The Homeless Were Quite at Home With ‘The Good Person of Szechwan’

The theater ensemble Ten Thousand Things recently completed a tour of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Person of Szechwan” to homeless shelters around Los Angeles. T.H. McCulloh reviewed the play April 19 in The Times. As director of the company, I believe that critics are entitled to their opinions, but I must take exception to two statements in the review that lie outside those boundaries.

First, McCulloh implies that I invented the title “The Good Person of Szechwan” in an attempt to be trendy and non-sexist. Ralph Manheim and John Willett use this title in their well-known 1976 edition of the play. Before beginning the production, I spoke personally to Willett, who urged me to choose “The Good Person,” rather than “The Good Woman,” because he believed it better expressed the complexities of Brecht’s intentions.

Second, in the final line of his review, McCulloh writes that “this experience for the homeless leaves them again disenfranchised.” Here, McCulloh takes it upon himself to speak for the homeless, who actually had responses to the play quite different from his own.

These men and women seemed readily at home with the aesthetic of the “rough theater” that shaped our production: a few hundred dollars for sets and costumes, seven actors playing 25 roles, the ability to perform in whatever lobby or eating room a shelter had available, and great quantities of liveliness, heart and humor to be directly exchanged between performers and audience.

Our homeless audiences tuned in immediately to Brecht’s vision of the world, and heartily appreciated all sorts of subtleties and nuances that escaped many of our paying audiences. For instance, at the Weingart Center, strong and knowing laughter greeted an often overlooked line of a song near the end of the first act: “Merely to get your dinner/Requires the ruthlessness of an empire builder.” Many in the audience would have to leave the play at intermission in order to get a good place in line on one of the street corners where food would be handed out that evening.

We invited audience members to record their responses, good and bad, in a notebook after every show. Without exception, the comments were highly enthusiastic: “I really enjoyed this play--boy was it real good!” “Terrific, well-acted out--one of the most funniest performances!” “The most extraordinary performance I’ve ever seen!”

Many responded keenly to the plight of Shen Te the Prostitute: “I think somebody wrote my unauthorized biography! It was moving and a release.” And perhaps most profound: “Things like this make me really want to get my life in order. It makes me see life really has a meaning. Thank you.”

Disenfranchised ? Perhaps McCulloh wanted a clever closing line for his review, but in trying to do so he deprives the homeless of the validity of their own opinions. And in our country, this is often one of the only things that the homeless have left.