Critics have said that Eric Bentley has given a new direction to theatrical history and represents the German avant-garde in drama. Brecht's most ambitious venture in verse drama, Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1933), was written in Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. Brecht left his homeland in 1993. Before he came to the United States in 1941, he was one of the editors of a short-lived anti-Nazi magazine in Moscow (1936--39). In 1949 his play Mother Courage and Her Children, which was a Marxist indictment of the economic motives behind internal aggression, was produced in the United States. Brecht found a large audience as librettist for Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, an… adaptation of John Gay's Beggar's Opera. Brecht is considered a playwright who saw the stage as a platform for the presentation of a message. His aim was to transform the state from a place of entertainment to a place for instruction and public communication. He called himself an epic realist. In 1947, Brecht was summoned to Washington, D.C., by the on Un-American Activities Committee, before which he testified. He firmly denied that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. How radical Brecht really was has been the subject of considerable controversy; but, for literary purposes, his politics need only be judged as they contributed to his artistry. In his final years Brecht experimented with his own theater and company-the Berliner Ensemble-which put on his plays under his direction and which continued after his death with the assistance of his wife. Brecht aspired to create political theater, and it is difficult to evaluate his work in purely aesthetic terms. It is likely that the demise of Marxist governments will influence his reputation over the next decade, though the changes are difficult to predict. Brecht died in 1956.
Bertolt Brecht(18981956) was one of the most influential playwrights of the twentieth century. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, he fled Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power. Returning to Germany after the war, he founded the Berliner Ensemble and continued to work on plays and films. Olympia Dukakishas worked for more than forty years as an actress, director, producer, teacher, and activist and has won numerous awards, including the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award. Norman Roessleris editor of Communications, the performance journal of the International Brecht Society, and is a lecturer at Temple University in Philadelphia. John Willett(19172002) is a scholar and translator of… several works by Bertolt Brecht into English. Ralph Manheim(19071992) is a translator of works by Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, G�nter Grass, and many others.
Carl Weberis a professor of directing and dramaturgy at Stanford University. He was a director for Brechts Berliner Ensemble and later directed numerous plays in Europe and the United States. Norm Roessleris editor of Communications, the performance journal of the International Brecht Society, and is a lecturer at Temple University in Philadelphia. John Willett(19172002) translated several works by Brecht into English. Ralph Manheim(19071992) translated works by Brecht, Hermann Hesse, G�nter Grass, and many others.