Download or read book Understanding Brecht New Edition written by Walter Benjamin and published by Verso. This book was released on 2003 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of Benjamin's writings on the poetic and dramatic work of his tutor and friend.
Download or read book Understanding Brecht written by Walter Benjamin and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the 'midnight of the century', with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin's most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht's oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques-such as the famous 'estrangement effect'-Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin's introductions to Brecht's theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin's insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin's masterful essay "The Author as Producer" as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht's place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.
Download or read book Understanding Brecht written by Walter Benjamin and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2024-08-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays of political philosophy by the renowned mid 20th-century critical theorist and literary critic The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht, both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices, continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the ‘midnight of the century’, with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin’s most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht’s oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques—such as the famous ‘estrangement effect’—Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin’s introductions to Brecht’s theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin’s insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin’s masterful essay “The Author as Producer” as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht’s place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.
Download or read book Contemporary American Playwrights written by C. W. E. Bigsby and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading writer on American theatre explores the works and influences of ten contemporary American playwrights.
Download or read book Brecht s Poetry of Political Exile written by Ronald Speirs and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertolt Brecht, one of the most influential European playwrights of the twentieth century, was also a poet of distinction. This volume is the first comprehensive study devoted to his most important collection of political poetry, the Svendborg Poems. The contributors analyse Brecht's work critically and historically, discussing it in relation to questions of poetics, political commitment, exile, propaganda, rhetoric, and the scope and limitations of political poetry. Links are also drawn with the work of German, Soviet and English poets of the period, and with later Germany poets.
Download or read book Benjamin and Brecht written by Erdmut Wizisla and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of the friendship between two of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century Germany in the mid 1920s, a place and time of looming turmoil, brought together Walter Benjamin—acclaimed critic and extraordinary literary theorist—and Bertolt Brecht, one of the twentieth century’s most influential playwrights. It was a friendship that would shape their writing for the rest of their lives. In this groundbreaking work, Erdmut Wizisla explores what this relationship meant for them personally and professionally, as well as the effect it had on those around them. From the first meeting between Benjamin and Brecht to their experiences in exile, these eventful lives are illuminated by personal correspondence, journal entries and private miscellany—including previously unpublished materials—detailing the friends’ electric discussions of their collaboration. Wizisla delves into the archives of other luminaries in the distinguished constellation of writers and artists in Weimar Germany, which included Margarete Steffin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Hannah Arendt. Wizisla’s account of this friendship opens a window on nearly two decades of European intellectual life.
Download or read book Routledge Revivals Bertolt Brecht Dialectics Poetry Politics 1988 written by Peter Brooker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this books argues with received accounts to reclaim Brecht’s emphasis on his self-described ‘dialectical theatre’, re-examining firstly the concepts of Gestus and Verfremdung and their realisation in Brecht’s poetry in terms of his attempt to consciously apply the methods of dialectical materialism to art and cultural practice. The author also takes issue with the customary view of Brecht’s career and politics which sees him as compromising either with Communist party dogma or bourgeois aesthetics, to find developing parallels between Brecht’s political and artistic though and the critical dialectics of Marx, Lenin and Mao. This development is examined in later chapters in relation to the early and late plays, The Measures Taken and Days of the Commune as well as in relation to Brecht’s changed circumstances in the years of war-time exile and in post-war East Germany.
Download or read book Brecht in Practice written by David Barnett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brecht Jahrbuch written by Theodore F. Rippey and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brecht and East Asian Theatre written by Anthony Tatlow and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains unique information about Bertolt Brecht and East Asian theatre. It focuses in particular on China and offers first and detailed accounts of important Brecht productions from those directly involved. Hence it grants remarkable insight into the problems of modern Chinese theatre and its relationship to Western theatre and into possible future developments. The book also throws light on Brecht's work and suggests ways of 're-producing' Brecht in the West. It consists of papers presented at a Hong Kong conference by distinguished Western critics (John Willett, Klaus Volker) and prominent practitioners of the theatre in China - directors (Huang Zuolin, Chen Yong), stage designers, translators and scholars. There are also accounts of Brecht productions in Japan and India, which form a stimulating contrast with the Chinese experience. With a wealth of practical examples, the book enables us to appreciate how theatre develops within different social structures. Presenting examples of cultural affinity and cultural disjunction, it also makes a useful contribution to intercultural study.
Download or read book An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht written by Anthony Squiers and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents Brecht’s thought in the context of a revolutionary Marxist aesthetic and explores his vision of consciousness as it relates to historical materialism, the dialectic of enlightenment, social ontology, epistemology and ethics.
Download or read book Brecht Broadway and United States Theater written by J. Chris Westgate and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not long after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, Bertolt Brecht’s name was on the lips of many writing about Broadway. Invoked knowingly—but not always knowledgeably—“Brecht” became something between marketing strategy and erudite justification for another season of Broadway musicals, another ignominy endured by the German playwright whose epic theater has only seldom been understood in the United States. To say that Brechtian and Broadway theatrical traditions represent divergence of philosophy, method, or ambition is to indulge—with the whimsy of Mark Twain—in understatement. Nevertheless, many references to Brecht since 2001 imply compatibility instead of contradiction—a confusion or corruption that suggested the need of looking closely at what Brecht wrote and intended in his epic theater more than seventy years after his first—and, unfortunately, typical—experience with United States theater. Beginning with the 1935 production of The Mother and moving through recent productions of political theater, including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Urinetown: The Musical, and My Name is Rachel Corrie, this anthology considers the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in terms of dramaturgy, performance, and reception. The essays in this anthology explore the political, cultural, and economic constraints shaping many of the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in U.S. theater history. This means looking at how, in many cases, epic theater has been co-opted and commodified by Broadway and what that commodification reveals about the culture of theater. Simultaneously, this means theorizing how epic theater finds—or can find—ways of providing a necessary bulwark against Broadway escapism, and what this suggests for the future of political theater in the U.S. What results is a dialectical history tracing Brecht’s encounters with Broadway, a history that opens-up and debates the complicated and often conflicted influence of Bertolt Brecht on United States theater. “Dr. Westgate's book on Brecht and Broadway is an excellent study of the reception of Brecht's work in the American theater and academe. Brecht, along with Moliere; Ibsen and Chekhov, is one of the most frequently performed playwrights in translation in America. A thorough investigation of the trajectory of Brecht stagings on Broadway has long been overdue. I am very grateful that Dr. Westgate has taken on the task and arrived at such a splendid result. The book is a must reading for any serious Brecht scholar.” —Carl Weber, Stanford Drama Department, Collaborator with Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble, Director of many Brecht stagings in the U.S. “This is a provocative collection of essays outlining the sometimes unexpected connections between Brecht and the Broadway theatre. Like Brecht himself, these essays are playful, argumentative, and productively dialectical in their contradictions. The book is both entertaining and educational, and bound to provoke healthy debate. I recommend it as a demonstration of the ongoing relevance of Brechtian theories of theatre to the analysis of mainstream commercial theatre." —Sean Carney, Associate Professor, McGill University
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 Philosophizing Brecht written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary anthology unites scholars with the notion that Bertolt Brecht is a missing link in bridging diverse discourses in social philosophy and aesthetics—an essential read for all those interested in Brecht as a socio-cultural theorist and theatre practitioners.
Download or read book Brecht in India written by Dr. Prateek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brecht in India analyses the dramaturgy and theatrical practices of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in post-independence India. The book explores how post-independence Indian drama is an instance of a cultural palimpsest, a site celebrating a dialogue between Western and Indian theatrical traditions, rather than a homogenous and isolated canon. Analysing the dissemination of a selection of Brecht’s plays in the Hindi belt between the 1960s and the 1990s, this study demonstrates that Brecht’s work provided aesthetic and ideological paradigms to modern Hindi playwrights, helping them develop and stage a national identity. The book also traces how the reception of Brecht was mediated in India, how it helped post-independence Indian playwrights formulate a political theatre, and how the dissemination of Brechtian aesthetics in India addressed the anxiety related to the stasis in Brechtian theatre in Europe. Tracking the dialogue between Brechtian aesthetics in India and Europe and a history of deliberate cultural resistance, Brecht in India is an invaluable resource for academics and students of theatre studies and theatre historiography, as well as scholars of post-colonial history and literature.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Brecht written by Peter Thomson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition properly retains much that was in the original Companion, but also introduces new voices and themes. It brings together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners and contains new essays on Brecht's early experience of cabaret, his significance in the development of film theory and his unique approach to dramaturgy. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this thorough overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke. Book jacket.
Download or read book A Guide To The Plays Of Bertolt Brecht written by Stephen Unwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Unwin's A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht is an indispensable, comprehensive and highly readable companion to the dramatic work of this challenging and rewarding writer. Besides providing detailed accounts of nineteen key plays, it explores their context and Brecht's dramatic theory to equip readers with a rich understanding of how Brecht's work was shaped by his times and by his evolving thinking about the function of theatre. Bertolt Brecht's work as a director, his critical and theoretical writing, and above all the remarkable plays that emerged from one of the most turbulent periods in history have had a profound and lasting influence on theatre. Central to theatre studies courses and whose plays are frequently revived on stage, Brecht is nevertheless perceived as a difficult writer. This companion is divided into two sections: the first seven chapters outline the tumultuous historical, cultural and theatrical context of Brecht's work. They explore his theatrical theory and provide an account of his approach to staging his plays which informs an understanding of how they work in practice. The second section provides an analysis of nineteen plays in six chronological groupings, each prefaced by a brief sketch of Brecht's life and theatrical development in that period. For each play, Stephen Unwin offers a synopsis, a critical commentary and an account of the work in performance. The book concludes with an examination of Brecht's legacy and a chronicle of his life and times. Written by experienced theatre director Stephen Unwin, this is the perfect companion to Brecht's plays and life for student and theatre practitioner alike.
