The Berliner Ensemble was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949. The company soon gained international prominence, and its productions and philosophy influenced the work of ...theatre-makers around the world. David Barnett's book is the first study of the company in any language. Based on extensive archival research, it uncovers Brecht's working methods and those of the company's most important directors after his death. The book considers the boon and burden of Brecht's legacy and provides new insights into battles waged behind the scenes for the preservation of the Brechtian tradition. The Berliner Ensemble was also the German Democratic Republic's most prestigious cultural export, attracting attention from the highest circles of government, and from the Stasi, before it privatised itself after German reunification in 1990. Barnett pieces together a complex history that sheds light on both the company's groundbreaking productions and their turbulent times.
This production history of The Mother provides substantial new insights into Bertolt Brecht’s theatre and drama, his impact on political theatre, and the relationship between text, performance, and ...politico-cultural context. As the only play which Brecht staged in the Weimar Republic, during his exile, and in the GDR, The Mother offers a unique opportunity to compare his theatrical practice in contrasting settings and at different points in his career. Through detailed analysis of original archival evidence, Bradley shows how Brecht became far more sensitive to his spectators’ political views and cultural expectations, even making major tactical concessions in his 1951 production at the Berliner Ensemble. These compromises indicate that his ‘mature’ staging should not be regarded as definitive, for it was tailored to a unique and delicate situation. The Mother has appealed strongly to politically committed theatre practitioners both in and beyond Germany. By exploiting the text’s generic hybridity and the interplay between Brecht’s ‘epic’ and ‘dramatic’ elements, directors have interpreted it in radically different ways. So although Brecht’s 1951 production stagnated into an affirmative GDR heritage piece, post-Brechtian directors have used The Mother to promote their own political and theatrical concerns, from anti-authoritarian theatre to reflections on the legacies of state Socialism. Their ideological and theatrical subversion have helped Brecht’s text to outlive the political system that it came to uphold.
Among the many problems raised by political ecology is one of language. The distribution between what is inert object and what is made of talking subjects does not do justice to science nor to ...literature—nor, of course, to politics. Hence, an effort to describe a relation with agency that focuses not on their characters (humans or nonhumans, animated or deanimated) but rather on their common source. This source is recognized here—both semiotically and then ontologically—as a “metaphorphic zone.” It is just such a common articulation that could allow speaking with and about former “facts of nature” in a different way, a way better adjusted to the new political situation.
This book contains unique information about Bertolt Brecht and East Asian theatre. It focuses in particular on China and offers first and detailed accounts of important Brecht productions from those ...directly involved. Hence it grants remarkable insight into the problems of modern Chinese theatre and its relationship to Western theatre and into possible future developments. The book also throws light on Brecht's work and suggests ways of 're-producing' Brecht in the West. It consists of papers presented at a Hong Kong conference by distinguished Western critics (John Willett, Klaus Volker) and prominent practitioners of the theatre in China - directors (Huang Zuolin, Chen Yong), stage designers, translators and scholars. There are also accounts of Brecht productions in Japan and India, which form a stimulating contrast with the Chinese experience. With a wealth of practical examples, the book enables us to appreciate how theatre develops within different social structures. Presenting examples of cultural affinity and cultural disjunction, it also makes a useful contribution to intercultural study.
A study on the concept of Jens Bjorneboes version of epic drama is presented. This phenomenon is explained with the help of a "border"-criterium, showing how the Norwegian author established, defined ...and crossed borders on many different levels in his dramatic works and their adaptations on stage. Bjorneboe is presented as an author who not only consciously uses the border-criterium to manipulate space and reality in his play Til lykke med dagen, but also expands or even crosses borders of theatrical theories and conventions, mainly Bertolt Brecht's concepts. His "epic plays" are hybrid in their forms, joining different European traditions and expanding beyond what was common and accepted in the peripheral (both geographically and culturally) Norwegian theatre world of the 1960 s. Jens Bjorneboe is presented as an author of transgression, one of the first "to cast off the Ibsenite leg-irons".
Staging History analyzes the commitment to social change present in the theatrical and theoretical writings of Bertolt Brecht. Challenging previous notions, Astrid Oesmann argues that Brecht’s work ...was less dependent on Marxist ideology than is often assumed and that his work should be seen as a coherent whole. Brecht used the stage to release political ideas into experimental spaces in which actors and spectators could explore the relationships between abstract thought and concrete social life. Oesmann places Brecht within the context of the major leftist theorists of the twentieth century, particularly Adorno, Benjamin, and Lukàcs, focusing on their discussions of realism, aesthetics, natural history, and mimesis. Oesmann elaborates upon the vision of a “counter-public sphere” in a number of Brecht’s theoretical texts and plays—especially The Three Penny Trial and Fear and Misery of the Third Reich—that present the emergence of such a sphere in the face of fascism. By exploring Brecht’s theoretical writings, selected plays, and recently published theatrical fragments, Oesmann reveals unpredictable constructions of history and surprising distinctions among various political ideologies, while also proving that Brecht remains vitally relevant to a “post-communist” world.
The Craft of Theatre is a first-hand account by one of the greatest actors and directors of the Berliner Ensemble, whose work with the company spanned over forty years. It offers an unparalleled ...insight to working on Brecht's texts and in some of the great Brechtian roles and will appeal to actors, directors and students of theatre. Ekkehard Schall's life was devoted to the theatre. In this autobiographical memoir, he offers a lifetime of experience, expertise and memories of working with some of the great German writers, actors and directors of the twentieth century. A member of the Berliner Ensemble established by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949, Ekkehard Schall worked on numerous productions of Brecht's plays and others with the Ensemble between 1952 and 1995. In the 1970s and 80s he combined the roles of leading actor and deputy director of the Ensemble. In all he played over sixty roles and achieved greatest success in the role as Arturo Ui, a role he played over 500 times. The Craft of Theatre: Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre offers the reader a lively account of Schall's work, of his insights and his appreciation of the Brechtian roles he assumed, and of the work of Germany's most important theatre. The Craft of Theatre is an important addition to Brechtian studies and to the biography of Germany's most totemic theatre. 'When you see Schall at work during his two-hour performance, it's as if you were watching Brecht himself on stage. Schall's technical skills embody all of Brechtian dramatic theory and practice, just as Brecht's thoughts and opinions infuse his performances.' NewYork City Tribune
Chinese dreams Hayot, Eric R. J
2003., 20091214, 2003, c2004.
eBook
China's profound influence on the avant-garde in the 20th century was nowhere more apparent than in the work of Ezra Pound, Bertolt Brecht, and the writers associated with the Parisian literary ...journal Tel quel. Chinese Dreams explores the complex, intricate relationship between various "Chinas"—as texts—and the nation/culture known simply as "China"—their context—within the work of these writers. Eric Hayot calls into question the very means of representing otherness in the history of the West and ultimately asks if it might be possible to attend to the political meaning of imagining the other, while still enjoying the pleasures and possibilities of such dreaming. The latest edition of this critically acclaimed book includes a new preface by the author.
This volume offers an examination of Brecht’s largely forgotten theatrical fragments of a life of David, written just after the Great War but prior to Brecht winning the Kleist Prize in 1922 and the ...acclaim that would launch his extraordinary career. David J. Shepherd and Nicholas E. Johnson take as their starting point Brecht’s own diaries from the time, which offer a vivid picture of the young Brecht shuttling between Munich and the family home in Augsburg, surrounded by friends, torn between women, desperate for success, and all the while with ‘David on the brain’. The analysis of Brecht’s David, along with his notebooks and diaries, reveals significant connections between the reception of the Biblical David and one of Germany’s most tumultuous cultural periods. Drawing on theatrical experiments conducted with an ensemble from Trinity College Dublin, this volume includes the first ever translation of the David fragments in English, an extensive discussion of the theatrical afterlife of David in the early twentieth century as well as new interdisciplinary insights into the early Brecht: a writer entranced by the biblical David and utterly committed to translating the biblical tradition into his own evolving theatrical idiom.
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