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Showing 1 - 25 of 126 matches in All Departments
Pip Broughton has translated the play for The Old Vic with reverence for Brecht an understanding of the social relationships in the play and last but not least with a fine feeling for the language. aAngelika Hurwicz
Includes the full German text, accompanied by German-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.
Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modem stage, Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war. Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling ("Mother Courage"), an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes--her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in literature.
Brecht presents the vivid and changing scene of Hitler's war machine. There is a worker who only mumbles "Heil Hitlers" and a S.A. man whose suspicion of him is enough to mark him for life. There is an assaulted Jew who did no wrong and a judge who has a tragic inclination to be just. There are a mother and father who have good cause to fear that their son has informed on them. The war machine moves across Europe, bringing ruin and misery everywhere.
'Brecht's dark, dazzling world-view...makes an absolutely devastating impact. The play is fuelled by the brilliant perception that everyone requires such a dual or split personality to survive.' Evening Standard Three gods come to earth hoping to discover one really good person. No one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta. Brecht's parable of good and evil was first performed in 1943 and remains one of his most popular and frequently produced plays worldwide. This Student Edition features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature.
Arguably Brecht's greatest play, A Life of Galileo charts the seventeenth century scientist's extraordinary fight with the church over his assertion that the earth orbits the sun. The figure of Galileo, whose 'heretical' discoveries about the solar system brought him to the attention of the Inquisition, is one of Brecht's more human and complex creations. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. Brecht's beautiful depiction of the explosive struggle between scientific discovery and religious fundamentalism is captured masterfully in this new translation by RSC writer-in-residence, Mark Ravenhill.
Brecht projects an ancient Chinese story onto a realistic setting in Soviet Georgia. In a theme that echoes the Judgment of Solomon, two women argue over the possession of a child. Thanks to the unruly judge, Azdak (one of Brecht's most vivid creations) natural justice is done and the peasant Grusha keeps the child she loves, even though she is not its mother. Written while Brecht was in exile in the United States during the Second World War, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a politically charged, much-revived and complex example of Brecht's epic theatre. This new Student Edition contains introductory commentary and notes by Kristopher Imbrigotta from the University of Puget Sound, US, offering a much-needed contemporary perspective on the play. The introduction covers: - narrative structure: play about a play within a play ("circle") - songs and music - justice and social systems - context: Brecht, exile, WWII, socialism - notions of collective and class - fable and story adaptation, folk fairy tale
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Brecht's series of twenty-four interconnected playlets describe events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s. They dramatise with clinical precision the suspicion and anxiety experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as the power of Hitler grew. Written in exile in Denmark and first staged in 1938 it was inspired in part by his recent trip to Moscow where he had been researching tasks for the anti-Nazi effort. This Student Edition features an extensive introduction and commentary and includes: a chronology of the Brecht's life and work; a synopsis of each playlet; an introduction to the context of the play; commentary on themes, characters, style and language; a review of the play in performance; notes on individual words and phrases in the text, and questions for further study.
This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following: * Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis) * Themes (war; nature; capitalism) * Dramatic devices (epic theatre) * Production history and critical reception * Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist) * Further study Widely regarded as Brecht's best work, Mother Courage and her Children was written in 1938-9 and received its premiere in Zurich in 1941. Mother Courage - a canteen woman serving with the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years War (1618-48) - follows the armies, selling provisions and liquor to the troops. Both her sons die in the war and her dumb daughter, Kattrin, is mortally wounded as she beats a drum to warn the town of Halle of an impending attack. Yet, all the while, Mother Courage continues her travels with her wagon, indomitably businesslike, calculating how she can make material profit from the war and turn conflict into capital.
The city burns in the heat of civil war and a servant girl sacrifices everything to protect an abandoned child. But when peace is finally restored, the boy's mother comes to claim him. Calling upon the ancient tradition of the Chalk Circle, a comical judge sets about resolving the dispute. But in a culture of corruption and deception, who wins? Written by the grand master of storytelling and peopled with vivid and amusing characters, this is one of the greatest plays of the last century. This Caucasian Chalk Circle is translated by award-winning writer Alistair Beaton, who also wrote the bitingly witty stage play Feelgood and the celebrated TV dramas The Trial of Tony Blair and A Very Social Secretary. The play was toured by Shared Experience in 2009.
Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler - recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today.Written during the Second World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter, Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.This version, originally translated by George Tabori, has been revised by leading Scottish playwright Alistair Beaton.
Even in Germany, the true scope and force of Bertolt Brecht s poetry did not become apparent until long after his death in 1956, and even today, so many of his more than 2,000 poems have never appeared in English. Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate his poetic legacy into English, positions Brecht, the author of Mother Courage and The Threepenny Opera, not merely as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely creative twentieth-century poet, one of the best in the whole of German literature. With a personal foreword by his own daughter, Barbara Brecht-Schall, Love Poems features 78 astonishing and deeply personal love poems many addressed to particular women that reveal Brecht as lover and love poet whose bitter struggle to keep faith, hope, and love alive during desperate times represents the essence of human relationships."
This Student Edition of Brecht's classic satire on the rise of Hitler features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature.Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler -- recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written during the Second World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter, Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.
Bertolt Brecht Characters: 30 male, 5 female Brecht's shudderingly accurate parallel between Hitler and his henchmen on the one hand and the old crime lords of Chicago on the other is a vigorous eye opener that was produced on Broadway with Christopher Plummer. The Cauliflower Trust in Chicago is in need of help and turns to a racketeer by the name of Arturo Ui to begin a "protection" campaign. His henchmen look astonishingly like Goebbels and Goring. Their activities include "accidental" fires and a St. Valentine's Day massacre. "A wild and grotesque sort of clown show, with everything seen through a distorting mirror...An ideal vehicle for a director who knows how to shoot the work in his staging." -The New York Post
Full Length, Drama w/music / 18m, 5f, extras /Int./5 Exts. This German play was written in 1939 and was first produced in Zurich in 1941. In America, it was published in English right away (1941, by New Directions) but did not reach Broadway till 1963 - in a memorable production directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Anne Bancroft. It had, of course, by that time been produced to much acclaim all over the world. When Bertolt Brecht directed the play in Munich (1950), Eric Bentley, Assistant Director, at his bidding started to translate the play into English. He was eventually to make several different English versions of it. The most interesting of these is published here. It was a collaboration with the eminent French composer Darius Milhaud. Together they made this remarkable contribution to musical theatre.
Brecht's series of twenty-four interconnected playlets describe events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s. They dramatize with clinical precision the suspicion and anxiety experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as the power of Hitler grew. This volume is translated by John Willett, joint editor of Brecht's collected plays in English and is accompanied by an extensive introduction and commentary. "What Brecht shows us here is more or less harmless by comparison with what came later. Perhaps this is its greatest strength: we know the results, what we are looking for is the beginnings."-Max Frisch
Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.The fifth volume in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Book jacket: Known primarily as a dramatist, Bertolt Brecht was also a gifted poet. These fifty poems--among them many ballads that later became part of The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, and Baal--reveal the tremendous range and versatility of Brecht's expression. His first and best book of poetry, Manual of Piety uses the traditional form of devotional literature to provide both an irreverant spoof and a serious critique of the post-World War I European (and more specifically, German) culture that gave rise to fascism. His characteristically sly wit combines with mordant social commentary to make Manual of Piety Brecht at his most hilarious--and also his most brutally incisive. |
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