Bertolt Brecht Blog

Bertolt Brecht was born in 1898, in the city of Augsburg which is a section of the German Empire. His father was Catholic and worked in a paper factory, and his mother was a Protestant ill with breast cancer most of his younger years. While his mother was struggling with cancer, Brecht wasn't heathy himself, struggling with a congenital heart condition. He suffered a heart attack at the age of twelve but as soon as he recovered he continued strong with his education. Uniquely, Brecht was exposed at a young age to the German translation of the Bible. Due to his education of the German translation of the Bible, Brecht's work reflects some quotes and references to the Bible which can be found primarily in Mother Courage. By the age sixteen he was writing for a local newspaper and had written his first play. One of his plays reflects on his mothers illness and excessive sexual pleasures. Brecht himself, was known to have no less than three mistresses at a time. We have learned throughout his writings that his mother used to smell his clothing to determine the extent of his sexual activities. He is known to have experimented with homosexuality; however, he later pursued his first marriage with an opera singer named Marianne Zoff. He was obsessed with the idea of abandonment and left his wife and children at the age of thirty one. In 1933 Brecht took his family and traveled around the world escaping from Nazi rule. In 1950, Brecht and Weigel were given Australian citizenship, and in 1951 Brecht received the National Prize, first class. In addition, in 1954 he won the international Lenin Peace Prize. Aside from his family relationships, he spent most of his time studying Chinese, Japanese, and Indian theatre focusing a lot on Shakespeare. Brecht, however, died of a heart attack on August 14, 1956.

One of his finest works, Mother Courage and Her Children, was written during the early years of the Second World War and reflects on the "darker times". Brecht's influence was not only in the realm of political playwriting. He was also a theorist who introduced the concepts of Epic Theatre, "gestures". He opened up more possibilities of how the stage could be used and for what purpose. It is said, that Brecht was a wonderful poet and song writer as well, and was probably the closest equivalent to Shakespeare the rest of Europe has produced. Within theatre, Brecht took a revolutionary stance-not only towards class struggle, but also toward s his representation of realism on stage. "Brecht argued that Realistic theatre presented and reinforced a particular political vision, a view of society as the inevitable product of evolution and history, and therefore not susceptible to change. For Brecht, the realism of the time, which was based on bourgeois ideals and characters, was a biased representation of social reality." "Brecht stated that his theatre work is based on a "radical separation of the elements of production," (see alienation effect in the notes below) rather than the unity of action seen in Realism. This realistic illusion Brecht found to be dishonest, in that it seduced the audience to accept subliminally its representation of reality as a natural andapolitical view of the world. He wanted the audience to rethink and redefine its world view. By contrast to the Realistic theatre, Brecht's theatre always shows dramatic illusion in its characterisation, setting, action and techniques such as the alienation effect of using screens featuring captions to reveal the forthcoming action."

"His plays tend to be episodic, written as a seemingly disconnected, open-ended montage of scenes presented in a non-naturalistic, non-chronological way. The audience needs to arrive at its own conclusion of how the events are linked together."

"Brecht usually left the stage bare in his productions as a means of preventing the audience from experiencing a detailed illusion of reality, of some fictional dramatic location. He exposed stage machinery, opened up the physical staging to the wings and often exposed the back wall. He also exposed the lighting grid above the stage so the audience could see how lights influence the mood of the scene and influence the audience's judgment."

"Brecht also developed his own acting style for his work. He urged his actors not to empathise totally with their characters, but to stand outside them and illustrate their behaviour. Brecht's actors were asked to go beyond the Stanislavsky system of acting, where the actor identifies entirely with their character and represents the character entirely from his or her point of view. Rather Brecht encouraged a more demonstrative acting method, one that enables the actor topresent the character from a number of perspectives."

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/drama/hsc/studies/brecht/2758/Brecht.htm#m2
This video below, tells a little about Bertolt Brecht's background.