Bertolt Brecht

Playwright, poet and activist Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was known for his theory of the Epic Theatre and his attempts to break down the division between high art and popular culture. The Threepenny Opera, his collaboration with composer Kurt Weill, was a milestone in musical theatre, and plays like Mother Courage and Galileo changed the course of modern drama and aesthetic theory.
Framed by two world wars, the Weimar Republic and a global depression, Nazism and exile and East German socialism, Brecht’s own life became a project, illuminating and intervening in the ongoing crisis of modern experience, shaped by capitalism, nationalism and visions of social utopia. Brecht upended and used as weapons the language and gestures of philosophers and beggars, bureaucrats and thieves, priests and workers. The results are at once funny and tragic, popular and complex, sharp, accessible and full of pleasure in the contradictions of being an active part in the production of history. This book examines Brecht’s life and work as a pivotal contribution to the history and legacy of art as social labour in the twentieth century.