THE BRIG
Originally produced by the radically experimental Living Theatre in New York in 1963, The Brig is a study of dehumanization and regimentation in a military prison. (Though the specific setting is a U.S. Marine brig in Japan in 1957, those details are irrelevant to the play’s Kafkaesque scheme.) The play’s dialogue consists entirely of public exchanges between the prisoners and their supervising officers: there are no contrived dramatic moments here, no breakout plans, no secret romances, no private vendettas to be settled. All we hear is the officers giving orders (frequently employing such choice military endearments as “maggot,” “louse,” and “insect”) and the prisoners responding “Yes sir!”
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This tightly regimented dialogue is accompanied by equally regimented patterns of movement–the prisoners’ actions in response to their overseers’ commands. These actions are physically tiring and emotionally demeaning, part of the brutal “rehabilitation” these prisoners must undergo for real or imagined crimes whose nature is never revealed.
That last scene is one of the most horrifying moments ever seen on a stage when performed as Brown originally intended. Here, like the rest of the action, it’s simply funny. The comedy stems from the incongruity of watching an office manager order a worker to submit to such punishment. Similarly, a yuppie executive calling his secretary “maggot” makes us laugh by its absurdity–an absurdity reinforced by the production’s use of oversize props (telephones, pencils, dollar bills) and symbols (toy cars and clubs inscribed with the words “benefits” and “pension”).
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Marlene Zuccaro.
