Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...EVER said staging a play by Bertolt Brecht would be anything but demanding. Perhaps it's the lure of this challenge that's led to so many Brechtian productions at Harvard lately. Some of these have been successful like Peter Sellars' elegant and effective "das Kleine Mahagonny." Director Ted Osius leads his players in a valiant effort to stage Mother Courage. Brecht's anti-war masterpiece Clearly, he works with a devoted cast. However, staging a play by Brecht is a bit like walking a tightrope--it requires that a cast be teetering at all times, almost off-balance...
Part of the difficulty results from Brecht's unusual type of theater. Brecht rejected the classical tradition and what he called "dramatic" an "Wagnerian" theater, like religion, overwhelmed audiences drugged them with emotions, and made them passive spectators in term of the theater and in terms of history...
...Brecht's theory, which he called "Epic" theater, involves incorporating the audience into the production by leaving them somewhat detached and thus more capable of learning a lesson from the play. The Brechtian audience ideally should leave the theater saying not, "Wow, that was a moving play," but rather. "I have never thought about them that was before" Brecht armed to achieve this effect by alternating his audience through stage techniques like pantomime, signboards which reveal the plot prematurely and thus kill the suspense and often through peculiar Kurt Wcill songs steamy or jazzy cabaret numbers about the most serious...
Mother Courage is a demanding play to yet another degree. For this is the play that got away from Brecht the play that unlike The Threepennv Opera Or The Good-Women of Setzuan, transcended Brecht's theories of theater and look on a life of its own. The final scene in which Mother Courage's mute daughter climbs to a rooftop and beats a drum to warn a nearly town of the approaching enemy can be one of the most moving scenes in post-modern drama. Because of its emotional force it almost disproves its creator's theories In that...
Fouled out--Brown, Meikle. Total fouls--Columbia 31, Harvard 23. Rebounds--Columbia 27 (Brecht 8), Harvard 30 (Trout 10). Assists--Columbia 11 (Brown 3). Harvard 9 (Plutnicki...