Jack Gelber The Connection Analysis

Jack Gelber’s The Connection was written in 1959 and first produced by the Living Theatre, directed by Living Theatre’s co founder-Judith Malina and designed by co-founder Julian Beck. According to Bradford Martin, in his article “ The Living Theatre: Paradise and Politics in the Streets,” the company is “one of the world’s leading experimental theatre companies” based in New York City. Emerging in the late 40s and early 50s, The Living Theatre adapted “anarchist and pacifist ideologies” that they represented through their appeal to the intertwining of “free the theatre” and “free the street” (cultural life starring as “the theatre” and political life, public life as “the street” ) as a means for “aesthetic activism and social change.” Their ultimate goal is society’s personal freedom of “sexuality”, drug “experimentation”, and freedom from state control. Gelber’s The Connection, adopted similar anarchist themes and motifs, and marks a breaking point in The Living Theatre as it combines “formal experiments with its political and social vision.” In addition to the adaption of The Living Theatre’s ideologies, Gelber adapts to greater aspects of anarchism. Through his theatrical devices, such as monologues and high realism, Gelber alludes to aspects of anarchy as described in George Woodcock’s article “What is Anarchism”: the hope for “justice and equality” in a society where “exploitation” and “oppression” are placed upon the workers by the privileged state and corresponding

By breaking the fourth wall and commenting on the production of the play, Gelber creates a kind of hyperrealism in which the audience is an active participant, creating the distinction between the play’s reality and the audience’s reality. The subject matter of the play (which in itself is a play about society using drug addicts and jazz musicians) brings a sense of hyper realism as well, the dialogue and plot attempts to perceive human social life in general: the dependency on interaction, the limbo of waiting (for a drug dealer in this case), and the oppression of capital society. It is also important note, as Mike Sell points out in his article “Jazz and the Drug War,” that jazz is a crucial part of this high realism. Written during the Cold War, jazz became a subculture of utopian society where audiences and performers alike could get away from it all. Gelber uses this history to incorporate the utopian aesthetic of jazz, while pairing it with drug addiction and an “improvised” play to compare real society to the allusion of free

From the first monologue questions of “anti-social habits” (similar to the “unsocial” discussed in further detail by Woodcock ) in today’s state structured society is brought to centre stage. The drug addict actors, Leach, Solly, Sam, Ernie, Harry, Cowboy and the musicians, stand as the exploited underpaid workers that Woodcock may describe as living “ little above the starvation level.” The photographers are also exploited: getting paid only to “pay the rent” sending money back to the state and property