Bertolt Brecht
Director, Poet, Playwright
“Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a
hammer with which to shape it.”
Early Life
● Born Bertold, 10 February 1898, Augsburg, Bavaria, in ill health
● Disliked school, nearly expelled for anti-war sentiments at the beginning of WWI
● Studied medicine, theatre, and art at University of Munich, later an orderly
● Critic for socialist paper Die Ausburger
● Served as dramaturg for the Deutsches Theatre and on Erwin Piscator’s dramaturgical
collective
Early Career in Theatre
● Moved to Munich to pursue a career in theatre
● Draws from work with Erwin Piscator, cabaret and
silent film performers, commedia dell’arte,
Shakespeare’s histories, religious upbringing
● First collaboration with Kurt Weill on The
Threepenny Opera
● 1930, they collaborate again on The Rise and Fall of
the City of Mahogany
● Becomes known as an anti-war Marxist, writing a
series of educational plays
Second World War
● Flees in 1933, receives an American visa in
1941, stripped of German citizenship
● Socialist, anti-war, anti-fascist work, begins
developing Epic Theatre
○ Mother Courage and her Children
○ The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
○ Caucasian Chalk Circle
● Blacklisted and questioned by House
Un-American Activities Committee
Epic Theatre
● Aims to keep audience separate and engaged, audiences should remember they are in a
theatre and watching a play and leave catalysed to act on what they’ve seen.
● Verfremdungseffekt - alienation or estrangement effect
○ Use of narration, breaking of the third wall
○ Speaking stage directions
○ Doubling or splitting of roles
○ Minimalism in set, props, costumes
○ Use of montages and placards
○ Use of tableaux and projection
○ Song and dance
○ Gestus
○ Spass
The Berliner Ensemble
● Returns to Zurich, then East Berlin after the war,
establishes The Berliner Ensemble with Helene Wiegel
○ initially an offshoot of the Deutsches Theatre
○ exclusive rights to Brecht’s plays
○ becomes a public corporation after reunification
○ continues until 1999
Death and Legacy
● Died in 1956 of a heart attack
● Known in certain circles for affairs, many with women co-writers
○ Weigel credits them and executes estate
● Influences cross genres and continue to the present day
○ Spike Lee
○ Tony Kushner
○ Urinetown
○ Pippin
○ Ragtime
○ Theatre of the Absurd
○ “Alabama Song”
○ Caryl Churchill
○ 7:84
○ Epic Theatre Ensemble