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Brecht Collected Plays #2
Collected Plays 2: Man Equals Man / The Elephant Calf / The Threepenny Opera / The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny / The Seven Deadly Sins
Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.
This second volume of Brecht's Collected Plays brings together some of his most glittering Berlin successes including The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins, Man Equals Man and The Elephant Calf. The Threepenny Opera is the story of the mercurial beggar turned entrepeneur Peachum and his battles with the criminal Mac 'the Knife'; Mahagonny, an operatic satire on the search for an American capitalist utopia; The Seven Deadly Sins is a ballet with songs that predicts the downfall of the petty bourgeosie and was first performed as the Nazis planned their book burning exercise. Man equals Man is an exploration of the theory of equality and The Elephant Calf is a play within a play based on an Indian folk story.
The translators include W H Auden and Chester Kallman, Ralph Manheim, Gerhard Nellhaus and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
424 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1977
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About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,603 books1,927 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 29, 2018
II – This series is great, overall. The model is a historical/biographical introductory essay, followed by the relevant plays in the period (here, 1925-29), ending with drafts, production notes, and theoretical documents about epic theatre. This particular volume features the following items:
A Man’s a Man with The Baby Elephant: the latter play is performed outside the main theatre chamber during the former’s intermission, sharing some of the same characters. It is generally an anti-war, anti-imperialist item—two of Brecht’s normal concerns. Within those critiques, it works a fungibility of persons doctrine, consistent with the title: “a man can be replaced” (5) or “one man is like another” (34) (the protagonists are nevertheless distinguished as “we are not the kind of men who like to accept favors from strangers” (30)—so no Blanche DuBois here). Following therefore from this inexorably is “man is not in the center” (39)—how could it be otherwise within the context of empire and war? Rather, “has anybody found out who this war’s against” If they need cotton, it’s Tibet; if they need wool, it’s Pamir” (45). At the same time, some sort of imperialist bios in the soldier, when someone can have “degenerated back into a civilian” (52)—this soldierly bios has its own imperatives, differently structured than the drive for commodity acquisition: “The army is thirsting to establish order in the populous cities of the north” (57). Accordingly it checks off all of the boxes for a critique of proto-fascism.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny - group buggers off to found a Galtic utopia, away from “all the world’s full of labor and sorrow” (88), away from ‘syphilisation’ (93). When laborers want to “only stay in the Alaskan forest, because all they want to do is to destroy our quiet and our contentment” (107), we see that the labor power of the polis is the excluded that must be included, zoe which is the condition of possibility for the polis. The agambenian concern continues when the polis enters a state of exception, arising out of a hurricane. All falls out as perhaps predictable—but also: “In the whole human race / there is no greater criminal / than a man without money” (135).
The Threepenny Opera - professional seekers of charity are assimilated to organized crime, which has its own trajectory. If there’s a one-liner that brings forth the germ of Brechtian epic theatre, it is surely “It’s art, it’s not pretty” (166). We see this develop in the art of the professional charity seeker, the manager of whom complains: “What I need is artists. Only an artist can tug at anybody’s heartstrings nowadays” (174)—exactly the result that epic theatre attempts to disrupt—to disengage the emotional response and engage the intellectual responses—cold Marxism at its finest, attempting to shear away ideological trifles, to pierce the ‘structures of feeling’ that Ray Williams later diagnosed as parcel to false consciousness, to confront the audience with the real as closely and as noumenal as possible.
A Man’s a Man with The Baby Elephant: the latter play is performed outside the main theatre chamber during the former’s intermission, sharing some of the same characters. It is generally an anti-war, anti-imperialist item—two of Brecht’s normal concerns. Within those critiques, it works a fungibility of persons doctrine, consistent with the title: “a man can be replaced” (5) or “one man is like another” (34) (the protagonists are nevertheless distinguished as “we are not the kind of men who like to accept favors from strangers” (30)—so no Blanche DuBois here). Following therefore from this inexorably is “man is not in the center” (39)—how could it be otherwise within the context of empire and war? Rather, “has anybody found out who this war’s against” If they need cotton, it’s Tibet; if they need wool, it’s Pamir” (45). At the same time, some sort of imperialist bios in the soldier, when someone can have “degenerated back into a civilian” (52)—this soldierly bios has its own imperatives, differently structured than the drive for commodity acquisition: “The army is thirsting to establish order in the populous cities of the north” (57). Accordingly it checks off all of the boxes for a critique of proto-fascism.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny - group buggers off to found a Galtic utopia, away from “all the world’s full of labor and sorrow” (88), away from ‘syphilisation’ (93). When laborers want to “only stay in the Alaskan forest, because all they want to do is to destroy our quiet and our contentment” (107), we see that the labor power of the polis is the excluded that must be included, zoe which is the condition of possibility for the polis. The agambenian concern continues when the polis enters a state of exception, arising out of a hurricane. All falls out as perhaps predictable—but also: “In the whole human race / there is no greater criminal / than a man without money” (135).
The Threepenny Opera - professional seekers of charity are assimilated to organized crime, which has its own trajectory. If there’s a one-liner that brings forth the germ of Brechtian epic theatre, it is surely “It’s art, it’s not pretty” (166). We see this develop in the art of the professional charity seeker, the manager of whom complains: “What I need is artists. Only an artist can tug at anybody’s heartstrings nowadays” (174)—exactly the result that epic theatre attempts to disrupt—to disengage the emotional response and engage the intellectual responses—cold Marxism at its finest, attempting to shear away ideological trifles, to pierce the ‘structures of feeling’ that Ray Williams later diagnosed as parcel to false consciousness, to confront the audience with the real as closely and as noumenal as possible.
May 5, 2025
Brecht’s satires break with theatrical and operatic norms by drawing on popular entertainment and avoiding sentiment. Best enjoyed while listening to Weill’s jaunty music.
February 28, 2025
Besides the incredibly underwhelming ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins, the inception and development of Brecht's Epic Theatre within the other plays/operas, even if limited by the whims of monetary intentions in the case of The Threepenny Opera, makes for entertaining clashes with the established theatre "apparatus." The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny towers in its complete approach to the allegorical critique of consumerism, but Man Equals Man, its interlude, and The Threepenny Opera find delightful humor in the struggles of identity and morals of the bourgeoise (contrasted with the gangster).
September 14, 2024
I didn't enjoy these as much as the good person of Szechewan, which I understand he wrote a decade later. I really liked the short Seven Deadly Sins of the Petit-Bourgeoisie ballet though.
January 18, 2015
A GREAT series. I'm only sorry that I DIDN'T purchase the others at the time they were published.
This particular anthology presents, perhaps, the most known or most popular Brecht plays: A Man's a Man (with the Baby Elephant piece for the Foyer), The Threepenny Opera, and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
A medium to extensive addendum follows all plays revealing much of the dramaturgy to the scripts as well as excerpts from interviews with Brecht and Weill.
A great anthology.
Indeed, the Manheim-Willett translation of The Threepenny Opera alone was worth the purchase price. So much more dynamic that many previously done.
Again, I wish I have purchased the whole series.
This particular anthology presents, perhaps, the most known or most popular Brecht plays: A Man's a Man (with the Baby Elephant piece for the Foyer), The Threepenny Opera, and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
A medium to extensive addendum follows all plays revealing much of the dramaturgy to the scripts as well as excerpts from interviews with Brecht and Weill.
A great anthology.
Indeed, the Manheim-Willett translation of The Threepenny Opera alone was worth the purchase price. So much more dynamic that many previously done.
Again, I wish I have purchased the whole series.
July 25, 2012
I watched some clips of songs and scenes from these plays, and they're fantastic, but it didn't work as well for me as a piece of reading. Certainly not Chekhov or Beckett. The melodies of the songs aren't easy to guess, which makes the reading feel choppy (no way I would have thought much of "The Alabama Song" having not known it already) and the themes are a little too didactic and dated (and often Marxist). Having heard of Brecht through a slight brush with some of his theories on theater (especially non-Aristotelian drama), I guess I just expected something a little deeper. The intro and explanatory notes were also not helpful. They seemed geared for producers and historians.
April 26, 2015
Meine Herren, meine Mutter prägte
Auf mich einst ein schlimmes Wort:
Ich würde enden im Schauhaus
Oder an einem noch schlimmern Ort.
Ja, so ein Wort, das ist leicht gesagt,
Aber ich sage euch: Daraus wird nichts!
Das könnt ihr nicht machen mit mir!
Was aus mir noch wird, das werdet ihr schon sehen!
Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!
Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.
Auf mich einst ein schlimmes Wort:
Ich würde enden im Schauhaus
Oder an einem noch schlimmern Ort.
Ja, so ein Wort, das ist leicht gesagt,
Aber ich sage euch: Daraus wird nichts!
Das könnt ihr nicht machen mit mir!
Was aus mir noch wird, das werdet ihr schon sehen!
Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!
Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.
February 12, 2007
آقای برشت به ما فهماند که آدم آدم است
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews