Some artists are just simply ahead of their time.
Consider, for example, Bertolt Brecht.
“The guy had a lot to say,” says Jenny Magnus, who should know: She makes her debut as Dark Joan this weekend in the Prop Thtr production of Brecht’s “St. Joan of the Stockyards.” (This after last year’s Brecht centennial, where it seemed Chicago couldn’t get enough of the playwright or of Magnus in Brecht productions.)
“In this play, he’s talking a lot about mergers, monopolies and the cycles of wealth and poverty,” says Magnus. “In this day and age, when it’s not so incredible that only one company can own all of entertainment, maybe it’s not that unthinkable to think of one company that owns all the meat.”
In other words, think of AOL and Time Warner as beef, Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch as meat merchants.
“In the play, the meat industry has a vertical integration, from buying from farmers to all levels of production,” says Magnus.
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“Clearly, it makes good `business’ sense, but it also lends itself to abuses of power…. If you own all the means of production, you don’t have to listen to anyone.”
Talking about power and art, though, also provides a forum for political reflection.
“What I’ve often felt about Brecht, who was this amazing writer and amazing theoretician, is that people in the U.S. frequently produce him for the theatricality of his scripts, not the politics,” she explains. “It’s more `Let’s not think about what’s being said, let’s just enjoy it.’ But in Europe, both the theater and the theory are preserved, and both are good and possible. They believe it is possible to theatricalize complex, abstract ideas.”
Not that Magnus denies there are eye-glazing moments in Brecht.
“But he’s so funny, the humor undercuts them,” she says. “In this piece, Dark Joan has her vision of the people marching into city, inciting a riot. And she does this whole drama where there’s major scenery chewing. Then, after she finishes, one of the workers says to another, `Did you understand that? I didn’t.'”
The part of Dark Joan may fit Magnus like a glove in some ways, but it is a huge, difficult part, and she knows it.
“I was kind of born to play this part,” she says with a chuckle. “She’s got this incredible artiness, the assuredness of her rightness, and then the crushing realization that she’s wrong. That’s very near and dear to my heart. She’s very human. She wakes up and sees how wrong she’s been.”
So does Dark Joan make light, does she make amends?
“She thinks she’s going to,” says Magnus, “but she gets swept up again in her rightness. At one point, her line is, `I have to go back,’ and I always think she means she’s going to go back and make amends, be of service. But she can’t live in the world she goes back to, it’s too compromised, too hypocritical.”
Contrary to frequent portrayals of Joan — which paint her as either a victim or malicious — Magnus goes for something more human, more complicated and less extreme.
“The main theme of the show is that fundamentalism in any form is dangerous,” says Magnus. “Any way of living that doesn’t include contradiction and complexity can’t be sustained. That’s very Brecht.”
In the meantime, Magnus is already prepping for a new show, called “Round and Round,” what she calls a “sex farce/tragedy,” and a new solo piece, which will be produced at Steppenwolf’s Garage in the summer of 2002.
But her most personal project is the one offstage: a follow-up to her solo CD, 1997’s “Whoopsadaisy.”
“My hope is to have it out by the time of the Steppenwolf show,” says Magnus.
“St. Joan of the Stockyards” is a Prop Thtr show at Bailiwick, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Call 773-486-7767 or 773-883-1090 for more information.