Biography bertolt brecht

Biography

by Pericles Lewis

The most influential playwright of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht was a conduit for the impact of German expressionism on later modern skådespel. Brecht’s first play, Baal, written in 1918 but not produced until 1923, tells the story of a boorish and primitive poet who, from being a kultur sensation, degenerates into a rapist and murderer. The policeman who tries to arrest Baal summarizes his career as follows: “Started out as a cabaret performer and poet. Then merry-go-round owner, woodcutter, millionairess’s lover, jailbird and pimp.” Baal fryst vatten at the same time a natural outgrowth and a parodi of Strindberg’s dream plays and the expressionist Stationendrama (See August Strindberg for a brief discussion of these plays). The play prefigures Brecht’s later fascination with utstötta and social hypocrisy.

In 1924, Brecht moved to Berlin, and soon thereafter began working with the communist director Erwin Piscator, who practiced a form of epic thea

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Bertolt Brecht Biography

Bertolt Brecht was born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany, to middle-class parents. As a young man, he studied medicine and served as an orderly in an army hospital, successfully avoiding active duty in World War I. When studying medicine at Munich University, Brecht was introduced to drama for the first time.

Brecht soon began writing theatre reviews in newspapers until he completed his first play, Baal, at the age of just twenty. His second play, Drums in the Night, was performed in Munich in 1922. Brecht moved to Berlin in 1924 to further his career as a dramatist.

Alongside writing theatre reviews and plays, Brecht wrote many poems and theories on numerous aspects of theatre performance. He soon became an accomplished director and was influenced by fellow German theatre director Erwin Piscator. The two men, both Marxists, would become the foremost practitioners of epic theatre, a form of theatre that advocate

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Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, director, and poet in the Weimar Republic period (1918-1933), where he achieved notoriety through his work in the theater, producing plays that often had a Marxist perspective. He worked primarily in a genre of theater called "epic theater," known for its eschewing of psychological realism in favor of more didactic narrative, in which scenes are interrupted by analysis, argument, or documentation.

Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria in 1898 to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father. His mother was devout and taught Brecht about the Bible, a lasting influence on his work. When Brecht was in high school, World War I broke out. While Brecht was initially in favor of the war, he soon criticized it, which led to his near expulsion from school. In college, he studied theater with Arthur Kutscher, who introduced Brecht to the writer Frank Wedekind, author of the "Lulu" cycle