Brecht

Husserl's phenomenology of appearances and the role of variations in the constitution of reality inspire Arendt's examinations of 'story' in The Human Condition. According to her, life is produced as a 'story'. Yet, a life story presents two significant difficulties: first, the unpredictability of events prevents individuals to be the author of their own stories, and second, due to the lack of sufficient distance to one's own story, only others can see and tell someone's story. Both claims give rise to difficulties in writing an autobiography. If narration is only possible when the narrators have sufficient distance to the narrated life, is it convincing that what they see and tell is the truth of the story? This article argues that if distance is a precondition of seeing and narrating, then variations of appearances and the reality that they constitute through different perspectives become a part of seeing and narrating.

Da C. Vicentini, La teoria del teatro politico (Firenze, Sansoni, pp. 83-124)

Sommario: 1 La formula del teatro politico. 2 Teatro e trasformazione storica. 3 Epoca storica e modello teatrale. 4 Unicità e molteplicità del modello. 5 Connotazioni delle tecniche teatrali. 6 Liquidazione e ricupero dell'estetica.  7 Carattere politico del teatro. 8 Connotazioni politiche delle tecniche teatrali. 9 Brecht e la formula del teatro politico

Introducción, traducción y edición bilingüe de los poemas de Bertolt Brecht musicalizados por Paul Dessau para la  comedia Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1940-41), estrenada en junio de 1948 en la Schaupielhaus de Zurich. La versión castellana, realizada a partir de la partitura de Brecht y Dessau, comprende:  "La canción de Puntila  (1-8)", "Himno", "La canción de los limones" y  "Balada del guardabosques y la condesa"

20. yüzyıl Batı tiyatrosundaki alternatif arayışların en önemlilerinden biri Brecht'in epik tiyatro kuramıdır. Brecht, gerçekçi-doğalcı akıma karşı çıkarak görünen gerçeğin değil, onun altında yatan nedenlerin anlatımına önem veren bir tiyatro anlayışı oluşturmayı amaçlamış; bu sebeple yüzünü Doğu tiyatrosuna dönmüştür. Doğu tiyatrosu anlayışından ve halk tiyatrosundan beslenerek yazınsal alan dahil olmak üzere oyunculuk tekniği ve sahne estetiğinde değişiklikler yaparak, düşünsel eleştirelliği amaçladığı epik tiyatro kuramını oluşturmuştur. Kökleri tarih öncesi devirlere dayanan Doğu tiyatrosu gölge oyunu, Osmanlı'da geniş bir coğrafyanın kültürel birikimi ve toplum yapısıyla yoğrularak kendi biçimini oluşturmuş; Karagöz adını almıştır. Geleneksel halk tiyatrosu Karagöz; göstermeci-açık biçimi, episodik yapısı, tip boyutundaki kişileri, yabancılaştırma estetiği, müzik kullanımı ile Brecht'in epik tiyatro kuramı ile benzeşmektedir. Bir İstanbul mahallesi görünümünde topluma ayna tutan Karagöz oyununda müzik, epik tiyatrodaki müzikle benzer bir işlevde kullanılmakta; böylece Geleneksel halk tiyatrosu türleri arasından ayrılmaktadır. Çalışmanın ilk bölümünde epik tiyatro ve epik tiyatroyu meydana getiren estetik öğeler üzerinde durulmuş, epik tiyatroda müzik gestus kavramıyla birlikte anlatılmıştır. İkinci bölümde Karagöz oyununun ve Brecht'in epik tiyatro kuramıyla benzeşen özellikleri, epik tiyatronun estetik öğelerinden oluşan başlıklar altında irdelenmiştir. Son bölümde ise Karagöz oyununda müziğin işlevi Brecht'in epik tiyatro kuramında müziğin kullanımı bağlamında örneklerle incelenmiştir.

Draft of a paper I'm hoping to edit further and publish.

The idea that things 'might have been otherwise', that even the past is infused with contingency, is vital to Brecht's project, as is a conception of history as an act of self-making by human beings. Specific historical, or indeed fictional, events are then presented and analysed as 'case studies' in the contingency of human choice and actions. Brecht was one of a handful of significant European influences on the development of Williams's cultural materialist perspective. This essay takes an in-depth look at Williams's responses to Brecht's drama, in particular the major plays of the period 1937-1945. I demonstrate that it is the anti-mechanical, anti-teleological nature of the Brechtian project which primarily attracts Williams to this unique dramatic corpus, but also that Williams ultimately views Brecht as merely opening a door. It is the more difficult task of walking through it that faces the post-Brechtian radical dramatist. As of the late 1960s, Williams regards Brecht as without parallel among modern dramatists. He is not only a formally original artist, but a pioneer of a new and progressive manifestation of what Williams called a structure of feeling, that historically specific complex of perceptual, affective and creative responses to social life that functioned as the central epistemological category of Williams's early cultural materialism. A literature of the totality, as Williams's analysis of the novel in The Long Revolution3 broached and later writings developed4, would be a robust realism, conceiving the individual and society dialectically. For Williams, Brecht does not achieve this; nevertheless, via the successful application of an original theoretical apparatus and dramatic conventions, Brecht's best plays achieve a prodigious level of social critique, opening out new horizons for a politically committed drama.

Part 1 is the translation by D. Suvin of a putative poem by Brecht Das Manifest (The Manifesto) pieced together from his various versions from 1944 on.

Part 2 is a comment article that discusses Brecht’s intention in 1944-45 to versify The Communist Manifesto in Lucretian hexameters in order to to renew its propagandistic efficacy, i.e. with the ambition to be to Marx what Lucretius was to Epicure. This assumed, that the How and the What cannot in a work of poetry (Marx’s prose or Brecht’s verse) be truly separated. The relationship of poetry to doctrine or didacticism is probed on this example, the horizon of which is that of verse narration as cognition. Further, the relation of poetry to history is adumbrated: both to the history of poetry and to the insights gained on the Left since 1848. Primarily, the updating factors in a theory of economic crises and some lessons of Leninism, with the overriding importance of destructive global wars added as Brecht’s own innovation.  Brecht’s unfinished but substantive and powerful poem remains a cognitive reshaping by “a poet in the style of Marx”.

First published as "Bertolt Brecht: The Manifesto" [transl.] and "On Brecht's The Manifesto: Comments for Readers in English." Socialism and Democracy 16.1 (2002): 1-31, http://sdonline.org/31/the-manifesto/ and http://sdonline.org/31/on-brechts-the-manifesto-comments-for-readers-in-english1/ (2nd item in different German version as “Brechts Gedichtfassung des Kommunistischen Manifests,” transl. S. Regler, Das Argument no. 282 (2009): 607-15, www.linksnet.de/files/pdf/DA282_suvin.pdf)

For a land as culturally diverse as India with a long and rich tradition of dramatic performances accompanying varied regional specificities or the folk tradition has always been undeniably the primary indispensable source of adding Indian essence to theatre. Focusing primarily on the 1970s, one may observe that the major Indian playwrights broke the barriers of regional language consciously and produced several noteworthy plays, thereby rendering their works experimental, and centered on incorporating the elements of folk theatre into the popular Indian theatre fold. Prominent playwrights like Girish Karnad and Badal Sircar deploying the theatrical device of Yakshagana creatively, and experimenting with folk elements to incorporate them into the proscenium theatre’ respectively, bear testimony to the emergence of a radical shift in Indian theatre, one that did not shy away from adapting itself to the modernist/avant garde forms brought into the world of modern theatre. Much like his contemporaries, Vijay Tendulkar experimented with various forms of folk theatre in Ghashiram Kotwal (1972) which has been successful as a significant and unique play in balancing the traditional and modern elements to carve a niche for itself in the history of Indian theatre. It is pertinent to revisit Tendulkar’s eminent work and discern its critical value in the world of contemporary Indian theatre along with an acknowledgement of the playwright’s adept use of a traditional idiom in contemporary theatre. A scholar should therefore attempt to comprehend how Tendulkar adopted the various theatre folk devices and forms as well as employed them effectively to represent power politics and the effects of oppression through a presentation of subliminal violence on stage that has the readers of the play grapple with very contemporary modernist debates.

Pretende-se investigar a representação no filme Post mortem (2010), do diretor chileno
Pablo Larraín – segundo de uma trilogia cuja temática gira em torno da ditadura de Pinochet, composta
ainda por Tony Manero (2008) e No (2012). Valendo-se dos conceitos de “modo de narração
paramétrico” e de “atuação desdramatizada” como categorias de análise, busca-se apontar uma estratégia
de distanciamento como forma de produção de novos sentidos pelo filme.

In Bakhtin's opinion, "the relation to meaning is always dialogic. Even understanding itself is dialogic." Particularly, the art of acting is such a dialogic relationship that fuses character and interpreter (performer) in the same unity of the presence before the audience. In other words, acting is a "dialectic" relationship, a dialogue on a higher level (a dialogue of personalities), as Bakhtin said. Dialogic acting manifests itself between two extreme aspects (identification and "distanciation") and as a merging of them. Putting the concrete manifestation of acting and staging into a formal model, we can affirm that the function of (theatrical) representation has a multitude of fuzzy values, situated between a theoretically absolute embodiment and a theoretically complete "distanciation." For instance, the former tends to be manifested in the "mimetic" rites (Durkheim) and in Stanislavski’s poetics. The latter is known as Brecht Verfremdungseffekt, or "alienantion effect," also to be found in traditional drama of the Extreme Orient, which inspired Brecht. (Today in the United States, Stanislavsks’s theories are a very important source of study for many actors. In contrast to Stanislavski, Brecht theorizes Verfremdungseffekt, endowing it with ideological connotations.) In mimetic rites, it is compulsory for the interpreter to identify itself with the archetypal character; this is a primary condition for the social, magical or religious efficiency of the ritualistic act(ing). More than (theatrical) performance, ritualistic act(ing) is a performative (re)presentation, i.e., the very archetypal event, in its immediate unfolding: drômenon as "lived transcendence" (Gusdorf), and Gadamerian metamorphosis. Alternatively, for both identification and distanciation as manners of acting, the concept of dialogism (Bakhtin) highlights one and the same discursive mechanism. The advantage is that the analysis of such a heterogeneous corpu—from modern theatre poetics to the ancient ritualistic performance—may operate in a relatively homogeneous way, with the same descriptive categories, borrowed from dialogic theory, and from theory of speech and fictional acts. Situated on the same axis of interpretation/ (re)presentation, "identification" and "distanciation" are fuzzy categories, with differences between them difficult to establish. This evokes Diderot's famous paradox, as reformulated by Lee Strasberg: "to move the audience, the actor must himself remain un moved.”
Keywords: (Theatrical) Performance, Identification, Distanciation, Artaud, Brecht, Gadamer, Stanislavski

This essay will explore two approaches to acting, namely Bertolt Brecht’s Epic performance and the American Method, and evaluate the ways in which they have been informed by 'implicit theories of the self'. This exploration will make use of an array of theoretical concepts, belonging to Auslander, Appadurai, Derrida, Roach and Zarrilli, among others, to discern what is truly at stake (be it on a theoretical or a practical level) when approaches to acting are intricately and inextricably tied to a particular theory or topography of the self.

On 10 December 2015, under the stage direction of Brian Kulick, New York's Classic Stage Company (CSC) opened its previews of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. 2 Resetting the 'chronicle' of the Thirty Years' War as the ongoing warfare in the Congo, the production relied on an African American cast, starring the actress Tonya Pinkins as the eponymous (anti)heroine. 3 As the rehearsals proceeded, though, Pinkins realized that, like the production's take on the Congolese war, the portrayals of the "African continent" and of "Blackness itself" were ethically compromised, represented less as "specific and infinitely diverse" than as "singularly nonspecific" "cultural misappropriation[s]." 4 In her words, when her "perspective as a Black woman was dismissed in favor of portraying the Black woman through the filter of the white gaze," it became unbearable to work in and for the show. 5 Performing as contracted, she exited the CSC production on 3 January 2016 and was subsequently replaced by another African American actress, Kecia Lewis. Pinkins used the reasons for her exit as a point of departure to motivate a larger public debate. In an alliance with the 2015 #BlackGirlsMatter and #BlackLivesMatter movements, the actress publicly challenged the institutional and authorial structures of power and their role in sustaining the representational materiality of the theatrical mise-en-scène. Initially publishing an open letter in Playbill giving her artistic differences with Kulick as a cause for her leaving, she animated what I call an affirmative dramaturgy, a mode of discursive reflection on theatrical work, here coordinating the registers of a materialist, Black feminist critique of white, masculine theater practices unresponsive to historically, socially and aesthetically conditioned racial and gendered professional injustices in the United States. 6 By affirmative dramaturgy, I have in mind a practice that jibes with Rosi Braidotti's "affirmative politics," combining "critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects," 7 particularly projects that resist political,

An ambitious article which posits theses aimed at defining the post-Brechtian in performance through an exemplary production.

I'm not usually one to upload papers, but the version of the article that appears both in print and on Project Muse are slightly incorrect. Modern Drama published errata in the following number of the journal, but I doubt people read those. So, the corrected version is available here, and the most significant correction occurs in the first thesis on p. 337. Readers of the incorrect version will note that the first thesis is not actually a thesis there.

Txomin Badiola: alegoría en las malas formas (malformalismo)

Peio Aguirre

Con motivo de una invitación lanzada a Txomin Badiola para visionar su obra audiovisual "Malas formas (una historia que se cuenta con historias de otros)" (2002) en el contexto de la escuela de cine Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola, en San Sebastián, reelaboro aquí (pasadas unas semanas de la proyección) algunas ideas sin ánimo exhaustivo. El recuerdo de esta pieza me transporta a Arteleku, cuando fue presentada en una première en 2002 gracias a la participación de esta institución junto con al MACBA de Barcelona en su financiación. Aquella fue la única vez que pude visionarla entera y con atención, aunque pocos meses después fue incluida en el programa de cine que el propio Txomin concibió paralelamente a su retrospectiva Malas formas en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao.

This overview of DS’s work on Brecht (further BB) was written as Introduction to a collection of my essays translated into Slovene and published in Ljubljana 2016 as Brecht’s Creativity and the Horizon of Communism. Section 1 introduces my stance on BB; section 2, the SFR Yugoslavia milieu for introducing Brecht there in the 1950s and up to the late 60s, which was on the one hand open to all kinds of neo-Marxism but on the other hand marked by absolute predominance of individualist psychology in theatre, with indifference to or hatred of BB.
Section 3 speaks to how I met BB’s work: through European student theatre, in which I was actively engaged, and where BB was (e.g. in West Germany and France) well known. To my mind, his horizon was identical to the furthest plebeian horizons of the Yugoslav revolution – though not of its dominant inherited forms. Section 4 discusses which essays by DS are inside and outside this book: a couple of longer ones were left out because of space constraints. Section 5 ends with what can Brecht tell the readers for their future, particularly about plebeian and emancipatory communism.

Este artigo empreende uma análise sobre o texto Pequeno organon para o teatro, de Bertolt Brecht, destacando a retomada intertextual que efetua do Organon, de Aristóteles, e o Novum organon, de Bacon. É enfatizada a estrutura dialética do escrito e as considerações que faz sobre a cultura clássica alemã, especialmente a noção de diversão, prazer e jogo no pré-romantismo alemão. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Brecht; antiaristotelismo; distanciamento.

Este artigo busca explorar o conceito de Gaslighting - o fenômeno de manipular a percepção que determinada pesoa tem da realidade - tal qual trabalhado no filme Anticristo (2009), de Lars von Trier. A partir de um viés que conjugue forma e conteúdo - implícitos e explícitos - procuramos observar como o foco narrativo da obra e a armadilha ideológica aí estabelecida fazem com que o conceito de Gaslighting ajude-nos no desvelamento de estereótipos e violências de gênero tidos como naturais e imutáveis.

For 15 years, Bertolt Brecht lived in exile. During that time, Brecht kept a working journal (Arbeitsjournal) and an atlas of images, War Primer, where he created montages of images and text. The war photographs clipped from magazines and  papers and his own epigrammatic commentaries, allowed him to create a stylistic and political response to the emergency of the dark times he lived on.

Resumo: “O círculo de giz caucasiano”, peça do dramaturgo alemão Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), é aqui analisada sob a ótica do conflito entre ética e política no que diz respeito à justiça. Trabalha-se a ambiguidade conceitual e objetiva da justiça a partir da antinomia grega fundamental entre Têmis e Díke, que se desdobra – sem se reduzir – nas oposições: legal-igual, formal-material, humano-divino, etc. Para resolver a aporia da justiça injusta, não-equidade, recorre-se ao conceito de Ethos como realidade geradora, integradora e avaliadora de todo o agir humano, numa perspectiva abstrata, e à visão dialética da histórica, de cunho marxista, como processo onde se dá a conquista e a efetividade do justo. Por fim, discorre-se acerca do papel da hermenêutica em Azdak, personagem da obra, ambíguo e contraditório, que, por sua antítese ao direito positivo, possibilita a síntese histórica da transformação social. Assim, a hermenêutica em Brecht é uma via de luta, de concretização da conquista histórica do justo. Delineiam-se, assim, as bases de uma Teoria Brechtiana do Direito.
Palavras-chaves: Ética, Justiça, Mitologia Grega, Marx.

Some of Berthold Brecht theatre plays show aspects that could be related to some concepts proposed by Carl Marx. One play of that is "A Man is a Man" in which the story tells the dilemmas and identity conflicts that a person could face when do not have a critic viewpoint of oneself in society and the importance of each citizen for its development and functions. This article discusses this play proposing some reflexions related to concepts made by Marx.

Berthold Brecht rompeu com muitos dos paradigmas até então firmados no teatro no início do século XX. Muitas das propostas dele se devem à forte influência sofrida pelas ideias de Carl Marx, de sua vontade em contrapor e criticar as ideologias políticas e econômicas de seu tempo. O objetivo desse artigo será o de apresentar a história do texto de teatro Um Homem é Um Homem, escrito por Bertold Brecht e relacioná-lo com algumas questões presentes nas propostas de Carl Marx. Nessa peça, o dramaturgo consegue trazer questionamentos sobre conceitos outros, de maneira a fomentar reflexões nos espectadores sobre o processo de trabalho, alienação, mais valia e a importância da conscientização social para não conduzir a população ao caos bélico. Com a leitura do texto desta peça de teatro, podemos perceber que o autor levava suas transgressões estilísticas para além da estética, propondo que o teatro seria um importante meio para se atingir à significação da conscientização dos papeis e funções sociais dos indivíduos em sociedade.

How do we make sense of a situation in which a film industry turns its own workings into one of its primary narrative ingredients and begins to represent itself obsessively? Is this simply a matter of modernist self-realization, now cast in a mythic frame that springs from commercial cinema’s penchant for the grandiose, the spectacular, and the hyperbolic? Or is something more at stake in a particular industry’s on-screen and off-screen self-projections at this conjuncture, in its mediatized articulation of the mythic and the reflexive, and in its willful blurring of the so-called “presentational” and “representational” modes1 in the service of metafiguration?

1960'lardan bu yana, Batı kapitalizminde zamanın ve mekanın sıkıştırılmasındaki yoğunluk, toplumsal alan kadar siyasal ve özel alanlarda da kendini gösteren aşırı parçalanmışlığın ve geçiciliğin tüm benzer nitelikleriyle birlikte postmodern durumu bir ölçüde özel kılan deneyimsel bağlamı göstermektedir. Zaman yoluyla mekanı yok etme ve üretim süresini kısaltmaya ilişkin sürekli bir arayışla, sermaye birikiminin baskılarından ortaya çıkan ve birbirini izleyen zaman-mekan sıkışmışlığını tarihsel bağlamına yerleştirdiğimizde en azından, postmodern durumu, tarihsel materyalist çözümlemeye ve yorumlamaya uygun bir konuma çekebiliriz. 1 Fassbinder sineması söz konusu olduğunda kısa süre içinde verilen onlarca eserden söz ederiz. Bu durum yukarıdaki metinden yola çıkarsak bizlere şu soruyu sordurur, Fassbinder de bu sıkışmışlık içinde, kısa zaman aralıklarında filmler üreterek sermaye birikiminin baskılarına boyun mu eğmiştir yoksa kapitalizmin kendi yöntemi ile bundan sıyrılmış mıdır? Fassbinder filmleri genel ölçekte baktığımızda zamanı unutmak bir kenarda dursun bizlere sürekli geçmişi ve bugünü hatırlatmakta, mekanı yok etmek değil aksine mekanı daha da betimleyerek sinemasının içine mekanın da anlamsallığını katarak, mekanı ve kapitalist sistem içindeki Almanya(Batı) insanının bu mekan içinde hapsoluşunu gözlerimizin önüne serer. Eğer ki Fassbinder'den bahsediyorsak bu iki olgu ve karakterler bütünsellik içinde geçmişe ve bugüne dair çıkarımlarda bulunmamıza olanak tanır. Bunları yaparken Fassbinder bazı eleştirilerin aksine kendine has üslubu ile perdeye yansıtır. Fassbinder sinemasını konuşurken atlamamız gereken bir diğer etkenler sinemasında dönüm noktası olan Douglas Sirk ve melodramın girdabına kapılmaktan kurtaran Brecht tarzından bahsetmemiz gereklidir. Fassbinderin tek uğraştığı şey sürekli kapitalizmi bombalamak da değildir, sistemin de etkisi ile toplumun içindeki korkuları, bireyselliği, sosyal durum ve farklılıkları, ayrımcılığı (özellikle dil, ırk, sosyal tabaka) da filmlerinde görürüz. Hatta Korku Ruhu Kemirir isminden dahi Alman toplumunun geçmişe bakmaya yönelik korkularını, şimdi içinde bulundukları vaziyeti görmeye olan korkularını tek kelime ile bizlere aktarmış dersek abartmış olmayız. Toplumdaki korkular ruhu kemirdikçe geriye sadece maddesel bedenden başka bir şey kalmaz, Fassbinder'in de aslında filmlerinde bunu çok net görebiliriz. Özellikle Maria Braun'un Evliliği'nde karakterin ekonomik olarak yükselişi aynı zamanda duygularını yitirişi çok açıktır. Filmlerindeki karakterler aslında toplumun birebir kendisidir, toplumu toplumdan, Postmodernizm ve Sinema, çvr, Sabri Büyükdüvenci/Semire Ruken Öztürk, s.95.

Durante la República de Weimar, en el marco del clima de agitación política y de crisis económica, algunas producciones culturales asumieron ciertos tintes satíricos. En este artículo se analiza cómo figuras ligadas a la vanguardia artística y al marxismo generaron una vía que permitió articular su postura crítica con nuevos parámetros modernos, rechazando las dinámicas del expresionismo y del misticismo de fin de siglo.

During the Weimar Republic, in the reigning climate of political agitation and economic crisis some cultural productions turned to a certain degree to satire. This paper addresses how
figures linked to the artistic avant-garde and Marxism opened a channel that allowed them to articulate their critical stance with new modern parameters, rejecting the dynamics of fin-desiècle
expressionism and mysticism.