Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

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The Festival’s advertising appears to be aimed at a more mainstream audience than
that of Alexandrowicz’s previous works. Attributes of the theatre, its location and the play’s
inclusion in a well-funded festival may lead to an unfamiliar audience finding the work’s
Brechtian attack on class structures, including its depiction of marginalized homosexuality,
more interventionist than their horizon of expectation would have led them to believe. The
play’s overt attack on class systems may be read as a comment on some of the members of
audience that Alexandrowicz hoped to attract. As the play weaves some of its gay themes
with its class discourses, a provocation of the audience through references to sexuality or
political content may operate as a distancing device. This potentially could stop the
audience member from “losing [him]self passively” in the narrative and analysing the social
issues of the play (Brecht 91). It may also simply offend and give cause to leave the theatre,
as Alexandrowicz admits occurred. He comments that he wanted that Beggars be
provocative in this regard. He believes the play’s depiction of sexual themes, and
specifically the assault on a male victim, as opposed to a female, had a certain effect on
audiences. In his Final Report to the BC Arts Council he writes:
Some people were not so thrilled [with the extreme bawdiness of the show]:
during our one previews a whole crowd of six or seven people got up and
walked out the side door of the theatre, leaving it open! (… I believe it is
significant that this took place during the scene in which a homosexual
seduction/coercion was taking place; I doubt they would have left if the
scene in question had involved a heterosexual relationship.)
(Alexandrowicz, "Final 3)