Brecht on Theatre

BRECHT AND THE EPIC THEATRE It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) There’s more than one Bertolt Brecht up Pompeii Brechtian Theory is not ‘Set in Stone’ Brecht’s theatre is constantly changing You cannot separate the theory from the plays You cannot separate the politics from the plays The Good Person of Szechwan Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht • Born on 10th Feb 1898 in Augsburg, Germany • Brecht was a sickly child, with a congenital heart condition and a facial tic, He suffered a heart attack at the age of twelve, but soon recovered and continued his education • While in school, he began writing and ended up co-founding and co-editing a school magazine called ‘The Harvest’ and wrote his first play ‘The Bible’ • Studied medicine in Munich (1917-1921) and served in a army hospital in 1918 during World War I • After the war, he moved to Berlin where he was attracted to modern theatre • Appointed as a consultant in 1924 in Deutches Theater in Berlin • Works with Erwin Piscator (originator of the phrase ‘Epic Theatre’) BRECHT • In 1922, his play ‘Drums in the night’ opened and received the prestigious Kleist prize for young dramatist as a result • In 1923 his two plays ‘Jungle of Cities’ and ‘Baal’ cause controversy in Berlin theatre world • First professional production – ‘Edward II’ in 1924 • 1928 - ‘The Threepenny Opera’ becomes a sensation and begins a long collaboration with composer Kurt Weill BAAL 1918 BRECHT • Violent antibourgeois attitude • Among his friends were members of the Dadaist group • Discovered Marxism in the late 1920s with Karl Korsch, an eminent Marxist theoretician • He developed his theory of ‘epic theater’ and an austere form of irregular verse and embraced Marxism The Beggar’s Opera (1728) The Threepenny Opera (1928) BRECHT • In 1933 to 1941 he went on exile in Scandinavia (mainly in Denmark) • From 1941 until 1947 he lived in the USA where he did some film work for Hollywood • In this period, his books were burned and his citizenship was withdrawn • He was cut off from German theatre • In this period away from Germany, Brecht wrote most of his greatest plays, major theoretical essays and dialogues Influences - Murder Ballads • Typically recounts the details of a mythic or true crime — who the victim is, why the murderer decides to kill him or her, how the victim is lured to the murder site and the act itself — followed by the escape and/or capture of the murderer EINFÜHLUNG • Translates as “Understanding/Empathy” • Originates in Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ • The audience feel what the character feels • Therefore - the audience must be passive • Brecht terms this type of drama an ‘emotional orgy’ PIRATE JENNY You gentlemen can say, "Hey gal, finish You people can watch while I'm scrubbing them floors! these floors Get upstairs! What's wrong with you! Earn And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're your keep here! gawking You toss me your tips Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya And look out to the ships feel swell But I'm counting your heads In this crummy Southern town As I'm making the beds In this crummy old hotel Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'. tonight No. You couldn't ever guess to who Nobody's gonna sleep here you're talkin'. Nobody! ! Nobody! Then one night there's a scream in the ! night Then one night there's a scream in the And you'll wonder who could that have night been And you say, "Who's that kicking up a And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm row?" scrubbin' And you say, "What's she got to grin?" And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda I'll tell you. And you say, "What's she got to stare at ! now?" There's a ship I'll tell ya. The Black Freighter ! With a skull on it's masthead There's a ship Will be coming in The Black Freighter Turns around in the harbor Shootin' guns from her bow PIRATE JENNY Now By noontime the dock You gentlemen can wipe off that smile off Is a-swarmin' with men your face Comin' out from the ghostly freighter Cause every building in town is a flat one They move in the shadows This whole frickin' place will be down to Where no one can see the ground Only this cheap hotel standing up safe And they're chainin' up people and sound And they're bringin' em to me And you yell, "Why do they spare that Askin' me, one?" "Kill them NOW, or LATER?" Yes. Askin' ME! That's what you say. "Kill them now, or later?" "Why do they spare that one?" ! ! Noon by the clock All the night through, through the noise And so still at the dock and to-do You wonder who is that person that lives You can hear a foghorn miles away up there? And in that quiet of death And you see me stepping out in the I'll say, "Right now. morning Right now!" Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair ! ! Then they pile up the bodies And the ship And I'll say, The Black Freighter "That'll learn ya!" Runs a flag up it's masthead And a cheer rings the air ! And the ship The Black Freighter Disappears out to sea And On It Is Me PIRATE JENNY Brecht and the un-American committee (1947) THE BALLAD OF MAC THE KNIFE And the shark, oh, it has teeth And it wears them in its face. And Macheath, he has a knife, But this knife, no one sees. Oh, how red is the shark’s fin, when the blood flows. Mack the Knife, he wears a glove, From which no atrocity can be read. In the Thames’ green waters, People suddenly fall. Is it either plague or cholera? No, it means Macheath’s been around. On a beautiful blue Sunday, A dead man lies on the beach And a man goes around the corner Known as Mackie the Knife. And Schul Meier is still missing And so many rich men, Mackie the Knife has his money, But no one can prove anything. Jenny Towler was found With a knife in her breast, And on the dock goes Macheath, Who knows nothing at all. Where is Alfons Gilte, the cabman? Will this ever come to light? Anyone could know. Macheath knows nothing. And the great fire in Soho, Seven children and an old man. In the crowd, Mackie the Knife — He’s not asked and doesn’t know. And the underaged widow Whose name everyone knows, Woke up and was raped. Mackie, what was your price? For some are in darkness The Ballad Of Mack The Knife BRECHT • 1949 - tempted back to East Germany by the Communist party with promise of own theatre • 1950 - forms Berliner Ensemble • 1954 - Berliner Ensemble theatre opened • Dedicates himself to directing and nurturing new directors • Dies 1956 - In his will he provided instructions that a stiletto be placed in his heart and that he be buried in a steel coffin so that his corpse could not be eaten by worms BRECHT ON THEATRE ...Looking around one discovers more or less motionless bodies in a curious state - they seem to be contracting their muscles in a strong physical effort, or else to have relaxed them after a violent strain... they have their eyes open, but they don’t look, they stare... they stare at the stage as if spellbound, which is an expression from the Middle Ages, an age of witches and obscurantists. ! How long are our souls going to have to leave our ‘gross’ bodies under cover of darkness to penetrate into those dream figures up on the rostrum, in order to share their transports that would otherwise be denied to us. The work of an actor? On the stage the actor is surrounded entirely by fictions... the actor must be able to regard all this as though it were true, as though he were convinced that This might be thought to be a course of all that surrounds him on the stage is a instruction for conjurers, but in fact it is a living reality and, along with himself, he course of acting, supposedly according to must convince the audience as well. This Stanislavsky’s method. One wonders if a is the central feature of our method of technique that equips an actor to make an work on the part... Take any object, a audience see rats where there aren’t any can cap for example; lay it on a table or the really be all thats suitable for discerning the floor and try and regard it as though it truth. Given enough alcohol it doesn’t take were a rat; make believe that it is a rat acting to persuade almost anybody that they and not a cap... Picture what sort of rat are seeing rats: pink ones. it is; what size, colour? We thus commit ! ourselves to believe quite naively that BRECHT ON THEATRE the object before us is something other than it is and, at the same time, learn to compel the audience to believe. ! RAPAPORT: THE WORK OF THE ACTOR (1936) THE MODERN THEATRE IS THE EPIC THEATRE (1930) • Dramatic Theatre • Epic Theatre • Plot • Narrative • implicates the spectator in a • turns the spectator into an observer situation • wears down the capacity for action • arouses the capacity for action • provides spectator with sensations • provokes the spectator to make decisions • experience • picture of the world • the spectator is involved in something • spectator is made to face something THE MODERN THEATRE IS THE EPIC THEATRE (1930) • Dramatic Theatre • Epic Theatre • Suggestion • Argument • instinctive feelings are preserved • brought to the point of recognition • the spectator is in the thick of things • the spectator stands outside and studies • the human being is taken for • the human being is the object of inquiry granted • • humans do not change humans can and do change • eyes on the finish • eyes on the process THE MODERN THEATRE IS THE EPIC THEATRE (1930) • Epic Theatre • Dramatic Theatre • each scene for itself • one scene gives way to another • montage • Growth • linear development • curves • evolutionary determinism • jumps • human being as a fixed point • human being as a process • thought determines being • social being determines thought • feeling • reason VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT • This is a big German word with a very big meaning.

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