This entire presentation is copyright © 1968 and © 1999 by William Allin Storrer. Phd. For permission to quote, contact Dr. Storrer at mindalive@storrer.com
Two factors must be considered in order to formulate a statement of principles governing the organization of communicative elements in Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf: what does each artifact communicate, and what element of communication unifies the presentation. The evidence presented in this dissertation suggests that, despite varying means, the film and dramatic media can communicate on the same levels of interpretation. The film is unified through its visual, drama through its verbal, structure. This is the specific lesson of Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf.
Four viewpoints have been developed as representative of a wide range of possible interpretations of Stagwoolf. Each of these interpretations was then developed with respect to Cinewoolf. Though Cinewoolf did not present in depth the symbolism of Martha and George Washington, there was no apparent evidence that such symbolism could not have been developed, but only that it was not. Though Cinewoolf is not the tragedy of George, it does progress according to tragic structure.
The simplest level of response to Albee's drama is a view of Stagwoolf as a story of college life. Though Albee devotes a full page1 to specifying general characteristics and ages of his actors and the setting in which they perform, most of the facts one learns about Martha and George and their early morning visitors is actually communicated in the dialogue they speak to each other. Two pages of facts related to Martha and George, Nick and Honey, and the campus were culled from those words spoken by the actors to each other, as well as four differing yet related interpretations of the meanings of the spoken words. In a stage production, the facts of physical reality would be essentially inviolable. Though there is considerable leeway for the director and his designer to choose what they put into "The living room of a house on the campus of a small New England college,"2 Stagwoolf restricts the action to that living room.
In Cinewoolf that living room constitutes the acting space for but forty-five per cent of the running time of the film, the other fifty-rive per cent being set in other rooms of the house, in the yard around the house, on the college campus, and at a roadhouse in the town of "New Carthage."(40) Though the existence of most of these other areas may be implied from Stagwoolf, and though such other areas as the kitchen,(89) bathroom,(160) and upstairs(159,173) of the house, and the greenhouse on the campus(198) are specifically identified, the roadhouse is never mentioned.
Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf both observe a tragic pattern of events. In the play, George is the tragic hero, in the film, Martha the tragic heroine, but this change does not reflect upon the ability of either media to present a tragic pattern of events. Were George's on stage sparagmos with Martha(159,174) cut from performance of Stagwoolf, the drama could be presented as the tragedy of Martha. Conversely, had this section been retained in Cinewoolf, the visual emphasis now given to Martha, and her dominance of George until sequence thirteen, could have been reversed, and the film would have become the tragedy of George.
Instead a virtue has been made of a seeming necessity. Martha comes on strong in both Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf. Her "Jesus H. Christ"(3) as she bursts on the stage, followed by her imitation of Bette Davis,(3-6) focuses attention on her in the opening moments of Stagwoolf. In Cinewoolf, her laughter that breaks the night's silence,(3) the overexposure as she turns on the light, and the Bette Davis imitation, provide a similar focusing of attention. In Stagwoolf we are misled into believing that Martha is the principal character until the tragic pattern, and her own admission of George's premiere rank,(189-190) prove otherwise. In Cinewoolf, Martha is number one, and her admission of George's high rank does not carry much weight against the evidence of the visual presentation and the revised tragic pattern it supports.
Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf both project the ambiguity of truth versus illusion. This ambiguity is embedded in the fabric of language of Stagwoolf. Statements made one moment may be contradicted another, until there is all too little that has not been placed in a status of ambiguity. Several segments of dialogue that do represent the truth have been cut from Cinewoolf, so that ambiguity as to their truth would not be created by the visual presentation. Presenting Martha's essentially honest recounting of her past in full(77-81) might have placed its truth in doubt. Use of flashback or similar device to develop the truth of her statements would have been a give-away of the fallacy of the Bergin story when it did not appear in similar concrete terms. By eliminating the major part of Martha's past history, so that the action never dwells on it, its truth is never questioned. In this manner, both the complete Bergin story and Bringing Up Baby are revealed in ambiguous terms on a visual level as well as in much of the dialogue.
The symbolism of Martha and George as the Washingtons is implicit in the language of Stagwoolf. The possibility of the drama working on this level of symbolism depends upon our willingness to accept hints that are in the text and to accept certain lines as having effective double meanings. When Martha asks "You men solve the problems of the world, as usual?"(48) the literally minded theatergoer might see nothing more than a casual bit or conversation making, but the sentence also suggests a symbol of the two leaders of the world's greatest powers in summit conference.
This symbolism is still hinted at in Cinewoolf, but there is no apparent supportive visualization of this level of interpretation. Most references to the symbolic dual between Nick "Kruschev" and George and Martha "Washington," and of the American dream these latter two have tried to create, do not appear in Cinewoolf. This must not be interpreted as a limitation of the film medium. The change is necessitated by the excision of George's on stage sparagmos(159-174) to make Cinewoolf into Martha's tragedy.
The two most specific references in terms of symbolism of the America versus Russia conflict and the disastrous outcome Albee predicts for the West are found in George's on stage sparagmos. The first of these is George's offer to Nick:
<. . . ice for the lamps of China, Manchuria thrown in. You better watch those yellow bastards, my love . . . they aren't amused. Why don't you come on over to our side, and we'll blow the hell out of 'em.(166)>
The other is at the end of this same scene, where George reads "And the West, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must . . . eventually . . . fall."(174) Neither of these speeches is the kind of material that can be transferred to another place in the dialogue without appearing obviously misplaced. Both disappear from the dialogue of Cinewoolf in the excision of George's on stage sparagmos and, since they cannot be easily relocated, other dialogue references to this level or symbolic action would be left without their conclusions, their explanations. Cutting most of these other verbal references, and leaving only the hint of this level of interpretation, allows the symbolism to operate unambiguously, if not as effectively as in Stagwoolf.
Underlying all these changes from Stagwoolf to Cinewoolf there seems to be a principle of the supremacy of visual over verbal communication that can be stated as "what is not shown, is not heard." By "shown" is meant anything that can be communicated visually, and by "heard" any aural communication. Since Cinewoolf does not show the tragedy of George, the dialogue that forces the tragic pattern to be his tragedy is cut from Cinewoolf. Since we do not see Martha's past history, nor Nick and Honey's past history, nor the symbolism of the Washingtons, these have been reduced in dialogue to only that connective tissue necessary to keep the plot flowing.
We do see the ambiguity in George's Bergin story, and in Martha's Bringing Up Baby, so we hear most all of the Bergin story and enough of Bringing Up Baby to establish the point carried in the visual presentation. This is not enough, however, to state the operative principle as "what is shown is heard." The only detail about the campus that is revealed in the dialogue is the existence of a greenhouse,(198) some place for Daddy to give the party, and Martha and George's house. All of these are shown in sequence one. Albee never mentions a roadhouse, yet better than one-eighth of Cinewoolf takes place at a roadhouse and in the adjacent parking lot. Cinewoolf presents visually a wealth of detail that is either never mentioned in the dialogue or never clearly implied by the dialogue.
The possibility that the principle may be stated as "what is heard must be shown," is not conclusively substantiated by Cinewoolf. Though considerably cut, Martha's past and the symbolism of the Washingtons is still mentioned, yet neither is developed visually. Generally, though, the statement does hold true.
The predominance of visual communication is seen in this manner to be expressed by Cinewoolf. Continuity of the medium is focused in the visual presentation, and the aural presentation is altered to conform.
The reverse is true for drama:
<In drama we are left to draw our own conclusions about the action of the characters. All we know must come from how they act and what they say about themselves and one another.>3
The stage director must rely on the words the actors are given to speak for guidance in staging the play. Some modern authors "help" by including copious stage directions, but Albee's stage directions are comparatively few, and it is possible to derive an interpretation entirely from the words his characters speak to each other. Ample evidence of this is present in the widely varying viewpoints derived by this and other writers entirely from what the characters in Stagwoolf say to each other.
This comparison of Stagwoolf and Cinewoolf demonstrates not only that film and drama can communicate similar content, but also that the primary communicating element is different for the two media. The drama's principal means of communication is verbal, and even though Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "has an uncommonly rich verbal texture,"4 and "the verbal structure serves the drama so well without recourse to other theatrical elements,"5the film's communication is structured by visual elements. That so articulate and literate an idiom as is Albee's could be adapted to the visual means of the film is a positive comment on the universality of Albee's dramatic expression and the flexibility of the cinema.
1. Stagwoolf, unnumbered introductory material.
2. Ibid.
3. Chester Clayton Long, "Cocteau's Orphée: From Myth to Drama and Film," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, V (October 1, 1565), p. 315.
4. John Gassner, "'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' on LP," The Saturday Review, XLVI (June 29, 1964), p 39.
5. Ibid.