Brecht As Director

Much has been written about Brecht in this country, some—though not enough—of his theoretical writings have been translated, and most of his plays have been published in English. From all of this, people quite naturally get the idea that Brecht was primarily a poet and playwright. But, although this is true, in order to understand Brecht the playwright one ought to know Brecht as a man of practical theatre—as a director. Brecht's influence on the theatre of his time stems mainly from the productions he created at the Berliner Ensemble; Germany's theatre has changed totally since he did his exemplary work during the early and mid-fifties in East Berlin. The new movement in England— The Royal Court, Peter Brook and Peter Hall, Kenneth Tynan, to mention a few names only—would probably have been vastly different if the Berliner Ensemble had not presented his work in London in 1956, and again in the sixties, and Giorgio Strehler in Italy and Roger Planchon in France have been deeply influenced by what, and how, Brecht created in Berlin. Though Brecht had worked for the theatre nearly all his life, as a critic first, then as a playwright and director, it was not until 1949 that he found a permanent place for his experiments, a company, and later a building, which he could form into the ideal instrument for his ideas, a theatre which was a laboratory, a place for investigation, analysis, and construction of models.