BRECHT: An Introduction

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1898. In 1916, as a student at the Augsburger Realgymnasium (a German secondary school), he was nearly expelled for expressing pacifist sentiments. In 1917, with World War I raging, Brecht was called to the front to serve as a medical orderly. It was there he witnessed some of the worst mutilation cases found in Europe, which left an indelible impression on him.

After the war, Brecht went to Munich with the intention of studying medicine. The artistic and dramatic movement known as Expressionism celebrated some of its greatest successes at this time. War-time censorship no longer operated, there were many newly formed experimental theatre groups and clubs, and the theatre­going public was favorably inclined towards the work of new authors. Brecht, who had always shown an interest in theatre, was soon neglecting his medical studies to write plays. Among these early works were Baal (written 1918, first performed 1923) and A Man's a Man (1926). The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroscltenoper, 1928), the first work in which his Marxist thinking was expressed, began his long collaboration with composer Kurt Weill. Threepenny used John Gay's The Beggar's Opera as the basis of a satirical attack on bourgeois society and its standards.

Brecht's importance made itself felt in two ways: through the production of his plays, and through the increasing influence of his theories about the theatre. His "alienation" theory and the use of "Epic Theatre" were two of the most important. The alienation effect distanced the emotion of a drama from the audience, thus destroying theatrical illusion and allowing the audience to experience the play more objectively. Brecht achieved this by interrupting the course of the action with poems, songs, asides from characters, and other forms of commentary on the action of a play, including projections and placards. He wanted the audience to judge the play critically instead .of being lulled into a state of passive empathy. Traditional theatre, Brecht believed, encourages audiences to accept life's conditions while Epic Theatre moves audiences to act on their own behalf to change those conditions.

In 1933, with the rise of Hitler, Brecht left Germany and lived in Scandinavia until it was overrun in 1941, moving then to the United States for the duration of World War II. It was during the years 1937 to 1945 that he wrote what are considered to be his most important plays: The Life of Galileo (1937-9), Mother Courage (1938-9), The Good Person of Szechwan (1938-41), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1943-5). In 1949, after returning to Germany, Brecht began his own theatrical company, the Berliner Ensemble, where acclaimed performances of his plays brought Brecht to prominence as one of the most important figures in the contemporary theatre. After his death in 1956, his wife Helene Weigel continued to supervise the company.

First published in 1997; Edited by Nancy Swortzell