|
Lehrstücke By Bertolt Brecht
The (; singular ) are a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The ''Lehrstücke'' stem from Brecht's epic theatre techniques but as a core principle explore the possibilities of learning through acting, playing roles, adopting postures and attitudes etc. and hence no longer divide between actors and audience. Brecht himself translated the term as ''learning-play'', emphasizing the aspect of learning through participation, whereas the German term could be understood as ''teaching-play''. Reiner Steinweg goes so far as to suggest adopting a term coined by the Brazilian avant garde theatre director Zé Celso, ''Theatre of Discovery'', as being even clearer.Steinweg, ReinerTwo Chapters from "Learning Play and Epic Theatre"/ref> Definition Although the texts have a highly formal, rigorous structure, this is designed to facilitate insertions or deletions (according to the exigencies of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial society, industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach. Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage (filmmaking), montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and modern architecture. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of Realism (arts), realism and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorpor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Mission (play)
''The Mission: Memory of a Revolution'' (''Der Auftrag: Erinnerungen an eine Revolution''), also known as ''The Task'', is a postmodern drama by the (formerly East) German playwright Heiner Müller. The play was written and first published in 1979. Müller and his wife Ginka Cholakova co-directed its first theatrical production in 1980, at the intimate 'Theatre im 3.Stock' studio space of the Volksbühne in Berlin (opening on 16 November). Müller also directed a full-house production in 1982 at the Bochum Theatre in West Germany.Weber (1984, 82). Dramatic structure Composed with a " collage-like" dramaturgical structure, the play stages intertextual relationships with a range of classics from the modern theatre, each dealing with the models and ethics of revolutionary action: Brecht's '' The Decision'' (1930), Büchner's ''Danton's Death'' (1835), and Genet's '' The Blacks'' (1958), among others. The play also uses motifs from Anna Seghers' story "The Light on the Gallows" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders. Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, and translation theory. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Round Heads And Pointed Heads
''Round Heads and Pointed Heads'' (german: Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe) is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Hanns Eisler. The play's subtitle is ''Money Calls to Money'' and its authors describe it as "a tale of horror." The play is a satirical anti-Nazi parable about a fictitious country called Yahoo in which the rulers maintain their control by setting the people with round heads against those with pointed heads, thereby substituting racial relations for their antagonistic class relations. The play is composed of 11 scenes in prose and blank verse and 13 songs. Unlike another of Brecht's plays from this period, '' The Mother'', ''Round Heads and Pointed Heads'' was addressed to a wide audience, Brecht suggested, and took account of "purely entertainment considerations." Brecht's notes on the play, written in 1936, contain the earliest theoretical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Exception And The Rule
''The Exception and the Rule'' (in German ''Die Ausnahme und die Regel'') is a short play by German playwright Bertolt Brecht and is one of several ''Lehrstücke'' (Teaching plays) he wrote around 1929/30. The objective of Brecht's Lehrstücke was that they be taken on tour and performed in schools or in factories to educate the masses about socialist politics. The play itself is short, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or "coolie" as he is called in most English-language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert, the merchant's brutality increases, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. Eventually when the Merchant fires his guide, the porter and the Merchant himself get lost and the water supplies are running low. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Decision (play)
''The Decision'' ('), frequently translated as ''The Measures Taken'', is a '' Lehrstück'' and agitprop cantata by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Created in collaboration with composer Hanns Eisler and director Slatan Dudow, it consists of eight sections in prose and unrhymed, free verse, with six major songs. A note to the text by all three collaborators describes it as an "attempt to use a didactic piece to make familiar an attitude of positive intervention."Willett (1959, 38–39). Plot Four agitators from Moscow return from a successful mission in China and are congratulated for their efforts by a central committee (called The Control Chorus.) The four agitators, however, inform the committee that during their mission they were forced to kill a young comrade for their mission to succeed. They ask for judgment from the committee on their actions. The committee withholds its verdict until after the four agitators re-enact the events that led to the young ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Baden-Baden Lesson On Consent
''The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent'' (german: Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis) is a '' Lehrstück'' by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and Elisabeth Hauptmann. Under the title ''Lehrstück'' it was first performed, with music by Paul Hindemith, as part of the Baden-Baden festival on 28 July 1929, at the Stadthalle, Baden-Baden, directed by Brecht, designed by Heinz Porep. Premiere Brecht's programme note described the work as unfinished and as the "product of various theories of a musical, dramatic and political nature aiming at the collective practice of the arts". The 50-minute piece was conceived as a multi-media performance, including scenes of physical knockabout clowning, choral sections and a short film by Carl Koch, ''Dance of Death'', featuring Valeska Gert. Along with its companion, the radio cantata '' Lindbergh's Flight'', the piece was offered as an example of a new genre, "the teaching-play or ''Lehrstück''", ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Horatians And The Curiatians
''The Horatians and the Curiatians'' (Die Horatier und die Kuriatier) is a '' Lehrstück'' ("''Schulstück''" in the collected plays) by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht written in collaboration with Margarete Steffin in 1933–34. It is a retelling of the story of the Horatii and Curiaces, a subject treated by Corneille ('' Horace'') and subsequently by many opera composers (see Horatii). Commissioned by the Red Army, the play was printed in Moscow in 1936 but never performed until 1958, two years after Brecht's death. The two choruses are the main characters. Brecht had initially planned the work as a collaboration with composer Hanns Eisler, but the two broke off their collaboration midway through the project. Two letters (from August 29, 1935 and shortly thereafter) to Hanns Eisler Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for compo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Neinsager
''Der Neinsager'' (''He Said No'') – like its companion piece ''Der Jasager'' (''He Said Yes'') – is a 1930 '' Lehrstück'' by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl .... However, unlike ''Der Jasager'', it was never made into an opera. References Lehrstücke by Bertolt Brecht 1930 plays {{1930s-play-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Jasager
' (literally ''The Yes Sayer''; also translated as ''The Affirmer'' or ''He Said Yes'') is an opera (specifically a '' Schuloper'' or "school-opera") by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht (after Elisabeth Hauptmann's translation from Arthur Waley's English version of the Japanese Nō drama ''Taniko''). Its companion piece is ''Der Neinsager'' (''He Said No'') although Brecht's other text was never set by Weill. Weill also identifies the piece, following Brecht's development of the experimental form, as a '' Lehrstück'', or "teaching-piece".Weill says: "In '' Lindbergh's Flight'' Bert Brecht and I had the schools in mind for the first time. I am hoping to develop this direction further in my latest play, the '' Lehrstück'' ''He Said Yes''. ..I no longer want to offer 'songs' so much as self-contained musical forms. In the process I want to take over whatever I hitherto found right, like what I once termed the gestic approach to music. The melody must give clear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Flight Across The Ocean
''The Flight across the Ocean'' (german: Der Ozeanflug, link=no) is a '' Lehrstück'' by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, inspired by '' We'', Charles Lindbergh's 1927 account of his transatlantic flight in the plane '' Spirit of St. Louis''. Written for the Baden-Baden Music Festival, it was originally entitled ''Lindbergh's Flight'' (''Der Lindberghflug'') and premiered in 1929 with music by Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith in a broadcast by the Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester under the direction of Hermann Scherchen and produced by Ernst Hardt. Shortly afterwards, Weill replaced the Hindemith sections with his own music and this new version (described as a "cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra") opened at Berlin's Kroll Theatre on 5 December 1929, conducted by Otto Klemperer. The play was enlarged as ''Der Flug der Lindbergh'' in 1930, but the new portion was not set to music. In December 1949, Brecht removed Lindbergh's name from the play for an upcoming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
