Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:14:00.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 33 - Brecht and Contemporary Experimental Theater

from Part III - The World’s Brecht

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2021

Stephen Brockmann
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

This article explores Bertolt Brecht’s significance for the most advanced forms of contemporary experimental and avant-garde theater.Brecht is one of the most popular and most-produced playwrights world-wide, and certainly in Germany; however many mainstream productions tend to deprive his work of its radical political and aesthetic edge.Nevertheless, contemporary avant-garde and experimental theaterwould be fundamentally unthinkable without Brecht, and it is particularly indebted to the most radical phase of Brecht’s career, when he and his team were working on learning plays (Lehrstücke) in the late 1920s and early 1930s during the final years of the Weimar Republic. Brecht’s conception of a separation of the elements, of putting mechanisms of power clearly on display, and of creating collective agency that, via script-based theater, tendentially removed power from the hands of writers and directors, are fundamental building blocks of contemporary experimental theater. The article explores such forms and their impact on the basis of experimental work by Robert Wilson, Wanda Golonka, and She She Pop.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×