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This volume contains new translations to extend our image of one of the twentieth century's most entertaining and thought provoking writers on culture, aesthetics and politics. Here are a cross-section of Brecht's wide-ranging thoughts which offer us an extraordinary window onto the concerns of a modern world in four decades of economic and political disorder. The book is designed to give wider access to the experience of a dynamic intellect, radically engaged with social, political and cultural processes. Each section begins with a short essay by the editors introducing and summarising Brecht's thought in the relevant year.
Bertolt Brecht in Context examines Brecht's significance and contributions as a writer and the most influential playwright of the twentieth century. It explores the specific context from which he emerged in imperial Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as Brecht's response to the turbulent German history of the twentieth century: World Wars One and Two, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the experience of exile, and ultimately the division of Germany into two competing political blocs divided by the postwar Iron Curtain. Throughout this turbulence, and in spite of it, Brecht managed to remain extraordinarily productive, revolutionizing the theater of the twentieth century and developing a new approach to language and performance. Because of his unparalleled radicalism and influence, Brecht remains controversial to this day. This book – with a Foreword by Mark Ravenhill – lays out in clear and accessible language the shape of Brecht's contribution and the reasons for his ongoing influence.
These essays represent the push to provide interdisciplinary Brecht research to English-speaking audiences following his death in 1956 and offer novel readings of his works indicative of the major literary questions of the time. The essays explore both Brecht's theoretical approach and political thought, with many also taking a comparative approach to analysis of individual plays. The contributors are Reinhold Grimm, Karl-Heinz Schoeps, Herbert Knust, Hans Meyer, Siegfried Mews, Raymond English, James Lyon, Darko Suvin, Gisela Bahr, Grace Allen, Ralph Ley, John Fuegi, Andrzej Wirth and David Bathrick.
The Lehrstücke (or 'learning-plays') lie at the heart of Brechtian theatre. Written during 1929 and 1930, years of far-reaching political and economic upheaveal in Germany and the period of Brecht's most sharply Communist works, these short plays show an abrupt rejection of most of the trappings of conventional theatre. The Lehrstücke are spare and highly formalized pieces intended for performance by amateurs, on the principle that the moral and political lessons contained in them can best be taught by participation in an actual production. There is nothing in the drama of the twentieth century to match the precision of their language and the economy of their theatrical technique.
This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, "The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, "and "Galileo," Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama. Translated and edited by John Willett, "Brecht on Theater" is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.
First published in 1980, this collection of fifteen original essays touches on a variety of topics related to the genesis of Brecht's works and their impact on contemporary literature, theater, and film. Discussed are Brecht's confrontation with Marxism and its political manifestations, the influence of his work on film and theater practitioners, the uses his literary descendants have made of his political commitment, and much more.
"First published by Methuen Drama in 1964 in an edition translated and with notes by John Willett. Copyright ÷ John Willett, 1964. The translation and selection of material in this edition first published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015."
Not long after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, Bertolt Brecht’s name was on the lips of many writing about Broadway. Invoked knowingly—but not always knowledgeably—“Brecht” became something between marketing strategy and erudite justification for another season of Broadway musicals, another ignominy endured by the German playwright whose epic theater has only seldom been understood in the United States. To say that Brechtian and Broadway theatrical traditions represent divergence of philosophy, method, or ambition is to indulge—with the whimsy of Mark Twain—in understatement. Nevertheless, many references to Brecht since 2001 imply compatibility instead of contradiction—a confusion or corruption that suggested the need of looking closely at what Brecht wrote and intended in his epic theater more than seventy years after his first—and, unfortunately, typical—experience with United States theater. Beginning with the 1935 production of The Mother and moving through recent productions of political theater, including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Urinetown: The Musical, and My Name is Rachel Corrie, this anthology considers the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in terms of dramaturgy, performance, and reception. The essays in this anthology explore the political, cultural, and economic constraints shaping many of the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in U.S. theater history. This means looking at how, in many cases, epic theater has been co-opted and commodified by Broadway and what that commodification reveals about the culture of theater. Simultaneously, this means theorizing how epic theater finds—or can find—ways of providing a necessary bulwark against Broadway escapism, and what this suggests for the future of political theater in the U.S. What results is a dialectical history tracing Brecht’s encounters with Broadway, a history that opens-up and debates the complicated and often conflicted influence of Bertolt Brecht on United States theater. “Dr. Westgate's book on Brecht and Broadway is an excellent study of the reception of Brecht's work in the American theater and academe. Brecht, along with Moliere; Ibsen and Chekhov, is one of the most frequently performed playwrights in translation in America. A thorough investigation of the trajectory of Brecht stagings on Broadway has long been overdue. I am very grateful that Dr. Westgate has taken on the task and arrived at such a splendid result. The book is a must reading for any serious Brecht scholar.” —Carl Weber, Stanford Drama Department, Collaborator with Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble, Director of many Brecht stagings in the U.S. “This is a provocative collection of essays outlining the sometimes unexpected connections between Brecht and the Broadway theatre. Like Brecht himself, these essays are playful, argumentative, and productively dialectical in their contradictions. The book is both entertaining and educational, and bound to provoke healthy debate. I recommend it as a demonstration of the ongoing relevance of Brechtian theories of theatre to the analysis of mainstream commercial theatre." —Sean Carney, Associate Professor, McGill University