Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a German dramatist and theatrical theorist known as much for his approach to drama and staging as for his actual plays. Influenced by such diverse individuals as Karl Marx and Charlie Chaplin (and even performing puppet theatre as a teenager), his theories included fighting against the traditional suspension of disbelief, that realism could be created only by the audience being aware of and reacting to the play's content. This included breaking the fourth wall and other attempts to create a defamiliarization effect. The term "Brechtian" arose to describe use of his theories and approach.
Brecht heavily incorporated political and social concepts into his plays, which include Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Setzuan, The Life of Galileo, the posthumously staged anti-Hitler satire The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and his most enduring work, The Threepenny Opera (with music by Kurt Weill). While there had been earlier English language stagings of the latter, the best known translation and lyrics were supplied in the 1950s by Marc Blitzstein, who in the same period also translated Mother Courage and Her Children for an unfinished Orson Welles production.
==References==
* Rowlf the Dog, in the 1968 special The Wonderful Night of Hercules Brown, quotes his fellow canine Skipper from a recent conversation: "The existential quintessence of Euclidean is the cornerstone of neo-Brechtian semantics."
* The July 10, 1984 edition of The Muppets comic strip has Waldorf reading a new Playbill feature, "Little Known Facts About Broadway." It claims that Threepenny Opera was originally written by Brecht and [Marc] Blitzstein (who translated it into English) as the "One Penny Opera" before Kurt Weill threw his two cents in.
==Connections==
see also The Threepenny Opera
*Luis Avalos played a gentleman and a waiter in The Good Woman of Setzuan (Broadway, 1970)
*Anne Bancroft played Mother Courage in Mother Courage and Her Children (Broadway, 1963)
*Ruth Buzzi played Mrs. Gay in A Man's a Man (Off-Broadway, 1960)
*James Catusi played Swiss Cheese in Mother Courage and Her Children (Broadway, 1963)
*James Coco played O'Casey and ensemble in Arturo Ui (Broadway, 1963)
*Frances Foster played Mrs. Mi Tzu in The Good Woman of Setzuan (Broadway, 1970)
*Hugh Franklin played Clark in Arturo Ui (Broadway, 1963)
*James Frawley played Flake and ensemble in Arturo Ui (Broadway, 1963)
*Michael Gambon played Galileo Galilei in The Life of Galileo (West End, 1980)
*Zero Mostel played Mr. Shu Fu in The Good Woman of Setzuan (Broadway, 1956)
*Joe Raposo composed incidental music for A Man's a Man (Off-Broadway, 1960)
*Jerry Stiller played a policeman in The Good Woman of Setzuan (Broadway, 1956)
*Gene Wilder played a chaplain in Mother Courage and Her Children (Broadway, 1963)
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Category:Stage References
Category:Covered Songwriters