Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world.
With
Laura Bradley Professor of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh
David Barnett Professor of Theatre at the University of York
And
Tom Kuhn Professor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015)
Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship’ (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938’ read by Tom Kuhn in this programme
Stephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009)
Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:07.4 | and this is one of more than a thousand episodes |
| 0:10.0 | you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this |
| 0:14.6 | edition you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:20.3 | Hello Bertold Brecht, 1898 to 1956, was one of the greatest European playwrights of the 20th century. |
| 0:28.0 | His aim was to make the familiar strange. |
| 0:32.0 | With plays such as Mother Courage and the Caucasian chalk circle he wanted |
| 0:36.0 | his audiences not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the |
| 0:40.8 | contradictions in life and act on what they learned and he developed his approach in |
| 0:45.0 | turbulent times from Vaimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis |
| 0:48.7 | to Ex-isylen Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he since inspired dramatists around the world. |
| 0:56.1 | We've been to discuss Bertel Brecht Alora Bradley, Professor of German and Theatre at the |
| 1:00.3 | University of Edinburgh, David Barnard, Professor of Theatre at the University of York, and |
| 1:04.9 | Tom Kuhn, Professor of 20th century German Literature and Emeritus Fellow of St Hughes College, University of |
| 1:10.6 | Oxford. |
| 1:11.6 | Tom Kuhn. Brecht was born in Augsburg in Bavaria. |
| 1:15.0 | Can you tell us something about his early life? |
| 1:17.0 | Yes, of course, he was born, as you just said in 1898. |
| 1:20.0 | It's quite worth holding on to that because he's two years older than the century always as we go on then through the 20th century. |
| 1:28.0 | So his childhood fell before the First World War. |
| 1:31.0 | And Augsburg then was the Augsburg as will never forgive me, but quite a sleepy conservative sort of place. |
... |
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