Theatre Personalities - Brecht
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The same year Stanislavski was founding the Moscow Art Theatre, a baby was born in Germany that was called to become one of the most influential dramaturges of history: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht
That's all for Brecht, next one will be about Jerzy Grotowski
The same year Stanislavski was founding the Moscow Art Theatre, a baby was born in Germany that was called to become one of the most influential dramaturges of history: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht
He started his studies in medicine in the Munich University, but was called to serve as a military doctor when the Great War started. He was 16 years old when he began to work at a military hospital, an experience that would scar him for life
When his country lost the dispute he started to write revolutionary poems that attacked and exposed the cruel nature of war. He was often censored by his editor, and most of his poems from this time couldn't see the light until 1929
One of these poems “Legende vom toten Soldaten” or “Legend of a dead soldier” related the story of a long deceased soldier who is exhumated and declared fit for service by the militar doctors and thus sent to fight at the front
Bertolt Brecht is mostly known and acclaimed for his political theatre, most of which was in line with the Marxist movement. From 1929 he used the dramatic forms as a mean to expose political and social issues in what was called “dialectical theatre” or “epic theatre”. In his plays he put the lower classes into the spotlight, taking part in themes such as nature, work, history, war, alienation and fascism
When Hitler won the 1932 elections, Brecht didn't hesitate to show his opposition to national socialism, and his balls of steel granted him a place in a concentration camp, from where he escaped in 1935. Since here, he started to move from country to country, he visited France, Denmark, Finland, the United States and Switzerland
It was then when he wrote one of my favorite plays, and a must-read to every theater enthusiast: “Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder” (Mother Courage and her children). In this play we follow the life of Mother Courage, a peddler during the Thirty Year's War who tries to survive following the trail of death of the swedish army and benefiting from the suffering of the victims of war in a reckless envoirment
Bertolt Brecht will be forever remembered for changing the way political theatre was made. He didn't just criticize or spit propaganda to his public, on the contrary, his concept of the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect") seeked to “strip the events of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and create a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them”. Basically, the actors would cut the action to adress the public directly or to sing songs to avoid the public to create an emotional link to the characters of the play, and thus putting them in an active position and creating the space in which they could think and judge for themselves about the issues presented
This is plain amazing even for today's standards, and not only because it proposes an enjoyable political theatre in which the ideas of the author won't be hammered into the minds of the public, not only because it seeks to create a distanced springboard from where people can actively take position about political issues by themselves, but because it works and people love it. Brechtian theatre done right can be one of the most thought provoking, challenging experiences a person can witness. When it's done poorly it can become the steaiest of turds, but, oh, god, when it's done right...
That's all for Brecht, next one will be about Jerzy Grotowski
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Tags: theatre | personalities | bertolt brecht | World War II | Hitler | Political | dialectic | epic
Armtit! PENN
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