John Willett Ordre des livres (chronologique)

Reviewing the work of the Berlin Ensemble, Harold Clurman has written: "The play which most strongly stamped on my mind a sense of Brecht's great stature as an artist of the theatre was Galileo ." And again: " Galileo is entirely contemporary in view of the events of our atomic age and in relation to certain problems of conscience." The adaptation is the famous one which was brought to completion by Brecht himself, working with Charles Laughton, who played Galileo in the first two American productions of the play (Hollywood and New York, 1947). Since then the play has become a classic of the world repertoire.

A visual history of this intriguing artistic period, featuring work by Dix, Grosz, Heartfield, Brecht, and more.

Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modern stage, "Mother Courage and Her Children" is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war. Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling -- "Mother Courage" -- an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes -- her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.

The period between the end of World War I and Hitler's ascension to power witnessed an unprecedented cultural explosion that embraced the whole of Europe but was, above all, centered in Germany. Germany housed architect Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus movement; playwrights Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator; artists Hans Richter, George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Hannah Hoch; composers Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schonberg, and Kurt Weill; and dozens of others. In Art and Politics in the Weimar Period , John Willett provides a brilliant explanation of the aesthetic and political currents which made Germany the focal point of a new, down-to-earth, socially committed cultural movement that drew a significant measure of inspiration from revolutionary Russia, left-wing social thought, American technology, and the devastating experience of war.

This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo . Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama. Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on Theater is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.