Brecht Sourcebook

Bertolt Brecht is one of the most prolific and influential writer-directors of the twentieth century. This fascinating anthology brings together in one volume many of the most important articles written about Brecht between 1957 and 1997. The collection explores a wide range of viewpoints about Brecht's theatre theories and practice, as well as including three plays not otherwise available in English: The Beggar or The Dead Dog, Baden Lehrstuck and The Seven Deadly Sins of the Lower Middle Class. Editors Martin and Bial have brought together a unique compendium which covers all the key areas including: * the development of Brecht's aesthetic theories * the relationship of Epic theatre to orthodox dramatic theatre * Brecht's collaboration with Kurt Weill, Paul Dessau and Max Frisch * Brecht's influence on a variety of cultures and contexts including England, Italy , Moscow and Japan. Together these essays are an ideal companion to Brecht's plays, and provide an invaluable reconsideration of Brecht's work. Contributors include: Werner Hecht, Mordecai Gorelik, Eric Bentley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kurt Weill, Ernst Bloch, Darko Suvin, Carl Weber, Paul Dessau, Denis Calandra, W. Stuart McDowell, Ernst Schmacher, Hans-Joachim Bunge, Martin Esslin, Artuto Lazzari, Tadashi Uchino, Diana Taylor, Elin Diamond, and Lee Baxandall.

Essays of Brecht translated and edited to explain his theories and discussion of his dramatic works.

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.

Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti, which remained unpublished in his own lifetime, now appears for the first time in English. Me-ti counselled against 'constructing too complete images of the world'. For this work of fragments and episodes, Brecht accumulated anecdotes, poems, personal stories and assessments of contemporary politics. Given its controversial nature, he sought a disguise, using the name of a Chinese contemporary of Socrates, known today as Mozi. Stimulated by his humorous aphoristic style and social focus, as well as an engrained Chinese awareness of the flow of things, Brecht developed a practical, philosophical, anti-systematic ethics, discussing Marxist dialectics, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, the Moscow trials, and the theories behind current events, while warning how ideology makes people the 'servants of priests'. Me-ti is central to an understanding of Brecht's critical reflections on Marxist dialectics and his commitment to change and the non-eternal, the philosophy which informs much of his writing and his most famous plays, such as The Good Person of Szechwan. Readers will find themselves both fascinated and beguiled by the reflections and wisdom it offers. First published in German in 1965 and now translated and edited by Antony Tatlow, Brecht's Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things provides readers with a much-anticipated accessible edition of this important work. It features a substantial introduction to the concerns of the work, its genesis and context - both within Brecht's own writing and within the wider social and political history, and provides an original selection and organisation of texts. Extensive notes illuminate the work and provide commentary on related works from Brecht's oeuvre.

New edition, revised for the centenary of Brecht's birth, containing additional updated material In this classic study, John Willett sets in context not only Brecht the theatre practitioner but Brecht the writer and man of his time. Through chapters on Brecht's relationships and attitudes to contemporary politics, English and American literature, Expressionism, music, art and cinema, as well as to such figures as Auden, Kipling and Piscator, the book presents a detailed and wide-ranging account of one of the most significant men of this century. "An outstanding introduction to its subject. . . will immeasurably enrich Brechtians young and old, especially those who think they know it all" (Times Educational Supplement); "Economical, witty and unpretentious in a way that Brecht would have liked, but immensely well-informed and thoroughly documented, seems certain to become required reading for anyone seriously interested in the dramatist" (London Review of Books); "An extraordinarily rich volume, which succeeds in being packed but uncrowded" (New Statesman)

This book contains selected poems, plays, and prose by Bertolt Brecht taken from various points throughout his career. It includes translations of two prose works and provides some background information on Brecht's life and career.

Now available in Bloomsbury Revelations series, Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings about the craft of acting and realising texts for the stage. It crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing and illuminates the practice of this hugely influential director and dramatist. The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the Messingkauf, or Buying Brass, including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of Life of Galileo, Antigone, Mother Courage and others. Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, Brecht on Performance is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the Modelbooks.

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.

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.