The Gas Heart - Legacy

Legacy

The Théâtre Michel show, and the play itself, are traditionally viewed as the final event in the evolution of Dada as a cultural movement, paraphrased by critic Johanna Drucker as "the 'death' of Dada". Hans Richter, who contributed to the 1923 show, wrote: "Le Cœur à barbe and Le Cœur à gaz were Dada's swan song. There was no point in continuing because nobody could any longer see any point. All this was linked with the movement's gradual loss of its inner power of conviction. The more it lost this power, the more frequent became the struggles for power within the group, until the hollow shell of Dada finally collapsed." Whiting also writes: "The Soirée drove the last nail into the coffin of the movement that Cocteau had all too aptly characterized as 'le Suicide-Club'." As another consequence of the performance, Tzara unsuccessfully sought to have Éluard sued (while the theater refused to host any other stagings of the play).

The Gas Heart endured as one of the most noted among Tzara's writings, as well as among Dada plays in general. New York Times chronicler D. J. R. Bruckner argues: "Few Dada plays survive; this one is exquisite ." The text was received with interest by the avant-garde movements of Central and Eastern Europe. In Hungary, it was staged as early as the 1920s by the Expressionist theater company of Ödön Palasovszky (in a Hungarian-language translation by Endre Gáspár). In 1930, Tzara produced and directed the film Le Cœur à barbe, which starred some of the original show's main protagonists. The post-World War II productions of the play include the 1976 staging at the University of Iowa Intermedia program (with uncredited performance by Ana Mendieta) and the 2001 Israeli modern dance adaptation by Gábor Goda and the Vertigo Dance Company.

While noting that Tzara's play shares a number of motifs with Not I, a 1972 dramatic monologue by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, Enoch Brater also argues that the latter is more accomplished and different in tone and that The Gas Heart is one of several "parodies of theatrical conventions rather than significant breakthroughs in the development of a new dramatic form."