Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

Bertolt Brecht is arguably the 20th Century’s single most important influence on theater. In his career he wrote several plays that have come to be well-known and respected including The Threepenny Opera (on which he collaborated with musician Kurt Weill), Mother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Brecht also wrote about the theater; these theoretical writings have effected what our theater looks and sounds like ever since. Born and raised in Germany, Brecht started writing in his early twenties at the same time that he was starting to flirt with radical, non-mainstream politics.

Brecht ultimately became a Marxist, and Marxist ideas such as class consciousness and opposition to those who determine the structure/ideals of society or own the means of production worked their way into his writing.

Because of his politics, Brecht went into self-exile in 1933 as Hitler first ascended to the German Chancellorship. During his exile Brecht’s writing flourished, and he penned many of his most well-known plays and his most important theoretical work. Taking refuge in the United States beginning in 1941, Brecht was soon pronounced an “enemy alien” when the United States joined World War II late that year. Like other German immigrants, he was given a registration number, restricted to an area within a five-mile radius of his home, and not allowed outside after dark.

During this bleak time he wrote The Caucasian Chalk Circle, completed in the summer of 1944 as the war turned in the Allies’ favor. He intended the play to be produced on Broadway starring American actress Luise Rainer in the role of Grusha, but a falling out between Rainer and Brecht prevented the production, and it did not premiere until 1948.

Brecht’s stay in America ended abruptly in 1947, after he was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1949 Brecht finally returned to Germany when he went to East Berlin to help stage Mother Courage and Her Children.

This production resulted in his founding a theater company, The Berliner Ensemble, with his wife, actress Helene Weigel. Thus Brecht was able to bring his work back to Germany; he spent the rest of his life working with the Berliner Ensemble and putting on stage, in Berlin, some of the plays he had written during his years of exile.

—Liana Thompson

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Bertolt Brecht.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,355100,00.jpg

Terms to know:

Parable — A story that illustrates a moral or lesson.

Adaptation—The process of taking a source material and retelling its story in a different context or form.