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BRECHT SOURCEBOOK Bertolt Brecht’s career intersects a wide range of political and cultural practices and history including German folk culture, vaudeville, jazz, the rise of Hollywood and mass culture, two World Wars, Nazi Germany, the emergence of international travel, and the beginnings of global culture. As one of the most prolific and influential writers, directors, and theorists of the twentieth centuty, Brecht is mandatory reading for anyone interested in cultural and political life. This anthology brings together an indispensable collection of articles, plays and interviews portraying the development and the complexity of Brecht’s ideas. Included are two plays not easily available in English: The Beggar or The Dead Dog and Baden Lehrstück. The collection covers: (cid:127) the development of Brecht’s aesthetic theories (cid:127) Brecht’s aesthetic theories in practice (cid:127) Brecht’s collaborations with Kurt Weill, Paul Dessau and others (cid:127) the adoption and adaptation of Brecht’s ideas in England, Japan, Russia, the United States, and Latin America. This book is an ideal companion to Brecht’s plays, and provides an invaluable reconsideration of his work. Contributors include: Lee Baxandall, Eric Bentley, Hans-Joachim Bunge, Paul Dessau, Martin Esslin, Henry Glade, Barclay Goldsmith, Mordecai Gorelik, Karen Laughlin, W.Stuart McDowell, Erica Munk, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernst Schumacher, Diana Taylor, Tadashi Uchino, Kurt Weill, Carl Weber. Carol Martin is Associate Professor of Drama at New York University, the co- editor of Studies in Dance History, the book review editor of The Drama Review and the author of Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930s. Henry Bial is Instructor of Drama at New York University. He is currently completing his dissertation on Jewish-American popular performance. Worlds of Performance General Editor: Richard Schechner WORLDS OF PERFORMANCE What is a “performance”? Where does it take place? Who are the participants? Not so long ago these were settled questions, but today such orthodox answers are unsatisfactory, misleading, and limiting. “Performance” as a theoretical category and as a practice has expanded explosively. It now comprises a panoply of genres ranging from play, to popular entertainments, to theatre, dance, and music, to secular and religious rituals, to “performance in everyday life”, to intercultural experiments, and more. For nearly forty years, The Drama Review (TDR), the journal of performance studies, has been at the cutting edge of exploring these questions. The Worlds of Performance Series is designed to mine the extraordinary riches and diversity of TDR’s decades of excellence, bringing back into print important essays, interviews, artists’ notes, and photographs. New materials and introductions bring the volumes up to date. Each World of Performance book is a complete anthology, arranged around a specific theme or topic. Each World of Performance book is an indispensable resource for the scholar, a textbook for the student, and an exciting eye-opener for the general reader. Richard Schechner Editor, TDR Series Editor Other titles in the series: Acting (Re)Considered edited by Phillip B.Zarrilli Happenings and other Acts edited by Mariellen R.Sandford A Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre and Performance: On and Beyond the stage edited by Carol Martin The Grotowski Sourcebook edited by Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford A Sourcebook of African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements edited by Annemarie Bean BRECHT SOURCEBOOK Edited by Carol Martin and Henry Bial London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 Editorial and selection Carol Martin and Henry Bial; individual contributions, the contributors The right of Carol Martin and Henry Bial to be identified as the Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Bertolt Brecht: a critical anthology/Carol Martin and Henry Bial. p. cm.—(Worlds of performance) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Brecht, Bertolt, 1898–1956–Criticism and interpretation. I. Martin, Carol, 1952–. II. Bial, Henry, 1970– III. Series. PT2603.R397Z56325 1999 832c.912–dc21 99–41388 CIP ISBN 0-203-97955-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-20042-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-20043-1 (pbk) To Sophia and Sam and to Ernest and Martha Bial CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Contributors xii Introduction 1 Carol Martin and Henry Bial Part I: Brecht’s Aesthetic Theories 1 On Chinese Acting 13 Bertolt Brecht translated by Eric Bentley 2 Theatre for Learning 21 Bertolt Brecht translated by Edith Anderson 3 An Epic Theatre Catechism 29 Mordecai Gorelik 4 Are Stanislavsky and Brecht Commensurable? 35 Eric Bentley 5 Brecht’s Concept of Gestus and the American Performance 41 Tradition Carl Weber 6 Beyond Bourgeois Theatre 47 Jean-Paul Sartre translated by Rima Dell Reck Part II: Brecht’s Theories in Practice 7 Gestus in Music 57 Kurt Weill translated by Erich Albrecht vii 8 Composing for BB: Some Comments 61 Paul Dessau translated by Hella Freud Bemays 9 Actors on Brecht: The Munich Years 67 W.Stuart McDowell 10 Bertolt Brecht’s J.B. 81 Lee Baxandall 11 Baden Lehrstück 87 Bertolt Brecht translated by Lee Baxandall 12 The Beggar or The Dead Dog 105 Bertolt Brecht translated by Michael Hamburger 13 The Dialectics of Galileo 111 Ernst Schumacher translated by Joachim Neugroschel 14 The Dispute Over the Valley: An Essay on Bertolt Brecht’s 123 Play The Caucasian Chalk Circle Hans-Joachim Bunge translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 15 Prologue to The Caucasian Chalk Circle 137 Bertolt Brecht translated by Eric Bentley Part III: Brecht Interpreted Abroad 16 Brecht and the English Theatre 145 Martin Esslin 17 The Death of Mother Courage 155 Henry Glade 18 Brecht and Chicano Theatre 163 Barclay Goldsmith 19 Brecht and Latin America’s “Theatre of Revolution” 173 Diana Taylor viii 20 Political Displacements: Toward Historicizing Brecht in 185 Japan, 1932–1998 Tadashi Uchino 21 The Actor’s Involvement: Notes on Brecht— An Interview 205 with Joseph Chaikin Erika Munk 22 Brechtian Theory and American Feminist Theatre 213 Karen Laughlin 23 Brecht, Feminism, and Chinese Theatre 227 Carol Martin Index 237 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When we began this project, we knew that the pages of TDR over the past 40 years would provide an incredible range of information on Brecht and how he was introduced in the U.S. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, TDR (then the Tulane Drama Review) was instrumental in making work by and about Brecht available to an English-speaking audience. Under the editorship of the late Robert W.Corrigan, the journal frequently published such work, including a special issue (T13) devoted exclusively to Brecht in 1961. Erika Munk, Managing Editor of TDR in 1967 and 1968, helped compile two additional special issues on Brecht (T37 and T38), which subsequently became the anthology Brecht (Bantam, New York, 1972). Many of the articles in this volume originally appeared in one of these three special issues, and we gratefully acknowledge the work of the editors of TDR. We regret that the Brecht Sourcebook cannot include all the work by and about Brecht which has appeared in the pages of TDR. Given the rich source of material, we had to make many hard choices. We thank Talia Rodgers and her staff at Routledge and Suzanne Winnacker, among others too numerous to name, for their helpful suggestions on this book. We also thank those authors who contributed new work, or granted permission to reprint material published elsewhere to help us bring this collection up to date. We gratefully acknowledge the many authors, editors, and publishers who assisted us as we navigated the murky waters of copyright information. Jerold Couture, attorney for the Brecht Estate, was especially helpful in enabling us to secure reprint permissions for the five Brecht-authored pieces in this collection. Our colleagues in the Departments of Drama and Performance Studies at New York University have provided invaluable support. Two people deserve special thanks for their practical assistance: Cindy Brizzell (now at Yale) and Aitor Baraibar. The editorial staff of TDR, including Mariellen Sandford, Marta Ulvaeus, Julia Whitworth, Sara Brady, and Jennifer Chan, were also very helpful. A special thanks to Katherine Hui-ling Chou, whose comments on “Brecht, Feminism, and Chinese Theatre” were most insightful and generous. Finally, without the support of Richard Schechner and Christine Dotterweich Bial, this project could not have come to fruition.
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