“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”
― Bertolt Brecht
Fifty-eight years ago, the world lost the man who changed the traditional way to write and watch theater, and that used plays and poems to think about the social conditions of mankind: Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht, who’s complete name was Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, was a German playwright and poet born on August 10th, 1898 in Augsburg, Germany. He is known as the father of epic theater, a dramatic genre that attempts to show the cruel social realities of a time, as a way to question an abusive government.
Brecht was born in an upper-class family. His father was a catholic manager of a paper factory, and her mother came from a rich protestant family. But, through the years, the young Brecht, who always showed a high spirit and intellect, turned away from the luxuries of his family in order to develop a deeper personality.
From 1917 to 1921, Brecht studied medicine in Munich, and in 1918 he served in a military hospital. With only 20 years old, Brecht wrote his first play, “Baal”. The story of "Baal" is about a young and alcoholic poet who gets involved in many problems due to his sexuality, and in the end commits murder and suicide. With “Baal”, Brecht started developing different dramatic techniques that he would use in his following plays.
“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.”
― Bertolt Brecht
The epic theater
Brecht explored different theater traditions to create the epic theater. Though some elements of this artistic form were already in other cultures, Brecht put them all together and formalized them.
Epic theater does not aim to seduce the audience or make it believe that it is watching the “real life”. In Brecht’s plays the public has to be fully aware that it's watching only a representation, so the spectators can formulate it’s own ideas and conclusions, not only the about play, but about the world and society.
According to the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, in the epic theater “instead of identifying with the characters, the audience should be educated to be astonished at the circumstances under which they function.”
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality
but a hammer with which to shape it.”― Bertolt Brecht
Brecht's ideas
Brecht was disappointed with the horror and violence of World War I, and he started to sympathize with Karl Marx's theory. Though he never joined the Communist party, his works were censored for his critics to the German middle-class and the Nazi oppression over the people.
In 1933, one of Brecht’s plays was censored by the Nazi police, and the actors were accused of being traitors. In February, Brecht and his family left Germany and all of his books and plays were burned in the nazi book burns of 1933.
During his exile, Brecht traveled to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. He wrote plays as “Life of Galileo”, “Mother Courage and her children”, and "The Good Person of Szechwan”, in which Brecht described the traps and nastiness of capitalism.
Brecht lived some years in California, United States, where he tried to write movies for Hollywood, but all of his scripts were rejected. In 1947, he even was required to testify before the Un-American Activities Committee, for his plays “promoted” messages against the U.S. government.
Bertolt Brecht was always a Marxist and critical of the oppression of the people. His plays attempted to educate their audience, and to break the comfortable dramatic conventions of his time. He returned to Germany, and died in Berlin on August 14th 1956 from a heart attack.
Brecht wrote fiction, poems, plays, scripts, and dramatic theory, and his ideas are still studied and discussed by art academics and students from all over the world.
Bertolt Brecht testifying before the Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.
A worker reads History
A poem by Bertolt Brecht
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.