Brecht Unbound

Brecht Unbound
Author: James K. Lyon
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780874135374

"Except for the annual Brecht Yearbook, Brecht Unbound represents the first broad critical study of Brecht's works to appear in the United States since before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Intended to move beyond the ideological considerations that have informed so much secondary literature about Brecht, the book is a cross-disciplinary reassessment of important aspects of his work. Included are essays on his poetry, drama, theoretical writings, Brecht's influence on American film techniques and music, his relationship to and borrowings from Japanese No theater, and a comparison between aesthetic techniques in his writings and Stravinsky's "The Little Soldier.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Heinz-Uwe Haus and Brecht in the USA

Heinz-Uwe Haus and Brecht in the USA
Author: Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2019-08-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1527538958

Heinz-Uwe Haus was the first renowned director from the German Democratic Republic to (be allowed to) direct in the USA. This book presents relevant material written in relation to his productions, specifically of Bertolt Brecht’s plays. This includes Haus’s notes for his casts, announcements of the productions in the media, newspaper reviews and academic articles about the productions, conference contributions, and reflections by cast members (both professional actors and university faculty) and designers (set, costume, light, music). The material on the productions is then discussed in the contexts of approaches to directing, actor training, the academic debate of Brecht in the USA, and historical and biographical dimensions. A conversation with Haus as the final chapter of the book further contextualises the material brought together here.

Engaging with Brecht

Engaging with Brecht
Author: Bill Gelber
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2023-02-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3031203941

This book makes the case for Bertolt Brecht’s continued importance at a time when events of the 21st century cry out for a studied means of producing theatre for social change. Here is a unique step-by-step process for realizing Brecht’s ways of working onstage using the 2015 Texas Tech University production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children as a model for exploration. Particular Brecht concepts—the epic, Verfremdung, the Fabel, gestus, historicization, literarization, the “Not...but,” Arrangement, and the Separation of the Elements—are explained and applied to scenes and plays. Brecht’s complicated relationship with Konstantin Stanislavsky is also explored in relation to their separate views on acting. For theatrical practitioners and educators, this volume is a record of pedagogical engagement, an empirical study of Brecht’s work in performance at a higher institution of learning using graduate and undergraduate students.

Brecht-Jahrbuch

Brecht-Jahrbuch
Author: Theodore F. Rippey
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2017
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0985195649

Alongside the usual wide-ranging lineup of research articles, volume 41 features an interview with Berliner Ensemble actor Annemone Haase and an extensive special section on teaching Brecht. Now published for the International Brecht Society by Camden House, the Brecht Yearbook is the central scholarly forum for discussion of Bertolt Brecht's life and work and of topics of particular interest to Brecht, especially the politics of literature and of theater in a global context. It includes a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, and, like Brecht himself, is committed to the concept of the use value of literature, theater, and theory. Volume 41 features an interview with longtime Berliner Ensemble actor Annemone Haase by Margaret Setje-Eilers. A special section on teaching Brecht, guest-edited by Per Urlaub and Kristopher Imbrigotta, includes articles on creative appropriation in the foreign-language classroom (Caroline Weist), satire in Arturo Ui and The Great Dictator (Ari Linden), performative discussion (Cohen Ambrose), Brecht for theater majors (Daniel Smith), teaching performance studies with the Lehrstück model (Ian Maxwell), Verfremdung and ethics (Elena Pnevmonidou), Brecht on the college stage (Julie Klassen and Ruth Weiner), and methods of teaching Brechtian Stückschreiben (Gerd Koch). Other research articles focus on Harry Smith's Mahagonny (Marc Silberman), inhabiting empathy in the contemporary piece Temping (James Ball), Brecht's appropriation of Kurt Lewin's psychology (Ines Langemeyer), and Brecht's collaborations with women, both across his career (Helen Fehervary) and in exile in Skovsbostrand (Katherine Hollander). Editor Theodore F. Rippey is Associate Professor of German at Bowling Green State University.

Edinburgh German Yearbook

Edinburgh German Yearbook
Author: Laura Bradley
Publisher: Camden House
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2011-10
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1571134921

While Bertold Brecht became identified internationally as the cultural figurehead of the GDR, his relationship with the authorities was always complex. This book examines his activities in the GDR and the regime's marginalizing response and posthumous appropriation of his legacy.

Brecht and Political Theatre

Brecht and Political Theatre
Author: Laura Bradley
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2006-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191536776

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.

Brecht in Practice

Brecht in Practice
Author: David Barnett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1408186020

David Barnett invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht in this clear and accessible study of Brecht's theories and practices. The book analyses how Brecht's ideas can come alive in rehearsal and performance, and reveals just how carefully Brecht realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of Brecht's concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with his method which sought to 'make theatre politically', in order to appreciate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. Barnett provides many examples of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes a closer look at two very different plays: one written by Brecht and one by a playwright with no acknowledged connection to Brecht. Through an interrogation of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Patrick Marber's Closer, Barnett asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate production.

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 40

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 40
Author: Theodore F. Rippey
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2016
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0985195630

Newest volume of the central scholarly forum for discussion of Brecht and aspects of theater and literature of particular interest to him, especially the politics of literature and theater in a global context.

Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory

Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory
Author: John J. White
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2004
Genre: Theater
ISBN: 1571130764

In concert with his work as a politically-charged playwright and dramaturge, Bertolt Brecht concerned himself extensively with the theory of drama. He was convinced that the Aristotelian ideal of audience catharsis through identification with a hero and the resultant experience of terror and pity worked against his goal of bettering society. He did not want his audiences to feel, but to think, and his main theoretical thrusts -- Verfremdungseffekte (de-familiarization effects) and epic theater, among others -- were conceived in pursuit of this goal. This is the first detailed study in English of Brecht's writings on the theater to take account of works first made available in the recent German edition of his collected works. It offers in-depth analyses of Brecht's canonical essays on the theater from 1930 to the late 1940s and early GDR years. Close readings of the individual essays are supplemented by surveys of the changing connotations within Brecht's dramaturgical oeuvre of key theoretical terms, including epic and anti-Aristotelian theater, de-familiarization, historicization, and dialectical theater. Brecht's distinct contribution to the theorizing of acting and audience response is examined in detail, and each theoretical essay and concept is placed in the context of the aesthetic debates of the time, subjected to a critical assessment, and considered in light of subsequent scholarly thinking. In many cases, the playwright's theoretical discourse is shown to employ methods of "epic" presentation and techniques of de-familiarization that are corollaries of the dramatic techniques for which his plays are justly famous. John J. White is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at King's College London.