Brecht Plays 8

The latest volume in Methuen's Collected Brecht includes two plays previously untranslated into English Volume 8 of Brecht's collected plays contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht's ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Holderlin's classic German translation of Sophocles' play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht's most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht's version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.

The latest volume in Methuen's Collected Brecht includes two plays previously untranslated into English Volume 8 of Brecht's collected plays contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht's ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Holderlin's classic German translation of Sophocles' play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht's most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht's version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.

Volume Four of Brecht's Collected Plays contains works from the 1930s.'Round Heads and Pointed Heads, based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is a powerful political allegory on Nazi racial policy and conditions in Germany. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich creates a montage of some thirty short scenes, showing ordinary life under the Nazis permeated by suspicion and anxiety. Senora Carrar's Rifles is based on J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, relocated by Brecht in the Spanish Civil War. The Trial of Lucullus, a radio play, is a starkly poetic pacifist text, in which the Roman general is tried by the Underworld for his military triumphs. Also included are two one-act plays, Dansen and How Much Is Your Iron? The volume includes an introduction and notes by Tom Kuhn and John Willett as well as variants and additional relevant texts by Brecht.

Volume Four of Brecht's Collected Plays contains works from the 1930s.??Round Heads and Pointed Heads, based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is a powerful political allegory on Nazi racial policy and conditions in Germany. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich creates a montage of some thirty short scenes, showing ordinary life under the Nazis permeated by suspicion and anxiety. Senora Carrar's Rifles is based on J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, relocated by Brecht in the Spanish Civil War. The Trial of Lucullus, a radio play, is a starkly poetic pacifist text, in which the Roman general is tried by the Underworld for his military triumphs. Also included are two one-act plays, Dansen and How Much Is Your Iron? The volume includes an introduction and notes by Tom Kuhn and John Willett as well as variants and additional relevant texts by Brecht.

This updated Companion offers students crucial guidance on virtually every aspect of the work of this complex and controversial writer. It brings together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners, and this edition introduces more voices and themes. The opening essays place Brecht's creative work in its historical and biographical context and are followed by chapters on single texts, from The Threepenny Opera to The Caucasian Chalk Circle, on some early plays and on the Lehrstücke. Other essays analyse Brecht's directing, his poetry, his interest in music and his work with actors. This revised edition also contains additional essays on his early experience of cabaret, his significance in the development of film theory and his unique approach to dramaturgy. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this provocative overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke.

Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great 20th-century innovators in theatre - the literary-theatrical equivalent of a Picasso or Stravinsky - and Germany's greatest poet of the last century, but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist; fundamentally in his plays he was a storyteller. This volume collects the complete short stories written by Brecht, including the prize-winning 'The Monster', and the fragmentary memoir ghost-written by Brecht, 'Life Story of the boxer Samson-Körner'. Brecht scholar Marc Silberman provides an introduction and editorial notes. Fans of Brecht will find in the 37 stories assembled here the same directness, lack of affectation, and wry humour that characterise his plays. Every lover of short stories will discover an unexpected trove of pleasure in this "mine for short-story addicts" (Observer).