The Measures Taken
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The Measures Taken
''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 you ...
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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 playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ...
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Frederic Ewen
Frederic Ewen (1899 – October 18, 1988) was an English professor at Brooklyn College from 1930 to 1952. During the height of the McCarthy period Ewen was forced to resign his teaching position after refusing to cooperate with a Senate Internal Security Committee investigation of communism and higher education. Early years Frederic Ewen was born in Lemberg, Austria in 1899, one of eleven children. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1912. He graduated from the City College of New York and received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His first book, ''The Prestige of Schiller in England'', based on his doctoral dissertation, was published by Columbia University Press. Academic career Ewen was appointed assistant professor of English at Brooklyn College in 1930. he joined the Teachers Union shortly thereafter and was involved in left politics on campus and within the larger movement in New York City. In 1940 the New York St ...
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Maishe Maponya
Maishe Maphonya (1951-2021) was a South Africa a political activist, playwright, director and poet. Maponya was born in Alexandra Township but his family was forcibly relocated to Diepkloof, Soweto in 1961. Biography and career Maponya was born in poverty under apartheid era in Alexandra Township, later his family was forcibly removed to Diepkloof Diepkloof is a large zone of Soweto township in the Gauteng province of South Africa. It is also sometimes referred to as Diepmeadow, if considered as a single township with the nearby Meadowlands, Gauteng, Meadowlands (although there is Orlando, ..., Soweto. His love for reading and writing was sparked at an early age, this is also when he became politically conscious and began to write poetry and stage productions that reflected the conditions of Black people in South Africa. References 1951 births 2021 deaths 20th-century South African male actors South African dramatists and playwrights People from Alexandra, Gauteng ...
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Memory Of A Revolution
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, it would be impossible for language, relationships, or personal identity to develop. Memory loss is usually described as forgetfulness or amnesia. Memory is often understood as an informational processing system with explicit and implicit functioning that is made up of a sensory processor, short-term (or working) memory, and long-term memory. This can be related to the neuron. The sensory processor allows information from the outside world to be sensed in the form of chemical and physical stimuli and attended to various levels of focus and intent. Working memory serves as an encoding and retrieval processor. Information in the form of stimuli is encoded in accordance with explicit or implicit functions by the working memory processor. ...
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Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langhoff's Deutsches Theater and in 1954 moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, built in 1892, that was open for the 1928 premiere of ''The Threepenny Opera'' (''Die Dreigroschenoper''). Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble Brecht's students Benno Besson, Egon Monk, Peter Palitzsch, and Manfred Wekwerth were given the opportunity to direct plays by Brecht that had not yet been staged. The stage designers Caspar Neher and Karl von Appen, the composers Paul Dessau and Hanns Eisler, as well as the dramaturge Elisabeth Hauptmann, were among Brecht's closest collaborators. After her husband died in 1956, Weigel continued managing the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The Berliner Ensemble achieved success through long and meticulous rehears ...
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East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was establish ...
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Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticism toward the "meta-narrative, grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to epistemological, epistemic certainty or stability of meaning (semiotics), meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objective fact are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the instrumental conditionality, conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-reference, self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism (philosophy), pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity (philosophy), identity, hierar ...
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Heiner Müller
Heiner Müller (; 9 January 1929 – 30 December 1995) was a German (formerly East German) dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and postdramatic theatre."With Beckett's death Müller becomes the theatre's greatest living poet." ''The Village Voice'', quoted on the backcover of Müller's ''Theatremachine'' (1995). The phrase "enigmatic and fragmentary pieces" comes from the article on Müller in ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre'' (Banham 1995, 765). Among others, Elizabeth Wright assesses Müller's contribution to a postmodern drama in ''Postmodern Brecht'' (1989). Biography Müller was born in Eppendorf, Saxony. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1946 which was in the course of the forced merger of the KPD and SPD subsumed into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED). He was soon expelled for lacking enthusiasm ...
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BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts also featuring. The station describes itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music", and through its BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme, New Generation Artists scheme promotes young musicians of all nationalities. The station broadcasts the The Proms, BBC Proms concerts, live and in full, each summer in addition to performances by the BBC Orchestras and Singers. There are regular productions of both classic plays and newly commissioned drama. Radio 3 won the Sony Radio Academy UK Station of the Year Gold Award for 2009 and was nominated again in 2011. According to RAJAR, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 1.7 million with a listening share of 1.3% as of September 2022. History Radio 3 is the ...
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Union Chapel, Islington
Union Chapel is a working church, live entertainment venue and charity drop-in centre for the homeless in Islington, London, England. Built in the late 19th century in the Gothic revival style, the church is Grade I-listed. It is at the north end of Upper Street, near Highbury Fields. As a venue Union Chapel hosts live music, film, spoken word and comedy events. There are around 250 events per year. It was voted London's Best Live Music Venue by readers of '' Time Out'' magazine in 2002, 2012 and again in 2014. It has a reputation for great acoustics, thanks to its design. Margins Homelessness Project The Margins Project, based in the Union Chapel, provides a range of support services to people facing homelessness, crisis and isolation. It operates Monday & Wednesday drop-in that provides advice around accessing benefits, support showers and laundry facilities. There is also a Supported Employment Programme which provides opportunity for people who have experienced homelessne ...
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Ernst Busch (actor)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Busch (22 January 1900 – 8 June 1980) was a German singer and actor. Biography Busch originated from a Kiel worker family. He started in life as a shipyard worker before he decided to make use of his acting and singing talent. Busch first rose to prominence as an interpreter of political songs, particularly those of Kurt Tucholsky, in the Berlin Kabarett scene of the 1920s. He starred in the original 1928 production of Bertolt Brecht's ''Threepenny Opera'', as well as the subsequent 1931 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. He also appeared in the movie ''Kuhle Wampe''. A lifelong communist, Busch fled Nazi Germany in 1933, accompanied by his wife, Eva Busch, and with the Gestapo on his heels, initially settling in the Netherlands. By 1938 they had divorced, without acrimony, as their lives diverged. Eva settled in Paris while Ernst initially made his home in the Soviet Union where he worked with Gustav von Wangenheim on the 1935 film "Kämpfer" (''"Fighte ...
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1930 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1930. Events *January 6 – An early literary character-licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, giving Stephen Slesinger U.S. and Canadian merchandising rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh works. *February – The Censorship of Publications Board begins to function in the Irish Free State. Among the first 13 books banned (announced in May) are ''Point Counter Point'' by Aldous Huxley, ''The Well of Loneliness'' by Radclyffe Hall and several on sex and marriage by Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes. *February 23 – Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' is banned in Thuringian schools by Education Minister Wilhelm Frick. *March 19 – Paul Robeson plays the title role of ''Othello'' at the Savoy Theatre, London, with Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona. *May 6 – The Collins Crime Club is launched as a crime fiction imprint by the U.K. firm William Collins. *May 10 – John ...
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