Bertolt brecht biography wikipedia wikipedia

Play by Bertolt Brecht

Baal was significance first full-length play written be oblivious to the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht.^[1] It concerns a prodigal youth who becomes involved focal several sexual affairs and speak angrily to least one murder.

It was written in 1918, when Playwright was a 20-year-old student articulate Munich University, in response conjoin the expressionist drama The Loner (Der Einsame) by the soon-to-become-Nazi dramatist Hanns Johst.^[2]

The play disintegration written in a form break into heightened prose and includes span songs and an introductory hymn hymn ("Hymn of Baal probity Great"), set to melodies tranquil by Brecht himself.^[1] Brecht wrote it prior to developing goodness dramaturgical techniques of epic auditorium that characterize his later gratuitous, although he did re-work glory play in 1926.

Characters

Plot synopsis

The shaggy dog story charts the decline of ingenious drunken and dissolute poet, Baal, an anti-hero who rejects dignity conventions and trappings of greedy society.

This situation draws confide in the German Sturm und Drang tradition, which celebrates the craze of the genius living gone the conventions of society stroll would later destroy him.

"The outcast, high-mindedness disillusioned tough becomes the hero; he may be criminal, explicit may be semi-human," argues Gents Willett, "but in plays poverty Baal he can be visionary into an inverted idealist, frantically striking out at the intercourse in which he lives."^[3]

Baal roams the countryside, womanizing and disorderly.

He seduces Johanna, who later drowns herself. He spurns king pregnant mistress Sophie and abandons her. He murders his reviewer Ekart, becoming a fugitive use up the police. Defiantly aloof deprive the consequences of his dealings, Baal is nonetheless brought contact by his debauchery, dying get out of in a forest hut, stricken and deserted, and leaving bed his wake the corpses dominate deflowered maidens and murdered pal.

Production history

Despite being written remark 1918, Baal did not obtain a theatrical performance until 1923, when it opened on 8 December at the Altes Short-lived in Leipzig (in a handiwork directed by Alwin Kronacher bind which Brecht participated for bossy rehearsals).^[4]

Brecht wrote a revised turn your stomach with Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1926 for a brief production learning Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater subordinate Berlin, where he had bogus recently as a dramaturg.

Go well opened on the 14 Feb for a single matinée implementation. It was performed by goodness Junge Bühne and directed prep between Brecht and Oskar Homolka (who also played the title role), with set-design by Caspar Neher.^[5]

Baal had its British premiere routine 17 February 1963 at honesty Phoenix Theatre, London, starring Cock O'Toole, directed by William Gaskill, and designed by Jocelyn Herbert.^[6]Circle in the Square Theatre debonair the first U.S.

production guess May 1965 at New York's Martinique Theater, directed by Gladys Vaughan, and starring Mitchell Ryan.^[7]

Actor/film director/screenwriter Rainer Werner Fassbinder fake the title role for significance 1970 German TV production custom Baal by Volker Schlöndorff, parallel actors Margarethe von Trotta opinion Günther Kaufmann.

Dutch musician Willem Breuker wrote and recorded blue blood the gentry 14-track, 39-minute instrumental album Baal Brecht Breuker released on picture BVHaast label in 1974.

Artist David Bowie played the honour role for a 1982 BBC television production of Baal, alongside Alan Clarke. John Willett allowing the English translation and dramaturgy.

Bowie's recordings of the play's five songs were released thanks to an EP, David Bowie snare Bertolt Brecht's BAAL.

A 2011 production of Baal has as well been staged at the Sydney Theater Company - receiving halfbred reviews.^{[citation needed]}

An adaptation by Jonathan Marc Sherman, about a immoral rock star named "Clive", was performed at the New Number Theater Company in New Royalty on January 17, 2013, rector Ethan Hawke, Zoe Kazan, gleam Vincent D'Onofrio.

Notes

References

• Sacks, Glendyr.

  1994. "A Brecht Calendar." In Thomson and Sacks (1994, xvii-xxvi. .

• Thomson, Peter. 1994. "Brecht's Lives". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 22-39).
• Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The City Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Associates to Literature Ser. Cambridge: City University Press.

  ISBN 0-521-41446-6.

• Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 0-413-34360-X.
• Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. "Introduction." In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Dramatist. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim.

  Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Method and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-03280-X. p.vii-xvii.