Download or read book The Craft of Theatre Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre written by Ekkehard Schall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book The Craft of Theatre written by Ekkehard Schall and published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brecht On Art And Politics written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brecht Plays 8 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest volume in Methuen's Collected Brecht includes two plays previously untranslated into English Volume 8 of Brecht's collected plays contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht's ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Holderlin's classic German translation of Sophocles' play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht's most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht's version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 1 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language. Volume One of Brecht's Collected Plays contains Brecht's first performed stage works. Baal is inspired by Brecht's student life in Augsburg and follows the life of a young poet on the rocky road to inspiration; Drums in the Night was written in response to Brecht's experience as a medical orderly in the aftermath of the First World War; and In the Jungle of Cities, set in Chicago, covers the downfall of a family that has moved from the prairies to the jungle of the big city - award-winning in its day, it was described by a leading German daily as the play that 'has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision'. This volume also includes The Life of Edward II of England, a ballad-like adaptation of Marlowe's original, and five one-act plays The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving Out The Devil, Lux in Tenebris, The Catch and A Respectable Wedding in which the bourgeois proceedings take a hilarious turn for the unseemly. The translators are Jean Benedetti, Eva Geiser and Ernest Borneman, Richard Grünberger, Michael Hamburger, Gerhard Nellhaus, Peter Tegel and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 6 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language. This sixth volume of Brecht's Collected Plays contains three plays he wrote while in exile during the early stages of the Second World War. In Brecht's famous parable The Good Person of Szechwan, the gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person. No one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a savage satire on the rise of Hitler, wittily transposed to gangland Chicago. Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written in 1940 during Brecht's exile in Finland, Puntila is one of his greatest creations, to be ranked alongside Galileo and Mother Courage. A hard-drinking Finnish landowner, Puntila suffers from a divided personality: when drunk he is human and humane; when sober, surly and self-centred. The play contains some of the best comedy Brecht wrote for the theatre. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 2 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language. This second volume of Brecht's Collected Plays brings together some of his most glittering Berlin successes including The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins, Man Equals Man and The Elephant Calf. The Threepenny Opera is the story of the mercurial beggar turned entrepeneur Peachum and his battles with the criminal Mac 'the Knife'; Mahagonny, an operatic satire on the search for an American capitalist utopia; The Seven Deadly Sins is a ballet with songs that predicts the downfall of the petty bourgeosie and was first performed as the Nazis planned their book burning exercise. Man equals Man is an exploration of the theory of equality and The Elephant Calf is a play within a play based on an Indian folk story. The translators include W H Auden and Chester Kallman, Ralph Manheim, Gerhard Nellhaus and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 3 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language Volume Three of Brecht's Collected Plays includes St Joan of the Stockyards - a play which recasts St Joan as Joan Dark springing hope into the hearts of factory workers at the mercy of meatpacker king Pierpont Mauler threatening cuts in the Depression; and the Lehrstücke or short 'didactic' pieces written during the years 1929 to 1933, are some of his most experimental work. Lindbergh's Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes / He Said No, The Decision,The Exception and the Rule, and The Horatians and the Curiatians reject conventional theatre; they are spare and highly formalised, drawing on traditional Japanese and Chinese forms. They show Brecht in collaboration with the composers Hindemith, Weill and Eisler, influenced by the new techniques of montage in the visual arts and seeking new means of expression. Also included is The Mother, based on Gorky's novel about the progress of a factory strike in Tver and the journey of a peasant mother from illiteracy to card-carrying communism. The translators include H R Hays (The Horatians and the Curiatians), Ralph Manheim (St Joan of the Stockyards), Tom Osborn (The Exception and the Rule), Geoffrey Skelton (The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent), John Willett (Lindbergh's Flight;The Decision;The Mother) and Arthur Waley (He Said Yes / He Said No). The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 4 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback, the long-awaited volume of Brecht's classic plays from the 1930s Volume 4 of Brecht's Collected Plays contains works from the 1930s, straddling fateful years in German political and cultural history - as well as in Brecht's own life. Round Heads and Pointed Heads, based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is a powerful political allegory on Nazi racial policy and conditions in the Germany Brecht had to leave in 1933. The Trial of Lucullus, a starkly pacifist text originally written in response to a commission from Swedish radio, portrays the Roman general tried by the Underworld for his military triumphs. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, unique in Brecht's work, consists of some thirty short scenes of life under the Nazis between 1933 and 1938, designed for use by groups in exile. Señora Carrara's Rifles is based on J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, but relocated by Brecht in the Spanish Civil War. Also included are two one-act plays, Dansen and How Much is Your Iron?, minor works designed for amateurs in Scandinavia, where the Brechts lived till spring 1941. The volume includes an introduction and notes by Tom Kuhn and John Willett, as well as Brecht's own notes on the texts.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 7 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language. The seventh volume of Brecht's Collected Plays contains the plays which Brecht wrote during his six-year stay in the United States from 1942 to 1948. The Visions of Simone Machard is a French resistance version of the Joan of Arc story. Schweyk in the Second World War transposes Hasek's 'good soldier' to the Prague of Hitler and Heydrich. The Caucasian Chalk Circle, based on the biblical story of the judgement of Solomon, was originally written for production on Broadway, with W. H. Auden responsible for the verse. A morality masterpiece, the play powerfully demonstrates Brecht's pioneering theatrical techniques and has since become one of his most popular works. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Brecht Collected Plays 5 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language. The fifth volume in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals. Mother Courage is usually seen as Brecht's greatest work. Remaining a powerful indictment of war and social injustice, it is an epic drama set in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years' War. The plot follows the resilient Mother Courage who survives by running a commissary business that profits from all sides. As the war claims all of her children in turn, the play poignantly demonstrates that no one can profit from the war without being subject to its terrible cost also. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Download or read book Engaging with Brecht written by Bill Gelber and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brecht On Film Radio written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Weimar Germany to Hollywood to East Berlin, Brecht on Film and Radio gathers together a selection of Bertolt Brecht's own writings on the new film and broadcast media that revolutionised arts and communication in the twentieth century. Bertolt Brecht's hugely influential views on drama, acting and stage production have long been widely recognised. Less familiar, but of profound importance, are his writings on film and radio. From Weimar Germany to Hollywood to East Berlin, Brecht on Film and Radio gathers together for the first time a selection of Brecht's own writings on the new film and broadcast media that fascinated him throughout his life and revolutionised arts and communication in the twentieth century. Marc Silberman's full editorial commentary sets Brecht's ideas in the context of his other work. "I strongly wish that after their invention of the radio the bourgeoisie would make a further invention that enables us to fix for all time what the radio communicates. Later generations would then have the opportunity to marvel how a caste was able to tell the whole planet what it had to say and at the same time how it enabled the planet to see that it had nothing to say." (Bertolt Brecht)
Download or read book The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Student Edition of Brecht's classic satire on the rise of Hitler features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature. Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler -- recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written during the Second World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter, Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.
Download or read book Measures Taken and Other Lehrstucke written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Good Person Of Szechwan written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Brecht's dark, dazzling world-view...makes an absolutely devastating impact. The play is fuelled by the brilliant perception that everyone requires such a dual or split personality to survive.' Evening Standard Three gods come to earth hoping to discover one really good person. No one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta. Brecht's parable of good and evil was first performed in 1943 and remains one of his most popular and frequently produced plays worldwide. This Student Edition features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature.
Download or read book Mother Courage and Her Children written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-13 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This version of Brecht's great anti-war play by playwright David Hare was premiered by the National Theatre, London, in November 1995. It adopts a freer approach to the text than many editions, adapting the original rather than offering a close translation. In this chronicle of the Thirty Years War, Mother Courage follows the armies back and forth across Europe, selling provisions and liquor from her canteen wagon. One by one she loses her children to the war but will not part with her livelihood - the wagon. The Berlin production of 1949, with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage, marked the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble. Considered by many to be one of the greatest anti-war plays ever written and Brecht's masterpiece, it remains a powerful example of Brecht's Epic Theatre and pioneering theatrical style.