"Lara Stevens, 'Anti-War Theatre After Brecht' (2016) [review essay]" (original) (raw)
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Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2018
In her compelling study, Lara Stevens combines two key strands of discussion in contemporary drama which have received increasing attention in theatre criticism lately: the question of how theatre and performance engage with and protest against the 'War on Terror' on the one hand and the relevance of Brechtian epic theatre for twenty-first-century political theatre on the other. Interested in particular in "how contemporary anti-war plays work to influence spectator responses to the violence of war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11" (1) and with a considerable personal investment in the topic, aiming "to understand how deeply I [as a Western subject from an allied nation] was implicated in these conflicts" (1), Stevens examines the role of theatre as a locus of resistance where alternative spaces and perspectives can be created "outside the normative and highly controlled frames of the mainstream media" (2). Integral to the book's investigations and to its understanding of political theatre is Bertolt Brecht, whose model of epic theatre is fruitfully brought into dialogue with the political and philosophical conditions of a post-Marxist, globalised and postmodern world in order to shed light on theas Stevens convincingly arguessignificant value of Brecht's ideas for the contemporary stage.
On the Need to Revisit the Anti-War Literature of Brecht and Owen Today
Youth Ki Awaaz, 2023
The 21st century, fundamentally speaking, is the age of the rise of the individual. It has been caused, to a certain extent, by the democratization and empowerment of social media that has led to our being conditioned, regularly, to the capitalist idea of brand value, which teaches us to worship person over work. It is, in part, because of this that we are now witnessing, globally, an ever-increasing amount of influence, dominance, and power arrogated in the hands of celebrity-like individuals rather than collectives.
Image Narrative, 2015
If there is a book that invites re-appropriation, it is Bertolt Brecht's relatively little known War Primer (1955), composed of photographs clipped from daily press accompanied by enigmatic epigrams. In a witty act of mimicry, the artist duo Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin composed War Primer 2 (2011) by superimposing a heterogeneous selection of images pertaining to the so-called War on Terror onto the original pages of Brecht's book. By focusing on images in which the photographic act is made the explicit theme of the photograph, their book reflects on practices of making and disseminating images of violence. On the one hand, War Primer 2 aims to disrupt the firmly entrenched imaginative geographies of the War on Terror. On the other, it casts a different light on the performative character of photographic imagery. The confrontation of the two photographic collections seems to suggest that there is still much to be learned from the current traffic in images. Résumé: S'il y a bien un livre qui invite à la réappropriation, c'est le relativement méconnu War Primer (1955) de Bertolt Brecht, composé de photographies découpées dans des quotidiens et accompagnées d'épigrammes énigmatiques. Dans une démarche d'imitation pleine d'esprit, le duo d'artistes Adam Broomberg et Olivier Chanarin réalisèrent War Primer 2 (2011) en superposant aux pages originales du livre de Brecht une sélection hétérogène d'images se rapportant à la guerre contre le terrorisme. En se concentrant sur des images dans lesquelles l'acte photographique devient explicitement le thème de la photographie, leur livre réfléchit sur les pratiques de production et de propagation des images de la violence. D'une part, War Primer 2 a pour but de perturber nos géographies imaginaires de la guerre contre le terrorisme qui sont fermement enracinées. D'autre part, l'oeuvre jette un éclairage différent sur le caractère performatif de l'imagerie photographique. La rencontre des deux collections de photographies semble suggérer qu'il y a toujours plus à apprendre de la circulation actuelle des images.
The War Mentality and The Brechtian Legacy
Theatrical Colloquia
The present article aims to illustrate the way in which the two world wars and their socio-political effects have produced significant changes in the collective consciousness and in the means of perceiving and constructing the Brechtian aesthetics. Starting from the idea that the entire work of the German playwright can be interpreted as being under the influence of social crises, the stake of this article is to briefly present a few elements on which the cultural heritage, that we can encounter today in the area of the postdramatic theatre, was based on. Whether we are speaking about the new British, German, American or Romanian dramaturgy, or about documentary theatre artists, - who, along with their involvement in the stage process, also play an important social function -, this heritage has an essential part in the development of the spectators’ critical thinking; it also represents the essence of the direct communication between stage and audience.
BRECHT'S "MOTHER COURAGE" AS A CRITIQUE OF WAR AND RELIGION.
This paper examines Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children as a critique of the twin concepts of War and Religion as he artistically portrayed them in the play. In doing so, I draw from Brecht's social background, especially from the fact that he was a self-confessed Marxist. His readings of the works of Karl Marx have greatly influenced his ideological as well as political beliefs. The paper also examines how he employed his theoretical concept of alienation to critique the phenomenon of war and its relationship with religion. The paper concludes with a summation of Brecht's attitude towards both war and religion and its implication to the new millennium.
Brecht's antitheatricality? Reflections on Brecht's place in Michael Fried's conceptual framework
'50 Years of Art and Objecthood: Traces, Impact, Critique', Special issue of Journal of Visual Culture, ed. by Alison Green and Joane Morra , 2017
In ‘Art and Objecthood’ (1967), Michael Fried articulates an uncompromising rejection of the theatre. His critique reaches as far as to expel the theatre from the realm of the arts and excludes it from the Modernist project. However, he exempts two theatre vanguardists from his argument, Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, who in his view developed anti-theatrical strategies as part of their aspirations to reform the theatre. This article examines whether Fried’s inclusion of Brecht into his anti-theatrical paradigm was justified or whether it was mere appropriation. It furthermore probes into Fried’s category of anti-theatricality within the conceptual framework of Brecht’s dramaturgical reflections and its validity as a key marker of Modernism.
Philosophizing Brecht: An Introduction for Dark Times
Philosophizing Brecht: Critical Readings on Art, Consciousness, Social Theory and Performance
The anthology unites scholars from varied backgrounds with the notion that the theories and artistic productions of Bertolt Brecht are key missing links in bridging diverse discourses in social philosophy, theatre, consciousness studies, and aesthetics. It offers readers interdisciplinary perspectives that create unique dialogues between Brecht and important thinkers such as Althusser, Anders, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Godard, Marx, and Plato. While exploring salient topics such as consciousness, courage, ethics, political aesthetics, and representations of race and the body, it penetrates the philosophical Brecht seeing in him the never-ending dialectic-the idea, the theory, the narrative, the character that is never foreclosed. This book is an essential read for all those interested in Brecht as a socio-cultural theorist and for theatre practitioners.
The Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in Twentieth Century literature. An acclaimed poet, he is best known as a playwright and director. His 'epic theatre' revolutionized the theatre by creating radical breaks from traditional literary and theatrical form. These radical breaks were done in an effort to facilitate radical social change. Specifically, Brecht designed his epic theatre as a revolutionary aesthetic which would help bring about the advent of a Marxist revolution. There is a broad corpus of academic work which analyzes the formalistic elements of his work. However, this body of work has been severely limited by a formalistic understanding of Brecht's thought and work and neglects his unique philosophical contributions to Marxism. This dissertation serves to remedy this by reconstructing Brecht's social and political philosophy into a single theoretical framework. In doing this, the dissertation presents Brecht's thought in context of a revolutionary Marxist aesthetic and explores his vision of historical materialism, dialectic of enlightenment, social ontology, epistemological foundations and ethics, in an effort to reveal his relevance today. This is accomplished by meticulous readings of his theoretical writings and deep analysis of three of his plays, the Good Woman of Setzuan, Life of Galileo, and his adaption of Coriolanus.