Albert Lamont, Jeff Nash (with book), Johnson Anthony and Louis Williams
(photo credit: John Ranard)

The Living Theatre finally has a permanent home after its 56 year journey. In its new space in the gentrified Lower East Side at 19-21 Clinton Street, it has opened with a revival of its 1963 hit The Brig. Written by Kenneth H. Brown, a Korean War veteran, this play about a United States Marine Corps prison was written out of personal experience. Judith Malina, co-founder and artistic director of The Living Theatre, has recreated her controversial 1963 New York production which later toured Europe until 1967. Since the revelations about such places as Abu Ghraib Prison and Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, the play has taken on a new relevance that could not have been anticipated in previous decades.

In depicting the brutality of military prisons, The Brig is as close to cinéma vérité as theatre can be. The play depicts one day in the lives of ten marine prisoners in a US Marine Corps prison in a foreign country. It never reveals what their infractions were. In fact, there is no exposition at all. The audience lives the one day from the moment the prisoners are awoken to lights out at the end of the day. Sitting on the other side of a barbed wire fence, the audience experiences this typical day simply as it unfolds, including the extreme noise and the deadly silences that punctuate the prisoners’ existence. The play takes place in real time with blackouts to skip over events such as meals which would take place elsewhere.

The set by the late Julian Beck and Gary Brackett is the height of realism. Five sets of bunk beds for the ten prisoners are enclosed in a barracks room with a fence for the wall facing the audience. Except for a shelf for toothbrushes and soap, there is nothing else in the room. On the other side of the fence is an area representing outdoors which includes a section covered with pebbles. This is enclosed by a barbed wire fence designating the outside wall. On the right and left sides of the central playing area are the guards’ check points and doors leading to the store room, the head, solitary confinement, etc.

The prisoners are awoken by a guard banging the top of a metal garbage can against the fence. They are continually addressed as “maggots” and each have a number instead of a name. They must always line up in numerical order. Before entering or leaving a room, they must shout to the guard on duty, “Permission to cross the white line, sir.” When the prisoners at various entrance ways are all yelling out at the same time, the sound level is deafening. They are continually subjected to inspections, shakedowns, etc. Each time they are returned to their quarters, they must get out their Marine Manual (which must be kept under their caps on top of their pillows at all other times), stand in a specific spot near their bunks and read silently standing up. While waiting for others to catch up or complete a task, they must continue running in place. On this particular day, one prisoner is discharged; another cracks up; and a new prisoner is admitted to the ranks and is assigned the number of a prisoner who has left.

If at any time they do not respond fast enough to commands, they are punched in the stomach but must snap back to attention immediately. At no time are any of the prisoners allowed to talk to each other or the guards. The only answer they may make to a command is either “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” Besides the physical brutality, there is the dehumanization of never having a name, or being allowed to speak or express a feeling or an opinion. The play is exhausting and tense to watch for the audience. It must be brutal for the actors.

It is difficult to analyze the acting as the prisoners never show a reaction. They stare ahead silently at all times except when given a command or asking to cross the white line at an entrance way. Their faces are expressionless and they are expected to behave like robots. Aside from physical differences such as height, weight or skin color, the men have been turned into total ciphers, devoid of any personal characteristics. Whether it is more difficult to show nothing or to run the gamut of emotions, only the actors can tell us. Nonetheless, the actors playing the prisoners heroically are put through their regimen.

The actors playing the guards, on the other hand, seem rather self-conscious as they bark their orders. Their obvious ad-libbing is rather banal as they use the same lines over and over again to taunt the prisoners who cannot respond. Among the actors who make an impression despite the restraints of the play are Albert Lamont who plays a prisoner who can’t take it any more and Brent Bradley as a prisoner who has obviously been given special responsibilities because he is so quick to respond to commands. Kesh Baggan is terrifying as a guard who demands that a prisoner die on the spot for an infraction.

The Living Theatre’s production of Kenneth H. Brown’s The Brig is not a pleasant experience nor is it meant to be. It is a powerful expression of man’s inhumanity to man. One only has to read the newspapers to know that this sort of thing is still going on all over the world. It is a visceral experience for the audience. One can only imagine what it must be like for the actors who must experience it night after night.

The Brig (through June 3)

The Living Theatre, 19-21 Clinton Street, in Manhattan