Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble鈥攖he post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel鈥攚ith its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'鈥攔elated in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era鈥攑articularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy鈥攙ying with the likes of Adorno, Luk谩cs, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter B眉rger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also 鈥楤recht鈥�"鈥攃ollective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner M眉ller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
Der Jasager und der Neinsager = He Said Yes / He Said No, Bertolt Brecht
He Said Yes: A teacher leads a hike in the mountains, among the hikers being a young boy whose mother is quite ill.
One variant of the story holds that the expedition is a quest for medicine, while another holds that it is in fact a religious pilgrimage. During the expedition the boy falls ill as well.
He is asked whether he should be abandoned by his fellow hikers, for which the customary and expected response is yes.
In He Said No, the boy answers no and suggests instead that a different custom should be introduced, 'the custom that one must think afresh in every new situation'.
This was the first play I read in my lie, I was 8! Those days I couldn't understand what drama is and why plays are like that. It took time over the years that due to the influence of my dear professor Dr Behzad Ghaderi that I realised the importance of drama. Nowadays I look at plays not as books to read or theatres to watch for fun, but something to deeply read, analise and understand.
In dieser Ausgabe ist sehr interessant und informativ, da man die Inspiration f眉r den Text von Brecht auch lesen kann. Es bietet ebenfalls die M枚glichkeit sich mit dem traditionellen N艒-Theater Japans auseinanderzusetzen. Bei den Brechttexten selbst finde ich den Unterschied zwischen dem Jasager und dem Neinsager sehr faszinierend und auch die Rezensionen der Werke, wie auch die angeh盲ngten Diskussionen, welche im Anschluss gef眉hrt wurde sehr bereichernd.