Brecht, Bertolt (1898–1956)

Bertolt Brecht was arguably one of the foremost playwrights, composers, dramaturges, and political activists of the 20th century. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, he grew up to study medicine and worked in a hospital in Munich during World War I. After the war he moved to Berlin, where he found his passion and talent for the theater. He was inspired by the influential critic Herbert Ihering, who told him how the public was hungry for modern theater. He also befriended Erich Engel, a man who directed most of Brecht's plays throughout Brecht's life. Brecht managed to put up his first two plays in Munich right after the war, Baal and Drums in the Night. But his first [Page 271]success came from his third play, In the Jungle of the Cities, which Engel directed in Berlin.

Brecht lived in Berlin during the 1920s, a time when the world looked to Berlin for the finest art, culture, and fashion. It was also the era of the Weimar Republic, a liberal government set up after World War I. Brecht and his work thrived during this time, taking advantage of the public's positive attitudes toward a more democratic government. By the early 1920s, Brecht had formed his infamous writing collective, whch included such great German artists as Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau, and Helene Weigel (his second wife). The collective focused its attention on furthering Brecht's work and ambitions to use theater as a means of social change and was one of the most influential literary and theatrical movements during the Weimar Republic. The collective put on a number of Brecht's plays, works they called Lehrstücke (teaching plays), for the large worker arts organization in Germany and Austria. These works were written to transform passive audiences into active audiences whose attention was drawn to participation and social change.

Along with Brecht's original works, the collective also adapted John Gray's The Beggars Opera, renaming it Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three Penny Opera). For this work, Brecht composed his own songs and music; it became the most successful play in Berlin in the 1920s. The play focused on the hardships of the working class and the unemployed in Germany, showing the hypocritical views of the Church toward these people. The play also centered around the workers as people rather than numbers. It remains one of Brecht's most well-known plays.

The collective was also where Brecht developed a new, radical approach to the theater. Brecht believed in socialist values and the power of art to move people to better society. He wanted to design an entire method of theater where the audience experienced a sense of alienation, something he called Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect or estrangement effect). Brecht called this new theory epic theater, the theory that a play should not simply cause the audience to emotionally identify with the scenes onstage, but rather it should invoke personal self-reflection and analysis, wherein a critical view of the stage would be developed and would move the person to enact change. Brecht wanted audiences to realize that the play was not reality but merely a representation of reality.

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