Theater: The Life of Galileo

For the past five years, I have been using Brecht's The Life of Galileo in a first-year writing course called Questions, Intuitions, Revisions: Storytelling as Inquiry, which I co-teach each fall at Bryn Mawr College. But I had never actually seen the play staged, and have very much been looking forward to the current Wilma performance. I finally saw the play last night, and thought it a magnificent production, in all the ways that Wilma's productions often are magnificent.

In light of the current conversation in this theater forum about the willingness of scientists to stand up for the importance of doubting, the performance highlighted two tensions that, in my multiple readings and re-readings of the script, I hadn't noticed before. The first is the gap, or elision, between the first act, in which the church hierarchy attempts to suppress the freedom of scientific inquiry, and the second act, when Galileo tells his former student Andrea about the need for scientists to "pledge to apply their knowledge for human good." There's a slide, in other words, from the 17th century encounter, in which religion oppresses science, and the 20th century use of science in the service of the state.

Ann Dixon has asked me to start the discussion thread off with some thoughts about the Wilma’s production of Life of Galileo. These aren’t the most stimulating thoughts I’ve had, but here goes. More of my thoughts (and translator David Edgar’s) are online at our website, along with rehearsal (and soon performance) photos of the play.

We had our first preview of Galileo last night. Considering it was only the second time the actors have been able to run the play in the past week, it went surprisingly well. This is a real workout for them, especially for John Campion as Galileo, a role comparable in size to King Lear and requiring him to give the illusion of aging nearly 30 years over the course of the evening.