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| General | Bio | Epic Theatre | Influence | Influence 2 | Brockhaus Article | Works |
|
b. Feb. 10, 1898, Augsburg original name EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT, German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. |
Brecht was, first, a superior poet, with a command of many styles and moods. As a playwright he was an intensive worker, a restless piecer-together of ideas not always his own (The Threepenny Opera is based on John Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Edward II on Marlowe), a sardonic humorist, and a man of rare musical and visual awareness; but he was often bad at creating living characters or at giving his plays tension and shape. As a producer he liked lightness, clarity, and firmly knotted narrative sequence; a perfectionist, he forced the German theatre, against its nature, to underplay. As a theoretician he made principles out of his preferences--and even out of his faults.
Resources
The International Brecht Society
Bertolt Brecht Turns 100: A Web Exhibit
Brecht-Links from Fachinformationen Germanistik
CWRU: Bertolt Brecht
Brecht: Biography
Bertolt Brechts 100. Geburtstag
Wolf Biermann über Brecht
The Brecht Centennial Page
The Influence of Brecht
Brecht: Leben und Werke
Brechts "Leben des Galilei"
Bertolt Brecht Chronology
Bertolt Brecht: Biography and Works
Links zu Bertolt Brecht from Stuttgarter Zeitung
Source:
"Brecht, Bertolt" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/bol/
topic?eu=16549&sctn=1>