Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks

ISBN-13: 9781408154557 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 312 str.

Bertolt Brecht; Marc Silberman; Steve Giles

Opis

Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings for directors and theatre practitioners, and is suitable for acting schools, directors, actors, students and teachers of Theatre Studies. Through these texts Brecht provides a general practical approach to acting and to realising texts for the stage that crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing.The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the Messingkauf, or Buying Brass, including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of Life of Galileo, Antigone, Mother Courage and others.Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, Brecht on Performance is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the Modelbooks.

Recenzje

Brecht on Performance is a companion volume and has two parts. The first is an overhaul of what Willett previously called the Messingkauf Dialogues. 'Buying Brass' - the more literal translation of Messingkauf - assembles more of the fragmentary material and includes Brecht's 'Practice Pieces for Actors', revealing that the 'dialogues' were only one, albeit major, element in the overall project. The editing of the fragments is exemplary . The second part includes writings and images from three of Brecht's 'modelbooks', as well as essays from the Berliner Ensemble's documentation Theatre Work and the 'Katzgraben' Notes. Taken together, the extracts presented here form a rich collection that includes significant work from when Brecht returned to theatre-making in 1948. These two volumes represent an excellent extension of Brecht's writings in English. The editors draw on contemporary scholarship, apply high editorial standards, and offer a readability that opens up Brecht's theories and practices for a new generation. David Barnett New Theatre Quarterly

O autorze

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and critical writings have had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Tom Kuhn is Professor of 20th century German Literature at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, UK, and General Editor of Bloomsbury Methuen Drama's Brecht publications. Marc Silberman is Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA. He is the co-editor of the completely revised and updated third edition of Brecht on Theatre and of Brecht on Performance (both 2014), and editor of Brecht on Film & Radio. Steve Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory. John Willett (1917-2002) was the greatest English language authority on Brecht the writer and man of the theatre. The foremost translator and editor of Brecht's drama, poetry, letters, diaries, theatrical essays and fiction, Willett produced a dozen volumes for Methuen Drama on the greatest modern German writer. Steve Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory. Tom Kuhn is Professor of 20th century German Literature at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, UK, and General Editor of Bloomsbury Methuen Drama's Brecht publications.