Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance

by David Barnett, Enoch Brater (Editor), Mark Taylor-Batty (Editor)

Overview

Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a bad-tempered dictator, a merciless exploiter and a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world.

David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two that contradicts popular misapprehensions about both Brechts. More importantly this book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of an interventionist theatre. What emerges is a far more nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to look beyond buzzwords like epic theatre or Verfremdung to understand their place in Brecht's political theatre and to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408183663
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/15/2015
Series:	Engage
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Barnett is Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Sussex, UK. He has published books on German theatre (studies on Heiner Müller and Rainer Werner Fassbinder), and is preparing a two-volume history about the Berliner Ensemble, the first book of its kind in any language. He has also published several essays and articles on German-, English-language, political and postdramatic theatre.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
One: Revealing the Radical Theorist
Two: The Messingkauf as Performative Thinking
Three: Brecht and Difference
Four: Method Trumps Means
Five: Brecht and the Actor
Six: Brecht and the Director
Seven: Brecht, Documentation and the Art of Copying
Eight: Brecht's Method in Action: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Closer by Patrick Marber
Epilogue
Endnotes
Index

Editorial Reviews

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2015

"The theater of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) has long suffered lamentable neglect in the US and the UK ... Fortunately, Barnett champions Brecht's cause with clarity and authority in this slim volume, which this reviewer predicts will soon prove indispensable to any serious Anglophone student of Brecht. ... The author draws on profound knowledge of the material, including Brecht's drama, the crucial Messingkauf fragments, and the history of the Berliner Ensemble. At the heart of the book is the chapter 'Brecht and the Actor, ' which elegantly dispatches the fallacy of a Brechtian 'style' and should be required reading in any acting class. Later chapters offer excellent illustrative readings of the application of Brecht's principles to both Brechtian and non-Brechtian drama. Barnett has delivered a vital corrective to the misapprehension of Brecht's theater. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." -- R. Remshardt, University of Florida, CHOICE

"Barnett's jargon-free study, accessible to students and enjoyable for specialists, effectively re-introduces Brecht's performance theory, charts its evolution during the exile years, and demonstrates its application through Brecht's formation of the Berliner Ensemble, when his long-simmering ideas could at last be put into practice." - Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism

"Barnett has done meticulous research and presents a very engaging scholarly argument." - Nathaniel Nesmith, American Theatre

From the Publisher