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Brecht On Art & Politics (Hardcover)
Bertolt Brecht; Edited by Steve Giles, Tom Kuhn; Translated by Laura Bradley, Steve Giles, …
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R1,748
Discovery Miles 17 480
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The first single-volume anthology of Brecht's writings on both art
and politics This volume contains new translations to extend our
image of one of the twentieth century's most entertaining and
thought provoking writers on culture, aesthetics and politics. Here
are a cross-section of Brecht's wide-ranging thoughts which offer
us an extraordinary window onto the concerns of a modern world in
four decades of economic and political disorder. The book is
designed to give wider access to the experience of a dynamic
intellect, radically engaged with social, political and cultural
processes. Each section begins with a short essay by the editors
introducing and summarising Brecht's thought in the relevant year.
"One of the greatest poets and dramatists of our century"
(Observer) Brecht's Lehrstucke or short 'didactic' pieces written
during the years 1929 to 1933, are some of his most experimental
work. Rejecting conventional theatre, they are spare and highly
formalised, drawing on traditional Japanese and Chinese theatre.
They show Brecht in collaboration with the composers Hindemith,
Weill and Eisler, influenced by the new techniques of montage in
the visual arts and seeking new means of expression. Brecht
intended them for performance by schools, workers' groups and
choral societies rather than by professionals, with the idea that
the moral and political lessons contained in them are best conveyed
by participating in an actual production. In addition to the
Lehrstucke, the volume contains The Mother, a longer play, again
with music by Eisler, based on the novel by Gorky. A story of
dawning political consciousness, told with irony and narrative
drive, its central character is one of Brecht's great female roles.
The original production starred Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and
Brecht was buried with the red flag that was a prop in the
production.
"Those who dismiss Brecht as a yea-sayer to Stalinism are advised
to read these journals and moderate their opinion." (Paul Bailey,
Weekend Telegraph) Brecht's "Work Journals" cover the period from
1938 to 1955, the years of exile in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and
America, and his return via Switzerland to East Berlin. His
criticisms of the work of other writers and intellectuals are
perceptive and polemic, and the accounts of his own writing
practice provide insight into the creation of his dramatic works of
the period, the development of his political thinking and his
theories about epic theatre. Also integrated into the journals are
Brecht's immediate reactions to and commentary upon the events of
the period: his political exile's view of the course of World War
II and his account of the House Un-American Activities committee."A
marvellous, motley collage of political ideas, domestic detail,
artistic debate, poems, photographs and cuttings from newspapers
and magazines, assembled, undoubtedly for posterity by one of the
great writers of the century" (New Statesman and Society)
"Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks" presents a
selection of Brecht's principal writings for directors and theatre
practitioners, and is suitable for acting schools, directors,
actors, students and teachers of Theatre Studies. Through these
texts Brecht provides a general practical approach to acting and to
realising texts for the stage that crystallises and makes concrete
many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing.The
volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new
commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the
practice of theatre, known as the "Messingkauf," or "Buying Brass,"
including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for
classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains
rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions
of" Life of Galileo," "Antigone," "Mother Courage" and
others.Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and
including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the
practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today,
"Brecht on Performance" is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is
illustrated with over 30 photographs from the "Modelbooks."
Brecht was never inclined to see any of his plays as completely
finished, and this volume collects some of the most important
theatrical projects and fragments that were always to remain 'works
in progress'. Offering an invaluable insight into the writer's
working methods and practices, the collection features the famous
Fatzer as well as The Bread Store and Judith of Shimoda, along with
other texts that have never before been available in English.
Alongside the familiar, 'completed' plays, Brecht worked on many
ideas and plans which he never managed to work up even once for
print or stage. In pieces like Fleischhacker, Garbe/Busching and
Jacob Trotalong we see how such projects were abandoned or
interrupted or became proving grounds for ideas and techniques. The
works collated here span over thirty years and allow the reader to
follow Brecht's creative process as he constantly revised his work
to engage with new contexts. This treasure-trove of new discoveries
is also annotated with dramaturgical notes to present readable and
useable texts for the theatre. The volume is edited by Tom Kuhn and
Charlotte Ryland, with the translation and dramaturgical edition of
each play provided by a team of experienced writers, scholars and
translators.
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The Tutor (Paperback)
Bertolt Brecht
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R175
R143
Discovery Miles 1 430
Save R32 (18%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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
Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great
20th-century innovators in theatre - the literary-theatrical
equivalent of a Picasso or Stravinsky - and Germany's greatest poet
of the last century, but the playwright was also a dazzling writer
of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist;
fundamentally in his plays he was a storyteller. This volume
collects the complete short stories written by Brecht, including
the prize-winning 'The Monster', and the fragmentary memoir
ghost-written by Brecht, 'Life Story of the boxer Samson-Korner'.
Brecht scholars Marc Silberman and Shuhsi Kao provide an
introduction and editorial notes.Fans of Brecht will find in the 37
stories assembled here the same directness, lack of affectation,
and wry humour that characterise his plays. Every lover of short
stories will discover an unexpected trove of pleasure in this "mine
for short-story addicts" ("Observer").
Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti, which remained unpublished in his own
lifetime, now appears for the first time in English. Me-ti
counselled against 'constructing too complete images of the world'.
For this work of fragments and episodes, Brecht accumulated
anecdotes, poems, personal stories and assessments of contemporary
politics. Given its controversial nature, he sought a disguise,
using the name of a Chinese contemporary of Socrates, known today
as Mozi. Stimulated by his humorous aphoristic style and social
focus, as well as an engrained Chinese awareness of the flow of
things, Brecht developed a practical, philosophical,
anti-systematic ethics, discussing Marxist dialectics, Lenin,
Hitler, Stalin, the Moscow trials, and the theories behind current
events, while warning how ideology makes people the 'servants of
priests'. Me-ti is central to an understanding of Brecht's critical
reflections on Marxist dialectics and his commitment to change and
the non-eternal, the philosophy which informs much of his writing
and his most famous plays, such as The Good Person of Szechwan.
Readers will find themselves both fascinated and beguiled by the
reflections and wisdom it offers. First published in German in 1965
and now translated and edited by Antony Tatlow, Brecht's Me-ti:
Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things provides readers with a
much-anticipated accessible edition of this important work. It
features a substantial introduction to the concerns of the work,
its genesis and context - both within Brecht's own writing and
within the wider social and political history, and provides an
original selection and organisation of texts. Extensive notes
illuminate the work and provide commentary on related works from
Brecht's oeuvre.
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.
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.
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.
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Aesthetics and Politics (Paperback)
Fredric Jameson; Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, …
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R310
R283
Discovery Miles 2 830
Save R27 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of
major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in
German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and
Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over
literature and art during these years are assembled in a single
volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous,
interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of
twentieth-century intellectual history.
This volume gathers together, for the first time in English
translation, Brecht's own writings on the new film and broadcast
technologies that revolutionised arts and communication in the
early part of the twentieth century This book includes all of
Brecht's theoretical writing about film, radio, broadcasting and
the new media written between 1919 and 1956 as well as all of his
important screenplays produced during the 1920s and 1930s.
Screenplays written during this time include an early sound-film
adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, and a collaboration with Fritz
Lang, Hangmen Also Die. Brecht's writings on the new media document
his fascination with it from Weimar Germany to Hollywood and the
movie industry.A must for students of Brecht and film studies
alike.
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
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
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.
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Love Poems (Paperback)
Bertolt Brecht; Translated by David Constantine, Tom Kuhn; Foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall
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R422
R396
Discovery Miles 3 960
Save R26 (6%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Even in Germany, the scope and force of Bertolt Brecht's poetry did
not become apparent until long after his death and today, 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 not only 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 German
literature. With a foreword by his daughter; Love Poems features 78
astonishing and deeply personal love poems that reveal Brecht as
lover and love poet whose struggle to keep faith, hope and love
alive during desperate times represents the essence of human
relationships.
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