Written by Jeff Dorchen, playwright
An anecdote about the genesis for Strauss at Midnight:
Bill Cusack, a former member of Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang theater company, took me to see Tim’s crappy play about the then-and-still current Iraq war, “Embedded.” The play wouldn’t have been quite as annoying as it was had it not included a scene or two in which the inner circle of the Bush administration shouted, “All hail Leo Strauss!”
There was absolutely no indication who Leo Strauss was or what he had to do with the action or meaning of the play. There was certainly no indication Tim Robbins knew anything about Strauss or what he might have to do with any type of policy of any sort whatsoever.
I found that situation embarrassing. If Strauss had something to do with the extremism of neo-conservatism, then some kind of didactic art could surely be created to explore it, even if only on an agit-prop level. I’m no expert on Strauss. My sense of his place in the current discussions of right and wrong statesmanship is attached to many ideas I’ve explored in other plays: ideas about privilege, situationist ideas about power distribution, the relationship between art and popular culture, etc. You know, all that Oobleckery.
If nothing else I would like to think of Strauss at Midnight as a corrective to the abuse of Brechtian strategy and general good sense represented by Tim Robbins’ hack job.
The more I explored the relationships in the play the more it became about Jewish authorship - as well as fake Jewish authorship (represented by the Protocols). That the Protocols were plagiarized from a play about Machiavelli in Hell just seemed too loaded with meaning to be ignored, especially given Strauss’s opinion about Machiavelli’s pivotal role in the development of modern humanist values.
Strauss originated, in my opinion, the only intellectually substantial challenge to Western humanism since Nietzshe, who seemed a lot more ambivalent about his challenge than Strauss ever was about anything. Given Strauss’s importance, and the international catastrophe attributed by some in part to his political philosophy, it would seem to me Liberalism could do a lot more to stand up for itself than let Tim Robbins drool his boogery way across the stage.
So there’s some background, which doesn’t include anything about The Odd Couple, but that’s its own kettle of fish.
Click “Read more” to view a copy of the reading list Jeff sent to the cast to prepare them for Strauss at Midnight
Saul Bellow: Ravelstein (which is about Bellow’s friendship with Bloom); Herzog; Humboldt’s Gift; and a collection of short stories called, I think, Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories. He also edited an anthology of stories not by him: Great Jewish Short Stories - it could offer some insight into the author’s self-identification as a Jew, at least it did for me. David Isaacson (Oobleck company member)has read a lot of Bellow recently, so he’d be a good person to talk to if anyone else is interested in understanding his character.
Allan Bloom: I wouldn’t read anything by Bloom, but if one must, The Closing of the American Mind is the important one as far as this play goes; also Giants and Dwarfs.
Leo Strauss: Thoughts On Machiavelli would the most appropriate relative to the play; Liberalism Ancient and Modern; Socrates and Aristophanes; anything else where the title contains one or more of these words: law, tyranny, or city.
Neil Simon: The Odd Couple, God’s Favorite, The Sunshine Boys
Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince; Discourses
Maurice Joly: Dialogues in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli
“The Closing of the Early Modern Mind”, an essay arguing that Strauss’s approach to interpretation is partly teleological and obstructs approaches to understanding the “early moderns” on their own terms.
“Selective Intelligence”, an article by the great investigative journalist Seymour Hersch on how the neo-conservative philosophy led directly to the Bush administration’s lying the US into the Iraq war
“Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror” - Nicholas Xenos - pretty much what the title says
“Leo Strauss and the Noble Lie” - an article critical of the neo-conservatives’ qualifications for “spreading democracy”
“Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor” - another critique of Strauss as he influenced the neo-con movement
“Socratic Rhetoric of Machiavelli and Melville” - an essay comparing Melville’s and Machiavelli’s ideas of cosmic justice as related to governance and social justice
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion - translated from the Russian, along with the epilogue from the original 1905 edition by Sergyei Nilus
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion with more explanatory text
“The Protocols of Zion, a Literary Forgery”, a presentation of the original expose in the London Times, 1921, of the fact that the Protocols had been cribbed from the Dialogues in Hell
Additional texts:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw
Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
The Boys in the Band, by Mart Crowley
The Inferno, by Dante Aleghieri
The Republic, by Plato - especially the discourses with Glaucon
Any other Plato
Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
The Spirit of Laws, by Montesquieu
Comments (1)
Thank you for this link!