshof and Sondergericht ” (149—50)� These examples demonstrate that Brecht’s trial scenes typically depict the failure of justice, and that they attribute this to the way in which the legal system itself serves an unjust sociopolitical order, either through its routine operations-as in Die Ausnahme und die Regel- or through its failure to oppose interference in the judicial process-as in Arturo Ui � The real problems in Die Ausnahme und die Regel and Der gute Mensch are, respectively, the systemic exploitation of coolies and the impossibility of maintaining human dignity under capitalism; these cannot become the subject of a trial before the existing courts� Dramaturgically, Brecht’s trial scenes deny catharsis to the theater audience, refusing the closure that a just trial and verdict would provide� The resulting frustration is heightened by the sense of responsibility that the theater spectator carries as a witness to the original action� This frustration and responsibility are designed to fuel the process of political reflection during and after the performance, as the theater audience carries out the labor neglected on stage� It is no accident that the trial scenes in Die Ausnahme und die Regel and Der gute Mensch appear at the end of each play, and that they are followed by an epilogue telling the theater audience to do better� Brecht adopted a similar technique midway through Arturo Ui , in which the rigged arson trial is followed by a scene in which a bloodstained victim of Ui’s gang staggers to the stage apron and appeals directly to the theater audience for help (BFA 7, 71)� It is for this reason that Karl-Heinz Schoeps is wrong to argue that Brecht’s trial scenes exclusively “involve the audience intellectually, not emotionally” (37)� While they do create distance, they also provoke emotions that spur the audience on to engage critically and intellectually with the matters misjudged on stage� Brecht’s earlier play Die Maßnahme , written in collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler and the director Slatan Dudow, presents a more complex case� This is partly because it was not designed primarily for performance before a theater audience; instead, it was devised as a means of turning concertgoing audiences into the producers of art� Amateur choirs sing the parts of a Communist Party Kontrollchor on stage, and at the premiere in 1930 three choirs joined together for this, resulting in a Control Chorus of three to four hundred singers� Members of this chorus act both as performers and as an onstage audience� They watch the action that is reconstructed by four agitators who have recently returned from China, and the text and music are designed to provoke the performers to reflect critically on both this reconstructed action and the lines that they are asked to perform� But Die Maßnahme is also different because it presents a Communist Party tribunal, rather than a court of law� Brecht presents the Party’s judicial Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 81 processes within the framework of a play whose characters, chorus, and songs campaign unequivocally for a Communist revolution� The sheer force of this propaganda and Hanns Eisler’s music initially seem to work against any invitation to critique the Party processes at work� George Jocums, for example, argues that “by tapping the rhetorical strength of choral structure, Brecht […] predisposes the viewer within the emotional field of the form itself to accept as true, or at least consider seriously, the judgment reached in this structure” (126)� Before examining the judicial process in detail, it is worth summarizing the scenario presented in Die Maßnahme � When the piece opens, four agitators have just returned to Moscow from a secret mission in Mukden, China� They interrupt the Party’s triumphant chorus of congratulation with the news that they have killed their young comrade� They did so in an extrajudicial measure or “Maßnahme,” a term associated in the political theory of jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888—1985) with a situation of crisis or imminent danger� 4 The agitators now submit their actions to the Party’s judgment� They reenact the episodes that led up to the Young Comrade’s death, showing the mistakes that he made, how they reasoned with him, and how he promised to do better� Each reenacted episode is followed by discussion between the agitators and the Control Chorus, and at the end of the play, the Control Chorus approves the agitators’ decision to kill their comrade� Reinhold Grimm and Yasco Horsman argue that the Control Chorus represents the offstage audience, and it does ask questions that an offstage audience has to save for discussion after the performance (Grimm 396; Horsman 93)� However, Grimm and Horsman overlook the way in which the Chorus’s overhasty congratulations in the opening scene have already cast its authority and judgment into question� As Ralf Schnell points out, the very name “Kontrollchor” is ambivalent in German: it suggests not only that the Chorus examines the action critically, but that it is itself subject to critical examination (154)� However, in keeping with Brecht’s prioritization of rehearsal and performance over reception by a third-party audience, there is no “split-knowledge arrangement” in Die Maßnahme � As the Party tribunal occupies the entire length of the play, any audience-if present-has seen no more of the action than the spectators in the Control Chorus on stage� Brecht does not establish his onstage or offstage audience as alternate witnesses to the action discussed in court� Consequently, both audiences are positioned as judges� Die Maßnahme can be and has been read as an endorsement of the Stalinist obliteration of dissent within the Communist Party� In 1948, Ruth Fischer- Hanns Eisler’s estranged sister-argued that it was “a preview of the Moscow trials” (Fischer 618) and that it presented the “transfiguration and beatification of the Stalinist Party” (624)� This line of thinking was also evident in a staging that premiered at the Schauspiel Leipzig in 2017, as the stark colors, uniform costumes, and mechanized choreography in Figs� 1 and 2 indicate� 82 Laura Bradley Die Maßnahme at the Schauspiel Leipzig, directed by Enrico Lübbe, 2017� Photographs by Bettina Stöß� Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 83 The staging showed the cancerous growth of the Party apparatus through the proliferation of identically clad performers on stage� On its website, the Schauspiel Leipzig argued: “Ebensowenig, wie es in der Maßnahme substantielle Zweifel oder Ambivalenzen gibt, darf es Namen und Individuen geben� Im Gegenteil: Maskierung und Tarnung ist Pflicht, die Entindividualisierung ist Leitprogramm” (“Verblendung” n� pag�)� In this reading, criticism of the Control Chorus and its methods is assumed to run contrary to Brecht’s and Eisler’s intentions� This interpretation ignores the ways in which details in the text and score invite performers to question the Control Chorus� Even in the opening scene, the Control Chorus rushes to judgment, praising the agitators before hearing their testimony (BFA 3, 75)� The Chorus then reacts naively to the reenacted episodes, asking questions such as “Aber ist es nicht richtig, die Ehre zu stellen über alles? ” (BFA 3, 89) after the reenactment has proven this not to be the case� Its instinct is to empathize with the Young Comrade, and it comes to recognize that it needs to learn from the agitators� The Party tribunal reveals that it is not only the Control Chorus that struggles with spectatorship� While critics have tended to present the Young Comrade’s conflict with the Party as one of feeling versus reason, spontaneity versus discipline, or reformism versus revolution, 5 Brecht and Eisler also present his conflict as one of spectatorship� Oliver Simons recognizes this when he argues that “Brecht’s young comrade is himself a viewer of tragic conditions-a spectator, however, who does not want to resign himself to his role and would rather intervene in the action” (335)� Yet Simons goes on to propose the un-Brechtian view that the Young Comrade’s “error is […] becoming an active agent to interfere in the theatrical action” (335)� Simons overlooks the fact that Brecht and Eisler criticize the Young Comrade’s gaze itself as shortsighted. In the first reenacted episode, the Young Comrade focuses on the immediate challenges in his area-chaos, shortages, and illiteracy-and expects the agitators to have brought practical aid� It is the agitators who shift the focus away from material issues to education, propaganda, and class consciousness; and it is the head of the Party house who broadens the focus to the global political context of the mission� The four agitators, not just the Young Comrade, are warned that the world is watching Mukden and they must not be seen; while they remain mindful of the need for anonymity, the Young Comrade keeps losing sight of it, the political context, and the fact that he is being watched� He repeatedly reveals himself: first to the overseer in charge of the coolies, then to the policeman and the merchant, and finally to the townspeople (BFA 3, 81—82; 85—86; 89; 93). He thus fails to correct the myopia evident in the audience’s first encounter with him, and he fails to act in awareness that he is under surveillance� 84 Laura Bradley Brecht and Eisler also use the Young Comrade to challenge notions of ethical spectatorship� Die Maßnahme replaces the idea of an abstract system of ethics with the Leninist view that ethics-moral behavior-are derived from the needs of the class struggle (BFA 24, 101)� The reenacted episodes show time and again how the Young Comrade adopts what would appear to be the ethical, humane response to the sight of suffering and injustice. For example, on seeing a coolie slip over in the mud while hauling a rice barge uphill, he bends down and puts a stone in front of the coolie’s foot before the man takes his next step (BFA 3, 82)� He thus helps this one man temporarily, rather than persuading all of the coolies working in the chain gang to campaign for better working conditions� The Young Comrade’s reactions are instinctive and spontaneous, but they cause him to lose sight of his instructions and the insights gained temporarily through discussion with the agitators, so that he fails to deny others immediate aid as it was denied to him� This amounts to a critique not just of liberal humanism, but also of reformism: attempts to ameliorate workers’ lives through piecemeal reform, rather than political revolution� This critique of the Young Comrade’s spectatorship sets the context for critical scrutiny of the spectatorship and judgment of the Control Chorus� The Control Chorus’s reactions to the climax of the conflict with the Young Comrade serve as a test of how far it has progressed as an active, critical onstage audience� The agitators reenact the episode in which the Young Comrade tore off the mask that concealed his identity, destroying the agitators’ cover and endangering their mission� The Chorus ratchets up the tension by switching from past to present tense when describing the threat and demanding to be told the agitators’ decision: “Eure Maßnahme! ” (BFA 3, 94)� Eisler changes from song to recitative: the Chorus chants “heftig, etwas eilend” (85), while the drum hurries the choristers along, beating in triplets as they chant mainly in crotchets� On one level, this reproduces the pressure that the agitators faced when they made their decision� On another, though, it suggests that the Control Chorus remains an impatient audience-particularly as the agitators tell the Chorus four times to wait (BFA 3, 94—95)� The agitators resist the pressure to switch to present tense dialogue, continuing instead to describe their actions in the past tense� They report how they wrestled with their decision: Klagend zerschlugen wir uns unsere Köpfe mit unseren Fäusten Daß sie uns nur den furchtbaren Rat wußten: jetzt Abzuschneiden den eigenen Fuß vom Körper; denn Furchtbar ist es, zu töten. (BFA 3, 97) 6 The language conveys the agonized labor of the agitators’ thought process through the alliteration of “k” and “f ” sounds and the chiasmus of the initial Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 85 letters of the body parts “Köpfe,” “Fäusten,” “Fuß,” and “Körper�” The momentum then quickens, as the agitators repeat and vary the verb “töten”: Aber nicht andere nur, auch uns töten wir, wenn es nottut Da doch nur mit Gewalt diese tötende Welt zu ändern ist, wie Jeder Lebende weiß� (BFA 3, 97) The deceleration provided by the three subordinate clauses, and then by the caesura, allows the key statement to stand out: “Noch ist es uns, sagten wir | Nicht vergönnt, nicht zu töten” (BFA 3, 97)� The complexity of these lines, with the double negative and the deferral of “noch,” forces the actors to slow as they work through the logic of the text� Yet after this labored language, the Control Chorus simply responds: Erzählt weiter, unser Mitgefühl Ist euch sicher Nicht leicht war es, zu tun, was richtig war� (BFA 3, 97) The understatement of the final line borders on the trite, particularly given Eisler’s instruction in the score that the lines should be delivered expressionlessly� As the lines are sung a capella , the Chorus lacks the support and reinforcement hitherto provided by the brass and percussion� The emphasis solely on “Mitgefühl” (sympathy; literally: shared feeling) echoes the “Mitleid” (compassion; literally: shared suffering) that previously characterized the Young Comrade’s spectatorship: his insistence on offering immediate aid to relieve suffering, which repeatedly led him to lose sight of the political goals of his mission� By relapsing from active reflection into unreflective sympathy, the Control Chorus exhibits exactly the kind of response that led to the Young Comrade’s tragic death� While the Chorus abdicates its responsibility as a critical audience and judge at the decisive moment, Die Maßnahme has given the performers and any theater audience the tools with which to spot and critique its lapse� Seeing the reference to “Mitgefühl” as “a strategic ‘verbal blunder’” by the Control Chorus, William Rasch writes: If we, as readers and spectators, have followed the progress of the Kontrollchor and have seen it as a model to be imitated or tried on for size, if we have seen in its actions a type of training for right behavior in a revolutionary situation, then we must stumble over this word, and therefore also stumble over the apparent transformation the Chor undergoes� If we have been good students, in other words, we are driven to question the lesson presented to us� (341) 86 Laura Bradley The closing chorus functions as a further stumbling block, as its triumphalist propaganda jars with the tenderness and mourning that the agitators have expressed in the preceding episode, in which they act out their killing of the Young Comrade� It recycles the opening chorus, in which-as Joachim Lucchesi argues-the mourning of the musical accompaniment anticipates and communicates the terrible news that the Chorus and any theater audience have yet to learn (Lucchesi, “Das Stück” 194—95). In the final scene, the significance of the music, not just the text, is now clear. Yet it is surely significant that Eisler does not use new dissonances, or motifs from the episodes concerning the Young Comrade, to suggest a dialectical synthesis or learning on the part of the Control Chorus� As a result, the triumphalist lyrics may suggest that the Control Chorus remains guilty of the opposite failing to the Young Comrade: hyperopia, or farsightedness, manifested in its exclusive focus on the Party’s long-term strategic goals� Despite the Chorus’s earlier expression of sympathy for the agitators, the Young Comrade’s death does not alter its assessment that the mission was a triumphant success� Trial scenes were clearly useful to Brecht because they provide dramatic situations in which witnessing, interpretation, intervention, and judgment matter� The courtroom scenes in Die Ausnahme und die Regel , Arturo Ui , and Der gute Mensch von Sezuan depict the failure of justice, manifested in the failure of judges to respond adequately to the evidence presented to them as spectator-participants in court� The plays thus challenge the theater audience to do better, particularly as it has witnessed the action under discussion in court in these plays� Die Maßnahme is more complex, partly because its depiction of the Communist Party’s internal judicial processes is accompanied by propaganda unequivocally in favor of a Communist revolution� While Die Maßnahme can be read as endorsing the Party’s right to eliminate dissent within its ranks, Brecht’s text and Eisler’s music create the space for performers-and, if present, the theater audience-to critique the spectatorial activity and judgment of the Communist Control Chorus� It is a richly provocative piece that sparked lively disagreements among the performers at rehearsals for the 1930 premiere and has continued to do so ever since� Notes 1 Brecht’s works are cited from the Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe in the form: BFA with volume and page numbers� 2 Baker 9� Baker’s article explores how Brecht’s courtroom scenes “tend to either demonstrate ideological positions as revealed through judicial deci- Watching Spectatorship and Judgment: Trial Scenes in Brecht’s Epic Theater 87 sions, or to use the stylized theatricality of the courtroom as a synecdoche for self-representation as role-play” (4)� 3 For further discussion of this episode, see Bradley 1034—35� 4 See e�g� Simons, esp� 330—34� 5 See e�g� Speirs 178; Bormann; and White� 6 The first two lines only feature in the 1930 edition and not in the revised edition published in 1931� Works Cited Baker, K� Scott� “Brecht’s Courtrooms and the Epic Theater�” Brecht Yearbook 37 (2012): 4—22� Bormann, Alexander von� “Nämlich der Mensch ist unbekannt: Ein dramatischer Disput über Humanität und Revolution ( Masse-Mensch , Die Maßnahme , Mauser )�” Wissen aus Erfahrungen: Werkbegriff und Interpretation heute. Festschrift für Hermann Meyer zum 65. Geburtstag � Ed� Alexander von Bormann in conjunction with Karl Robert Mandelkow and Anthonius H� Touber� Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976� 851—80� Bradley, Laura� “Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship�” Modern Language Review 111 (2016): 1029—48� Brecht, Bertolt� Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe � Ed� Werner Hecht et al� Berlin/ Frankfurt am Main: Aufbau/ Suhrkamp, 1988—2000� Clover, Carol� “‘God Bless Juries! ’” Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History � Ed� Nick Browne� Berkeley: U of California P, 1998� 255—77� Dahlberg, Leif� Spacing Law and Politics: The Constitution and Representation of the Juridical � Abingdon/ New York: Routledge, 2016� Dickson, Keith A� Towards Utopia: A Study of Brecht. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978� Eisler, Hanns� Die Maßnahme: Lehrstück von Bertolt Brecht in 8 Nummern für Tenor, 3 Sprecher, gemischten Chor und kleines Orchester, op. 20 (1930). Vienna/ London/ New York: Universal-Edition, 1931� Fischer, Ruth� Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege and Oxford UP, 1948. Grimm, Reinhold� “Ideologische Tragödie und Tragödie der Ideologie: Versuch über ein Lehrstück von Brecht�” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 78�4 (1959): 394—424� Horsman, Yasco� Theaters of Justice: Judging, Staging and Working Through in Arendt, Brecht, and Delbo � Stanford: Stanford UP, 2010� Jocums, George� The Dialectics of Law and Justice in the Plays of Bertolt Brecht � Diss� U of Michigan, 1970� Lucchesi, Joachim, ed� Das Verhör in der Oper: Die Debatte um die Aufführung “Das Verhör des Lukullus” von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau. Berlin: BasisDruck, 1993� 88 Laura Bradley ---� “‘Das Stück wirkt mit der Musik ganz anders! ’” Maßnehmen: Bertolt Brecht/ Hanns Eislers Lehrstück “Die Maßnahme.” Kontroverse, Perspektive, Praxis � Ed� Inge Gellert, Gerd Koch and Florian Vaßen� Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 1998� 189—95� Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels� Das kommunistische Manifest. Hamburg: Severus, 2016� Pearson, Meg F� “Audience as Witness in Edward II �” Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558-1642 � Ed� Jennifer A� Low and Nova Myhill . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011� 93—111� Rasch, William� “Theories of the Partisan: Die Maßnahme and the Politics of Revolution�” Brecht Yearbook 24 (1999): 330—43� Rex v� Sussex Justices [1924], 1 KB 256� Rochester, Joanne� Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010� Schauspiel Leipzig� “Verblendung: Impulse zu ‘Die Maßnahme / Die Perser’�” schauspielleipzig.de. Schauspiel Leipzig, n�d� Web� 23 May 2022� Schnell, Ralf� “Text und Metatext: Zur textstrategischen Dimension der Maßnahme �” Maßnehmen: Bertolt Brecht/ Hanns Eislers Lehrstück “Die Maßnahme.” Kontroverse, Perspektive, Praxis � Ed� Inge Gellert, Gerd Koch and Florian Vaßen� Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 1998� 150—58� Schoeps, Karl-Heinz� “Epic Structures in the Plays of Bernard Shaw and Bertolt Brecht�” Essays on Brecht: Theater and Politics � Ed� Siegfried Mews and Herbert Knust� Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1974� 28—43� Simons, Oliver� “Theater of Revolution and the Law of Genre: Bertolt Brecht’s The Measures Taken ( Die Maßnahme )�” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 84�4 (2009): 327—52� Speirs, Ronald� Brecht’s Early Plays. London/ Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982� Stern, Guy� “Drama Within Drama: Brecht’s Use of Trial Scenes�” Communications from the International Brecht Society 32 (2003): 70—74� Vismann, Cornelia� Medien der Rechtsprechung � Ed� Alexandra Kemmerer and Markus Krajewski� Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011� White, John, and Ann White� “Mi-en-leh’s Progeny: Some of Brecht’s Early Theatrical Parables and their Political Contexts�” The Text and its Context: Studies in Modern German Literature and Society Presented to Ronald Speirs on the Occasion of his 65 th Birthday � Ed� Nigel Harris and Joanne Sayner� Bern: Peter Lang, 2008� 327—37�