Proscenium Theatre Publications
It took a long time to finally find a job that paid me to write, mainly because there were not many of those around. On my good days I believed I had the skills and the experience, but the body of work I had to prove it was all creative and specialised, and I had little interest in journalism as such. Then suddenly an advert appeared in the Evening Post from a company called Proscenium which produced content for theatre programmes. The job would not only pay me to indulge my two favourite things – writing and the theatre – but the offices were in the centre of town barely twenty minutes’ walk from my home. Competition was bound to be fierce, so you can be sure I prepared my application with fanatical care – in the teeth of the thundering conviction that this was obviously too good to be true and I would have absolutely no chance. (Then again, maybe that helped. Secure in the knowledge that nothing I did was going to make any difference, I could relax and enjoy the process instead.)
The practical stages involved proofreading various articles and a general knowledge test, but the decider, I decided, was surely the sample article we applicants were required to supply. The brief read as follows:
The Play: the piece is for an imaginary new play entitled The Cross Roads which is being presented by a major repertory company. The play deals with two couples who have lived in the same house at different times. Though they are in no way alike, their lives, as demonstrated by the play, show oddly similar patterns, particularly in the way the protagonists relate to the world around them.
Context: the programme will contain a biographical piece about the author, together with a historical chart of the periods when each of the couples lived.
What you should write: this brief is for a third, short, article (about 500 words) on the subject of “History Repeats Itself”. There should be no suggestion that this is necessarily the theme of the play - that is for the performance to state. In fact, all we are doing here is to provide a little peripheral reading material which may offer the audience some appropriate food for thought. So, for the purposes of this article, the actual events in the play do not need to be known or referred to - it would, in any case, be unwise to give away the plot!
Instead, the article should look at some aspects of history which have repeated themselves (or unexpectedly failed to do so, perhaps).
I wrote two:
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
“History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
Marx’s famous dictum contains all we require in a good quote. It is neat, pithy, and memorable. In modern parlance, a sound bite. But what does it actually mean? And, more importantly, is it true?
On the face of it, Marx seems to be saying that any tragic event is destined to re-occur in farcical form the next time similar circumstances prevail. But if this really were the case, we would first have to deny the existence of both free will and the forces of blind chance that generally have a say in such matters. Besides, is it really only with the experience of hindsight and the soothing effect of temporal distance that we are able to see the funny side? Surely this is too simplistic? To take a single obvious example – the First World War was certainly a tragedy, but the Second was hardly any less catastrophic. So, no farce there.
Perhaps the grammar is at fault? Strictly speaking, for a historical event to be ‘repeatable’ it must first have happened at least once before, in this case presumably as neither tragedy nor farce. (For reasons of economy, no doubt, Marx leaves us to speculate on what theatrical form the original event might have taken. Panto perhaps? Kitchen-sink drama?) But the fact is that historical events are never neutral, they are like snowflakes. Each one is unique in isolation; it is only when they are viewed in a mass that they take on the appearance of a featureless expanse.
A chicken-and-egg argument at best, then. And while we are on the subject, why would events recur only twice? Why not five times? Or nineteen? And what dramatic guise would they adopt for further such encores? Restoration comedy? Rock musical? Japanese Noh play?
Given, then, that the elements we have are not holding water as they stand, let’s see what happens when we turn the maxim on its head. German, after all, is a tricky language and they don’t always put their words in the same order as we do. “History repeats itself, the first time as farce, the second time as tragedy.” Now consider Napoleon. Legend has it that at the height of the Russian campaign, he ordered a stock of overcoats for his troops from a British firm, ie the foe. This was a farcical situation certainly, and for a modern parallel we need look no further than the Iraqi supergun affair. Here the principle at work in the replay seems to be no less absurd than it was first time around. We may be a nation of shopkeepers, and business is business, but surely there are limits?
The potential tragedy in this pairing would probably have been cultural anyway. Had Napoleon’s order ever been met, there may never have been a retreat from Moscow and Tchaikovsky would have had to call his 1812 Overture something else.
No, the sad truth is that history is arbitrary and repeats itself with no more logic than a curry, and for no better reason than that humankind steadfastly refuses to learn from its mistakes. One may argue that each generation should reserve the child’s right to experiment and come to its own conclusions. Yet the fact remains that as a race we simply will not be told and therefore, like so many strands of DNA, events will keep on replicating themselves with biological inevitability and potentially infinite variety even unto the umpteenth generation.
The best we can hope for is that whenever history does drop its next banana skin, we shall have enough sense of humour left to survive the fall and still come up smiling.
TIME AND TIME AGAIN
Once Bitten, Twice Shy?
November 11th, 1918 – ‘The war to end all wars’ comes to an end.
September 3rd, 1939 – Britain and France declare war on Germany
“History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
(Karl Marx, after Hegel)
In his book A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Julian Barnes tells the story of one Lawrence Beesley, a second-class passenger who survived the sinking of the Titanic by boarding a half-empty lifeboat. Forty years later, while working as a consultant on the film A Night to Remember, he secretly infiltrated the crowd of extras about to brave the chill waters of the special effects tank, determined to suffer in fiction the death he had cheated in fact. Unfortunately, as he was not a paid-up member of the actors’ union, the director ordered him off the boat deck and so for the second time in his life, Beesley disembarked from the Titanic moments before it went down.
“Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.”
Ex-Park Ranger Roy C Sullivan, the human lightning conductor, has been struck by lightning seven times. The first incident occurred in 1942 and resulted in the loss of a big toenail. More recently, his eyebrows were burned off in the late ’60s, and in April 1972 his hair went up in flames. The following year, the new growth of hair was again blasted away, and his legs were scorched. The latest occasion was in 1977 when he was struck while fishing.
The Triumph of Optimism Over Experience
According to the Guinness Book of Records, in October 1957 Mrs Beverley Nina Avery, a 48-year-old barmaid from Los Angeles, California, obtained her sixteenth divorce from her fourteenth husband, Gabriel. She alleged outside the courtroom that no fewer than five of those fourteen had broken her nose.
Hope Springs Eternal
In December 1950, the wedding of Dorothy and David King Funk took place. They were divorced seven years later. January 1970 found them seeking their fifth divorce from one another. On the three other occasions, the marriage had been deemed to have broken down irreparably.
A Question of Reincarnation
Mr Marvin Redland, a guitar salesman from Norfolk, offered the following defence when charged with aiding and abetting the suicide of Dolly Weinberg, a barmaid at the Cherokee Tavern: “She started going on about having been a canary in a past life, and that next time she would come back as a water buffalo. When I laughed in her face she appeared to lose her rag and, seizing an automatic pistol kept behind the bar to deter rowdy customers, she shouted, ‘You wait – I’ll prove it!’”
What Goes Around, Comes Around
In the months leading up to the trial, all five prosecution witnesses in an Old Bailey kidnapping case disappeared. One was found dismembered, another died from gunshot wounds, the third took a fatal overdose, the fourth died from alcohol poisoning, and the fifth left home on the day of the trial never to be seen again. A police spokesman said, “We are satisfied there were no suspicious circumstances.”
“England Swings like a pendulum do.” (Roger Miller)
‘The skirt length of the modern Western woman acts as an economic barometer. As hemlines rise and fall, so does the economic condition of the country. Short skirts appear at times of high national production, and long skirts during periods of austerity and recession.’ (Dr Desmond Morris, Manwatching)
At the moment the pendulum would appear to be at rest, hanging, as it were, to the knee. Whether it is on its way towards the upswing of prosperity or heading back down into recession, perhaps only the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Vivienne Westwood, can say.
“If at first you don’t succeed…”
In the ninth century AD, King Alfred the Great successfully defended this country from the marauding Danes. Since 1066, it has been every Briton’s proud boast that no foreign power has ever invaded these shores. Of course, those who do the boasting are all to some extent descended from Willliam the Conqueror, the man responsible for the invasion at that time. It is perhaps less widely known that Duke William himself was a seventh-generation descendant from the army that had settled in Northern France after being unable to establish a foothold in England in the ninth century. Ironically enough, these Norsemen, or Normans as they were called, had originally come from – Denmark…
The Verdict
(reproduced verbatim)
“He submitted two pieces, one poking fun at Marx’ dictum and the other using a plethora of snippets ala Guinness Book of Records – ie pantomime programme-style. They both work well, though, I must say the first works better than the second, simply because I am not convinced that all the examples in the snippety one bear that much relevance to the title. Nonetheless, the writing style is exemplary and I cannot really fault what he has done, particularly in the Marx piece where he really does manage to introduce considerable humour. He said he was offering two different styles and that he has done successfully.”
It was tea time a few days later when I got the call. I was upstairs feeding our infant son. When my own dad stood reading the letter accepting me into Oxford, twenty years before in this very room, he’d had his arm around my shoulder. As his eyes reached the crucial line, I remember his grip tightening for a moment. This was like that – the relief, the vindication, the sense of a new and exciting future opening up.
Alas, the job was only destined to last a couple of years. Something to do with finances – it always comes down to money in the end – but while it lasted, I gave it my best shot. Here are some of the pieces I wrote during that happy period.
