h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I studied The Caucasian Chalk Circle once, and then performed in it and thoroughly enoyed myself. I noticed it's not mentioned in the entry and I was just wondering how many plays Brecht officially wrote. Also what the author's favourite Brecht play is.

Kat

There were much too many plays and poems he wrote to put them in the article, I only wrote the ones I did to give the reader the feeling of how Brecht was starting to get noted etc.

I have only read excerpts from his plays, mostly Caucasian Chalk Circle and I have to say I couldn't stand it. It was so drab, dull and boring and appeared so grey to me. I don't actually like Brecht's writing that much, it is more his influence on the theatre which interests me and which is why I respect him. Thanks for taking note of my entry though There is a link to another article previous written on Brecht but it is not very extensive, that has, however, a larger list of his plays and poems.

If you are a dramatist you might be interested in reading about Stanislavski, A5133151, Artaud, A4870299, and Grotowski, A4882980, all of whom have had significant influence on the theatre. Artaud is certainly an interesting fellow, died clutching his shoe.

I was in the Caucasian Chalk Circle at school and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I think I also studied it for German A level as a set book, along with Thomas Mann (Death in Venice) and Friedrich Dürrenmatt (The Physicists). Mind you, at the end of it, I agreed that Grusha should get the child, but that the land should go to the people who'd traditionally lived in it, so obviously his didactic somewhat failed with me!

I studied Brecht for A level german as well. We did the good woman of Szechuan. I quite enjoyed it. Your article brought back memories, especially all the stuff about epic theatre. We watched a production of the Chalk circle that was put on at our school and we went to london to watch an english production of the Threepenny opera. I have to say I enjoyed the second one better but that's probably because it was done professionally and in english! Another good effect that Brecht used that wasn't mentioned was setting his plays in random places, like having a play about a capitalist country but set in china which is obviously communist. That's the kind of thing we had to talk about in german.

Ooh, was it the National Theatre version from a couple of years ago, with all the actors playing instruments and the newish translation by Jeremy Sams? That was a very good production of the Threepenny Opera indeed! I saw the first performance of the tour that preceded its London run.

Um no I don't think so. I think we went to see it in the Hammersmith Apollo. I don't remember anything about instruments but there were songs obviously. I think it was a different performance. It was good though.

I suspect Cauc Chalk is much better if performed rather than read. I played various small characters plus Azdak, whom I had great fun with. Fab character to stalk around waving your arms around for. It would certainly be interesting to see professionally.

Are Brecht's plays falling into silence now though? I very rarely hear about performances of them and people don't seem to know them much at all.

I think you're right, people don't tend to know much about them. I'd never heard of the guy before I started studying him in german and I've hardly heard anything about him since then until reading this entry today!

Mother Courage gets wheeled out every so often, but other than Threepenny Opera, most Brecht things are seen very infrequently these days.