Brecht Collected Plays: 3: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the Rule; The Horatians & the Curiatians; St Joan of the Stockyards

Bertolt Brecht

Bloomsbury Academic, 1998 - Drama - 432 pages

The most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language





Volume Three of Brecht's Collected Plays includes St Joan of the Stockyards - a play which recasts St Joan as Joan Dark springing hope into the hearts of factory workers at the mercy of meatpacker king Pierpont Mauler threatening cuts in the Depression; and the Lehrstücke or short 'didactic' pieces written during the years 1929 to 1933, are some of his most experimental work. Lindbergh's Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes / He Said No, The Decision,The Exception and the Rule, and The Horatians and the Curiatians reject conventional theatre; they are spare and highly formalised, drawing on traditional Japanese and Chinese forms. They show Brecht in collaboration with the composers Hindemith, Weill and Eisler, influenced by the new techniques of montage in the visual arts and seeking new means of expression. Also included is The Mother, based on Gorky's novel about the progress of a factory strike in Tver and the journey of a peasant mother from illiteracy to card-carrying communism.



The translators include H R Hays (The Horatians and the Curiatians), Ralph Manheim (St Joan of the Stockyards), Tom Osborn (The Exception and the Rule), Geoffrey Skelton (The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent), John Willett (Lindbergh's Flight;The Decision;The Mother) and Arthur Waley (He Said Yes / He Said No). 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.

Contents

• HE SAID YESHE SAID: 45
• Later additions and substitutions by Brecht: 55
• Textual variants: 90

About the author

Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, and died on August 14, 1956. He was a German playwright, theatre director and Marxist. The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum. Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. He wrote many lyrics for musicals and collaborated with Kurt Weill to create Die Dregroschenoper -- the biggest hit in 1920s Berlin. 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. Brecht died in 1956.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Brecht Collected Plays: 3: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the Rule; The Horatians & the Curiatians; St Joan of the Stockyards; Brecht collected plays; Volume 3 of Collected Plays, Bertolt Brecht; Methuen world classics; Methuen's world dramatists; Volume 3 of Plays, Bertolt Brecht; Plays, poetry and prose, Bertolt Brecht; World Classics
• Author: Bertolt Brecht
• Editors: John Willett, Ralph Manheim
• Translated by: John Willett, Ralph Manheim
• Edition: reprint, reissue
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 1998
• ISBN: 0413704602, 9780413704603
• Length: 432 pages
• Subjects: Drama / European / General; Drama / General