Acknowledgements One: Revealing the Radical Theorist Two: The Messingkauf as Performative Thinking Three: Brecht and Difference Four: Method Trumps Means Five: Brecht and the Actor Six: Brecht and the Director Seven: Brecht, Documentation and the Art of Copying Eight: Brecht’s Method in Action: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Closer by Patrick Marber Epilogue Endnotes Index
A re-examination of Bertolt Brecht in light of his theoretical writings and his work in the theatre.
David Barnett is Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Sussex, UK. He has published books on German theatre (studies on Heiner Müller and Rainer Werner Fassbinder), and is preparing a history of the Berliner Ensemble, the first book of its kind in any language. He has also published several essays and articles on German-, English-language, political and postdramatic theatre.
The theater of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) has long suffered
lamentable neglect in the US and the UK ... Fortunately, Barnett
champions Brecht's cause with clarity and authority in this slim
volume, which this reviewer predicts will soon prove indispensable
to any serious Anglophone student of Brecht. ... The author draws
on profound knowledge of the material, including Brecht’s drama,
the crucial Messingkauf fragments, and the history of the Berliner
Ensemble. At the heart of the book is the chapter 'Brecht and the
Actor,' which elegantly dispatches the fallacy of a Brechtian
'style' and should be required reading in any acting class. Later
chapters offer excellent illustrative readings of the application
of Brecht’s principles to both Brechtian and non-Brechtian drama.
Barnett has delivered a vital corrective to the misapprehension of
Brecht’s theater. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division
undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general
readers.
*CHOICE*
Barnett’s jargon-free study, accessible to students and enjoyable
for specialists, effectively re-introduces Brecht’s performance
theory, charts its evolution during the exile years, and
demonstrates its application through Brecht’s formation of the
Berliner Ensemble, when his long-simmering ideas could at last be
put into practice.
*Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism*
Barnett's style of writing is not only crystam clear but also
jargon free ... The book is an important and timely contribution to
Brechtian scholarship.
*Brecht Yearbook*
Barnett has done meticulous research and presents a very engaging
scholarly argument.
*American Theatre*
Brecht in Practice leads its reader seamlessly from Brecht’s
theoretical concerns to the practical matters with which they are
inextricably linked ... [Barnett] writes with enviable clarity and
precision ... as a result, successive potentially complex
discussions are rendered effortlessly digestible.
*Modern Language Review*
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