What do these songs by The Doors, Louis Armstrong, Tom Waits
and Nina Simone have in common?
The Answer is that they were all written by one playwright and one composer:
To be specific, the first song comes from their Anti-Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany.
And the second, third, and fourth song come from The Threepenny Opera.
Kurt Weill has his own interesting tale, but this article will focus mainly on Brecht, and his approach to art.
Bertolt Brecht was very inventive and a major iconoclast in the field of theatre. He is one of my favorite directors/writers/dramaturges because of what he did with the art form.
Brecht was born in 1898, so he grew up right just as the 20th century was beginning. He discovered theatre in college while taking a medicine course in an attempt to avoid being drafted into World War 1.
Brecht was eventually drafted, but made it back relatively quickly.
In the early 1920s, Brecht got a job helping out at a German Kabarett, which is a lot like a Cabaret, except instead of being a tavern where sketches, live music, dance, burlesque shows, and other types of entertainment are performed, a German Kabarett features only satirical sketches, with a social bent. Many of Brecht's heroes were veterans of Kabarett, including Frank Wedekind — an influential German playwright who was a master of satire and symbolism, attacked contemporary views towards sexuality, and is considered a precursor of the German Expressionist movement— and Karl Valentin —who is often called the Charlie Chaplin of Germany.
While working at the Kabarett, Brecht discovered that he had a penchant for creating re-writes, adaptations, and rebuttals to famous works. He wanted to take plays that were already well-known, such as Christopher Marlowe's Richard II, and inject them with new social, political meanings. He was refunctioning the works.
In the mid-1920s, Brecht saw The Gold Rush, and admired Chaplin for his exaggerated but still very real style of acting. He also saw Battleship Potemkin and admired Eisenstein for his montage style of storytelling. Around this time Brecht read Karl Marx for the first time, and saw his own beliefs mirrored in Communism.
By the end of the 1920s Brecht had a very clear understanding of what he valued:
Reason, Didacticism, Satire,
Re-contextualization, Juxtaposition, Parody
Exaggerated acting, Fragmented storytelling,
Strong social/political statements
and re-purposing things in order to make change.
Brecht looked around at the theatre scene at the time and he did not see his values reflected anywhere in the current "form" of theatre. So he decided to invent his own NEW form of theatre.
Many artists who set out to revolutionize their chosen medium do it because they wish to push the envelope in terms of EITHER content or form. They want to say something new in a classical way or say something classic in a cutting-edge way. The Content vs. Form debate is as old as grass and artists who invent new systems and rules as Brecht did are usually seen as "formalists" - more concerned with how you say it than what you say. But Brecht was not either one of those people. Brecht refused to pick a favorite in the battle between “form” and “content.” Instead he envisioned a three-way choice between:
Material (content),
Technique (form)
and a third option,
Function — the effect that the work will have in the real world.
Brecht chose to make the first two subservient to the third always. In his opinion, Story and Form are nice, but what really matters is getting a reaction out of the people sitting in the chairs. And theater as-it-was was making them passive and escapist when they should have been active and concerned.
With Epic Theatre, Brecht sought to “refunction” the art form. He wanted Theater to no longer be just for entertainment. Instead, he would use theatre as a tool, and a dialectic forum that people would consciously use to examine and change society.
Brecht's new form of theatre set out to do that. He called it, “Epic Theatre.”
Brecht wrote characteristics of the Epic Theatre style down in a little manifesto which was called The Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre. (Click here for a short excerpt)
Bertolt Brecht was very inventive and a major iconoclast in the field of theatre. He is one of my favorite directors/writers/dramaturges because of what he did with the art form.
Brecht was born in 1898, so he grew up right just as the 20th century was beginning. He discovered theatre in college while taking a medicine course in an attempt to avoid being drafted into World War 1.
Brecht was eventually drafted, but made it back relatively quickly.
In the early 1920s, Brecht got a job helping out at a German Kabarett, which is a lot like a Cabaret, except instead of being a tavern where sketches, live music, dance, burlesque shows, and other types of entertainment are performed, a German Kabarett features only satirical sketches, with a social bent. Many of Brecht's heroes were veterans of Kabarett, including Frank Wedekind — an influential German playwright who was a master of satire and symbolism, attacked contemporary views towards sexuality, and is considered a precursor of the German Expressionist movement— and Karl Valentin —who is often called the Charlie Chaplin of Germany.
While working at the Kabarett, Brecht discovered that he had a penchant for creating re-writes, adaptations, and rebuttals to famous works. He wanted to take plays that were already well-known, such as Christopher Marlowe's Richard II, and inject them with new social, political meanings. He was refunctioning the works.
In the mid-1920s, Brecht saw The Gold Rush, and admired Chaplin for his exaggerated but still very real style of acting. He also saw Battleship Potemkin and admired Eisenstein for his montage style of storytelling. Around this time Brecht read Karl Marx for the first time, and saw his own beliefs mirrored in Communism.
By the end of the 1920s Brecht had a very clear understanding of what he valued:
Reason, Didacticism, Satire,
Re-contextualization, Juxtaposition, Parody
Exaggerated acting, Fragmented storytelling,
Strong social/political statements
and re-purposing things in order to make change.
Brecht looked around at the theatre scene at the time and he did not see his values reflected anywhere in the current "form" of theatre. So he decided to invent his own NEW form of theatre.
Many artists who set out to revolutionize their chosen medium do it because they wish to push the envelope in terms of EITHER content or form. They want to say something new in a classical way or say something classic in a cutting-edge way. The Content vs. Form debate is as old as grass and artists who invent new systems and rules as Brecht did are usually seen as "formalists" - more concerned with how you say it than what you say. But Brecht was not either one of those people. Brecht refused to pick a favorite in the battle between “form” and “content.” Instead he envisioned a three-way choice between:
Material (content),
Technique (form)
and a third option,
Function — the effect that the work will have in the real world.
Brecht chose to make the first two subservient to the third always. In his opinion, Story and Form are nice, but what really matters is getting a reaction out of the people sitting in the chairs. And theater as-it-was was making them passive and escapist when they should have been active and concerned.
With Epic Theatre, Brecht sought to “refunction” the art form. He wanted Theater to no longer be just for entertainment. Instead, he would use theatre as a tool, and a dialectic forum that people would consciously use to examine and change society.
Brecht's new form of theatre set out to do that. He called it, “Epic Theatre.”
Brecht wrote characteristics of the Epic Theatre style down in a little manifesto which was called The Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre. (Click here for a short excerpt)
The over-arching theme of Epic Theatre is that
IT TAKES THE AUDIENCE OUT OF THE ILLUSION
— Most 20th-century dramaturges (much like modern filmmakers) sought to wrap their audience up in an entertaining illusion that was realistic, believable, and made the audience forget they were watching a play. Brecht wanted to make it very, very obvious to the audience that they were watching a play; He wanted to shake them out of the story, and thus, put their minds back into the real world. He called this the “Verfremdungseffekt” or the “strange-making” effect. The less the audience identifies with the illusion, the more they can think critically, analytically, and objectively about the problems they were watching. To accomplish this break with the audience, practitioners use the following techniques:
- Characters break the fourth wall and address the audience.
- Actors play multiple roles, wear masks, or do other things to draw attention to the fact that they are people pretending.
- Brecht's plays often grind to a halt so actors can break into song.
- Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill collaborated on some "Epic Operas." The "Epic" approach to opera, in which there is a dramatic scene played out on stage and THEN there is a song to break the continuity, is in direct contrast to the through-composed operas (such as those by Richard Wagner) that Brecht was competing against. Epic Operas are more akin to musical revues, variety shows, or modern musicals. But unlike modern musicals, the songs in a work of epic theatre aren’t be happy-go-lucky big musical numbers, either. Rather they'd be intense political or philosophical statements composed by Kurt Weill, and sung by the actors directly towards the audience, rather intimately.
- Brecht’s “epic opera” featured a rebuttal of what Richard Wagner called the Gesamtkunstwerk (“all-artworks-together”) approach to opera. Wagner wanted his operas to be multimedia experiences where Music, visual art, performing art, and literature were all blended together into one ultimate show. Brecht’s plays were similarly multimedia extravaganzas because they contained all the same art forms that Wagner’s operas did. HOWEVER, instead of letting the art forms mix together to form a new kind of experience (so that each art form would also water the others down) Brecht presented the music, the literature, and the other arts side-by-side. Together in one play, but still separate from each other. This way the music could comment on the literature and vice-versa. The elements of music, literature, acting, and visual art are juxtaposed, rather than blended. This adds to the montage effect that Brecht wanted, and avoids wrapping the audience up in one single experience. Brecht called his approach “the separation of artistic elements”
- Epic Theatre plays are often set in odd time periods or locations. The farther something is from a recognizable setting, the more abstract it becomes, and the more the audience can focus on the ideas contained in the narrative.
- The play runs like a montage of events.
- A work of Epic Theater is fragmented into noticeable chapters. Each chapter is introduced by one of the actors, and before the scene starts the actor gives a short summary of the events that are about to unfold. The idea behind this is that it gives the audience a change to reflect on what they just saw, as well as anticipate what happen next. By removing the element of surprise from the scene, Brecht forces his audience to be more critical.
- On occasion, a film might be segmented this way. Some Stanley Kubrick movies are divided into chapters with on-screen titles, as are some of the Coen Brothers films, and many silent movies. The montage style of Battleship Potemkin is the influence here.
- Each scene, and section within a scene, is supposed to be created as if it could play independently and stand on its own, like a musical hall turn. Though it would ultimately serve a larger arc.
- Characters narrate their own actions.
- Minimalist, symbolic, or otherwise "obviously fake" props would be used.
- Items on stage may be labeled randomly, and other strange, surreal things may be done with staging.
- Brecht’s plays featured a special acting style, called Gestus. The idea is that when getting into the character, the actor (rather than just getting into the character’s head with Freudian psychology and "what's my motivation?") comes up with an understanding of the role their character plays in society, and invents a body language that “makes clear their attitudes with overt, grand but simple gestures”
- This is to contrast the sort of under-stated realism of theater and drama that was popular in the day. A character performed with his or her “gestus” in mind is slightly exaggerated and focused specifically on doing something. A character’s gestus is not a stereotype but just a set of very clear character traits that are amped up so that the character becomes more archetypal and symbolic than subtle and “realistic”
- Think about the way that characters act in silent movies. Specifically think about Charlie Chaplin, whose acting in The Gold Rush probably planted the seeds of "Gestus"
- In addition to each character having a “Gestus,” each play has a “Fabel.” A Fabel is like a logline that states the moral of the story from a social and political point of view, rather than just a storytelling point of view.
Some of Brecht's most famous plays include:
The Threepenny Opera - The story of a victorian gangster and his antics and romances. It raises questions about society. It features such things as a man who makes a business out of giving beggars permits and costumes "to arouse pity." Also has a song about the power of sexual dependency, a song where an oppressed woman fantasizes about being a pirate, and a heavily-lampshaded tacked-on happy ending. It is based on "The Beggar's Opera," a satirical opera from England, written about 200 years prior. It was a collaboration between Brecht and Weill and it proved very very popular.
In 1932 it was made into a film, but it did not embody the spirit of Epic Theatre or the Fabel that Weill and Brecht intended, so they actually sued the filmmakers.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany - The story of a gang of robbers who decide to disconnect from the grid ("Going Galt," if you will) and form a new city made only for the pursuit of pleasure. Things start going to hell when they take capitalism to far and begin to put a price on everything, including love and life. A strong parody of the operatic style, it even ends with a twisted Deus-ex-Machina where God Himself comes down to the city to set things straight, and the townsfolk tell him to get lost and he leaves in disgust. Another collaboration with Kurt Weill.
Mother Courage and Her Children - Set during the 30-years-war in Germany and Poland. It tells the story of a woman who makes her living selling supplies to war-battered people on both sides during the height of the war. She slowly loses everything she has, including her 3 children, to the ravages of war. It is hailed as being one of the best anti-war plays of all time and was written as one of nine plays in critique of Nazism at the beginning of World War 2. And yet at the same time it is very funny. Kurt Weill was not involved, because he and Brecht parted ways in the 1930s, due to politics.
In 2011, a Chicago-based theater company called the Bricklayers (click for their website) went on tour with an all-mask production of Mother Courage which came with great success to Minneapolis. In this video, lead actor Barbra Berlovitz discusses the play:
