Brecht's legacy: German theater. Brecht's legacy: the German theater "Epic Theater" in Russia

AND HERE'S THE MOON OVER SOHO
“And the damned whisper: “Darling, cuddle up to me!”, / And the old song: “Wherever you go, there I am with you, Johnny,” / And the beginning of love, and meetings under the moon!”
The play “The Threepenny Opera” is Brecht’s most frank and scandalous.
Written in 1928 and translated into Russian in the same year for the Chamber Theater. This is a remake" Beggar's Operas by John Gay, written two hundred years before Brecht as a parody of operas Handel, a satire on England at that time. The plot was suggested by ourselves Swift. Brecht hardly changes it. But Gay’s Peachum is already a clever bourgeois, and Mackie the Knife is still the latest Robin Hood. In Brecht, both of them are businessmen with “cold noses.” The action is moved a hundred years forward, to Victorian England.
The mere list of characters in the play caused an outburst of rage among the respectable bourgeoisie. " Bandits. Beggars. Prostitutes. Constables." Moreover, they are placed on the same board. One remark is enough to understand what will be discussed: “ Beggars beg, thieves steal, walkers walk." In addition, the playwright included Brown, the chief of London police and priest Kimble among the characters. So law and order and the church in the country are “at one with” thieves, bandits, prostitutes, and other inhabitants of Soho. In the 19th century, the lower strata of the population lived there, among crowdsbrothels , pubs, entertainment venues.
"Everything, without exception, everything here is trampled, desecrated, trampled upon - from the Bible and the clergy right down to the police and all the authorities in general... It’s good that during the performance of some ballads, not everything could be heard,”- one critic wrote indignantly. " In this circle of criminals and whores, where they speak the language of sewers, reviving dark and vicious thoughts, and where the basis of existence is the perversion of the sexual instinct - in this circle, everything that even remotely resembles moral laws is trampled... In the final chorus, the actors like crazy people screaming: “First bread, and morality later”... Ugh, damn!” - another was openly hysterical.
In Soviet times, the play was staged as an accusatory document of the bourgeois system. There was a bright performance at the Satire Theater. I remember another one, I saw it in my youth - at the Zhovtnevoy Revolution Theater in Odessa. It was a Ukrainian theater, with Brecht translated, and even then I was interested in the director’s versions. It was not possible to enjoy the “versions”. My friend and I were alone in the hall and sat so close that the actors addressed all the monologues, all the zongs to us. It was very awkward - in the second act we ran away to the box.
In the post-Soviet space, “Threepenny” appears more and more often. They brought to us the MKhT version staged Kirill Serebrennikov.It looks more like an expensive musical. Not about England of the 19th century, not about Germany in the 20s of the 20th century (which, in fact, is what Brecht writes about), but about Russia in the 10s of the current century, already accustomed to street spectacles .A series of beggars of all stripes went straight into the hall, “getting” the holders of expensive tickets in the stalls. The show turned out to be powerful, comical, watchable. And the Brechtian bitterness of analysis... well, it dissolved somewhere between the stalls and the balcony..
So the dramatic material chosen by the course master, People's Artist of Russia Grigory Aredakov for the graduation performance of theater institute graduates, is not as one-line as it seems. With the help of the artist Yuri Namestnikov and choreographer Alexey Zykov they create an energetic, dynamic, sharp spectacle on the stage of the Saratov drama. All the zongs of the play are heard, and there are so many of them that they made up a separate volume.
Whether they need it is another matter everyone sound: firstly, it’s too long (the play, in fact, runs for more than three hours without text cuts), and secondly, sometimes it’s too blunt. Many zongs are altered words Francois Villon, poet of the French Renaissance. Written freely, they take on a completely coarse flesh in Brecht. In some places, vulgar notes of strippers break through in the dances , what the famous theater critic so emotionally warns about Kaminskaya: « How many times, precisely for the sake of playing in the evil world, for the sake of waving a pistol and wiggling the sirloin parts of the body in picturesque fashion, our theaters began to stage Brecht’s masterpiece - there are countless examples».
No, the student performance is a happy exception. The plasticity of the heroes - the cat-like plasticity of born thieves, raiders, priestesses of love - is not an end in itself, it creates the overall picture of the performance, sculpts the images in a prominent way. And even when they dance (the girls wear wonderful colored clothes, with lush frillsmini-dresses from Namestnikov), then how they do it!.. With what ingenuity and elegance of the aristocrats of the London bottom... The magician Zykov could conduct the entire performance non-verbally, and we would be happy to solve his codes.
And there are also zongs, where, thanks to the infectious rhythms Kurt Weill you can hear jazz notes (it’s not for nothing that he loved to sing the song about Macky the Knife himself) Armstrong).Very professionally performed, by the way. Especially by the female soloists (music editors Evgeny Myakotin, Madina Dubaeva) There is also a well-twisted plot, and a friendly ensemble of extras, and memorable soloists - coldly imperturbable, accustomed to the complete subordination of those around Makhit ( Stepan Gayu). Brecht wrote that he was humorless. The hero Guy really never smiles, but there is so much hidden irony in the mise-en-scène with the fish (which “ you can't eat with a knife") and in a quarrel between Mackey's two wives, where he acts as an arbitrator, skillfully playing along with one of the wives.
Our superhero will be afraid only once - when he is sent to prison a second time, and things smell like kerosene. He has a wonderful enemy - the king of the beggars, Peachum ( Konstantin Tikhomirov). Just as cold-blooded, calculating, but more skillful in intrigue. He saves the considerable invested “capital” - his daughter - from the hands of a bandit! Polly Anastasia Paramonova lovely, but a little... a kind of pink fool. For the time being...until she is entrusted with the real job - providing a “roof for the bandits.” Here we will see a completely different Polly, the faithful daughter of her father, a businessman in the “shadow economy”. Once at the gallows, the husband calls out to her.
“Listen, Polly, can you get me out of here?
Polly. Yes, sure.
Poppy. Of course, you need money. I'm here with the warden...
Polly ( slowly). The money went to Southampton.
Poppy. Don't you have anything here?
Polly. No, not here".
In money matters, sentiment is alien not only to Mack, but also to his dear wife. " And where is their moon over Soho?/Where is the damned whisper: “Darling, cling to me”?
For some reason, his “combat friend” Mackie looks paler than the short but irresistible ponytail in checkered trousers.Lanky Brown (Andrey Goryunov). But Polly’s worthy opponent, the destroyer of the lover who abandoned her, will be Jenny-Malina, luxurious in a halo of flowing curls ( Madina Dubaeva).
Brecht's theater is openly journalistic, it's all about accents. Previously, the zong with a simple chorus was strongly emphasized : “Bread comes first, and morality comes later!” In Aredakov’s performance, Captain Macheath’s farewell speech will be remembered: “What is a “crowbar” compared to a share? What is a bank raid compared to a bank foundation? » And the explanation of his accomplice Matthias at the boss’s wedding : “You see, madam, we are connected with major government officials.” Here you go "moon over Soho" But nothing is new under the sun, although this truth was revealed to us in the gangster 90s.The performance turned out to be large, multifaceted, multi-figured, truly musical and spectacular. Which is already a lot for beginning actors.
Irina Krainova

Bertolt Brecht and his "epic theater"

Bertolt Brecht is the largest representative of German literature of the 20th century, an artist of great and multifaceted talent. He has written plays, poems, and short stories. He is a theater figure, director and theorist of the art of socialist realism. Brecht's plays, truly innovative in their content and form, have traveled to theaters in many countries around the world, and everywhere they find recognition among the widest circles of spectators.

Brecht was born in Augsburg, into a wealthy family of a paper mill director. Here he studied at the gymnasium, then studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Munich. Brecht began writing while still in high school. Beginning in 1914, his poems, short stories, and theater reviews began to appear in the Augsburg newspaper Volkswile.

In 1918, Brecht was drafted into the army and served as an orderly in a military hospital for about a year. In the hospital, Brecht heard plenty of stories about the horrors of war and wrote his first anti-war poems and songs. He himself composed simple melodies for them and, with a guitar, clearly pronouncing the words, performed in the wards in front of the wounded. Among these works especially “Ballada” stood out about a dead soldier”, which condemned the German military, which imposed war on the working people.

When the revolution began in Germany in 1918, Brecht took an active part in it, although And I didn’t quite clearly imagine its goals and objectives. He was elected a member of the Augsburg Soldiers' Council. But the greatest impression on the poet was made by the news of the proletarian revolution V Russia, about the formation of the world's first state of workers and peasants.

It was during this period that the young poet finally broke with his family, with his class and “joined the ranks of the poor.”

The result of the first decade of poetic creativity was the collection of Brecht’s poems “Home Sermons” (1926). Most of the poems in the collection are characterized by deliberate rudeness in depicting the ugly morality of the bourgeoisie, as well as hopelessness and pessimism caused by the defeat of the November Revolution of 1918

These ideological and political features of Brecht's early poetry characteristic and for his first dramatic works - "Baal",“Drums in the Night” and others. The strength of these plays lies in sincere contempt And condemnation of bourgeois society. Recalling these plays in his mature years, Brecht wrote that in them he was “without regrets showed how the great flood fills the bourgeois world".

In 1924, the famous director Max Reinhardt invites Brecht as a playwright to his theater in Berlin. Here Brecht gets closer With progressive writers F. Wolf, I. Becher, with the creator of the workers' revolutionary theater E. Piscator, actor E. Bush, composer G. Eisler and others close to him By spirit of artists. In this setting, Brecht gradually overcomes his pessimism, more courageous intonations appear in his works. The young dramatist creates satirical topical works, in which he sharply criticizes the social and political practices of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Such is the anti-war comedy “What is this soldier, what is that” (1926). She written at a time when German imperialism, after the suppression of the revolution, began to energetically restore industry with the help of American bankers. Reactionary elements Together with the Nazis, they united in various “bunds” and “verein” and promoted revanchist ideas. The theater stage was increasingly filled with sappy, didactic dramas and action films.

Under these conditions, Brecht consciously strives for art that is close to the people, art that awakens the consciousness of people and activates their will. Rejecting decadent dramaturgy, which takes the viewer away from the most important problems of our time, Brecht advocates a new theater, designed to become an educator of the people, a conductor of advanced ideas.

In his works “On the Way to the Modern Theatre”, “Dialectics in the Theatre”, “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, etc., published in the late 20s and early 30s, Brecht criticizes contemporary modernist art and sets out the main provisions of his theory "epic theater." These provisions relate to acting, construction dramatic works, theatrical music, scenery, the use of cinema, etc. Brecht calls his dramaturgy “non-Aristotelian”, “epic”. This name is due to the fact that ordinary drama is built according to the laws formulated by Aristotle in his work “Poetics” and requiring the actor’s mandatory emotional adaptation to the character.

Brecht makes reason the cornerstone of his theory. “Epic theater,” says Brecht, “appeals not so much to the feelings as to the reason of the spectator.” Theater should become a school of thought, show life from a truly scientific perspective, in a broad historical perspective, promote advanced ideas, help the viewer understand the changing world and change themselves. Brecht emphasized that his theater should become a theater “for people who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands,” that it should not only reflect events, but also actively influence them, stimulate, awaken the activity of the viewer, force him not to to empathize, but to argue, to take a critical position in a dispute. At the same time, Brecht by no means renounces the desire to influence feelings and emotions.

To implement the provisions of the “epic theater”, Brecht uses in his creative practice the “alienation effect”, i.e. an artistic technique, the purpose of which is to show the phenomena of life from an unusual side, to force others to look differently. look at them, critically evaluate everything that happens on stage. To this end, Brecht often introduces choruses and solo songs into his plays, explaining and evaluating the events of the play, revealing the ordinary from an unexpected side. The “alienation effect” is also achieved by the acting system, stage design, and music. However, Brecht never considered his theory to be finally formulated and until the end of his life he worked on improving it.

Acting as a bold innovator, Brecht at the same time used all the best that was created by German and world theater in the past.

Despite the controversial nature of some of his theoretical positions, Brecht created truly innovative, combative drama, which has a keen ideological focus and great artistic merit. Through the means of art, Brecht fought for the liberation of his homeland, for its socialist future, and in his best works he acted as the largest representative of socialist realism in German and world literature.

In the late 20s - early 30s. Brecht created a series of “instructive plays” that continued the best traditions of workers’ theater and were intended for agitation and propaganda of progressive ideas. These include “The Baden Teaching Play”, “The Highest Measure”, “Saying “Yes” and Saying “Pet””, etc. The most successful of them are “St. Joan of the Slaughterhouses” and a dramatization of Gorky’s “Mother”.

During the years of emigration, Brecht's artistic skill reached its peak. He creates his best works, which made a great contribution to the development of German and world literature of socialist realism.

The satirical play-pamphlet “Roundheads and Sharpheads” is an evil parody of Hitler’s Reich; it exposes nationalist demagoguery. Brecht also does not spare the German inhabitants, who allowed the fascists to fool themselves with false promises.

The play “The Career of Arthur Wee, Which Might Not Have Happened” was written in the same sharply satirical manner.

The play allegorically recreates the history of the emergence of the fascist dictatorship. Both plays formed a kind of anti-fascist duology. They abounded in techniques of the “alienation effect,” fantasy and grotesquery in the spirit of the theoretical principles of “epic theater.”

It should be noted that, while speaking against the traditional “Aristotelian” drama, Brecht did not completely deny it in his practice. Thus, in the spirit of traditional drama, 24 one-act anti-fascist plays were written, included in the collection “Fear and Despair in the Third Empire” (1935-1938). In them, Brecht abandons his favorite conventional background and in the most direct, realistic ma-nere paints a tragic picture of the life of the German people in a country enslaved by the Nazis.

The play in this collection “Rifles” Teresa Carrar" in ideological relationship continues the line outlined in dramatization"Mothers" by Gorky. At the center of the play are the current events of the civil war in Spain and the debunking of the harmful illusions of apoliticality and non-intervention at the time of the historical trials of the nation. A simple Spanish woman from Andalusia, a fisherman Carrar I lost my husband in the war and now, afraid of losing my son, in every possible way prevents him from volunteering to fight against the Nazis. She naively believes in the assurances of the rebellious generals, What do you want Not neutral civilians were touched. She even refuses to hand over to the Republicans rifles, hidden from the dog. Meanwhile, the son, who was peacefully fishing, is shot by the Nazis from the ship with a machine gun. It is then that enlightenment occurs in Carrar’s consciousness. The heroine is freed from the harmful principle: “my house is on the edge” - And comes to the conclusion about the need to defend people's happiness with arms in hand.

Brecht distinguishes two types of theater: dramatic (or “Aristotelian”) and epic. The dramatic seeks to conquer the emotions of the viewer so that he experiences catharsis through fear and compassion, so that he surrenders with his whole being to what is happening on stage, empathizes, worries, losing the sense of the difference between theatrical action and real life, and feels like not a spectator of the play , but a person involved in actual events. Epic theater, on the contrary, must appeal to reason and teach, must, while telling the viewer about certain life situations and problems, must observe the conditions under which he would maintain, if not calm, then in any case control over his feelings and in fully armed with clear consciousness and critical thought, without succumbing to the illusions of stage action, he would observe, think, determine his principled position and make decisions.

To clearly identify the differences between dramatic and epic theater, Brecht outlined two series of characteristics.

No less expressive is the comparative characteristic of dramatic and epic theater, formulated by Brecht in 1936: “The spectator of a dramatic theater says: yes, I already felt this too. - That’s how I am. - This is quite natural. - So will always be. - The suffering of this person shocks me, because there is no way out for him. - This is great art: everything in it goes without saying. - I cry with the one who weeps, I laugh with the one who laughs.

The spectator of the epic theater says: I would never have thought of this. - This should not be done. - This is extremely amazing, almost unbelievable. - This must be put to an end. - The suffering of this man shocks me, for for him a way out is still possible. - This is great art: in it nothing goes without saying. - I laugh at the one who cries, I cry over the one who laughs.”

To create the distance between the viewer and the stage necessary so that the viewer can, as it were, “from the side” observe and conclude that he “laughs at the one who is crying and weeps at the one who laughs,” i.e., so that he sees further and understands more, than stage characters, so that his position in relation to the action is one of spiritual superiority and active decisions - this is the task that, according to the theory of epic theater, the playwright, director and actor must jointly solve. For the latter, this requirement is particularly binding. Therefore, an actor must show a certain person in certain circumstances, and not just be him. At some moments of his stay on stage, he must stand next to the image he creates, i.e., be not only its embodiment, but also its judge. This does not mean that Brecht completely denies “feeling” in theatrical practice, that is, the merging of the actor with the image. But he believes that such a state can occur only momentarily and, in general, must be subordinated to a reasonably thought-out and consciously determined interpretation of the role.

Brecht theoretically substantiates and introduces into his creative practice the so-called “alienation effect” as a fundamentally obligatory moment. He considers it as the main way of creating a distance between the viewer and the stage, creating the atmosphere provided for by the theory of epic theater in the attitude of the audience to the stage action; Essentially, the “alienation effect” is a certain form of objectification of the depicted phenomena; it is intended to disenchant the thoughtless automatism of the viewer’s perception. The viewer recognizes the subject of the image, but at the same time perceives its image as something unusual, “alienated”... In other words, with the help of the “alienation effect” the playwright, director, actor show certain life phenomena and human types not in their usual, familiar and familiar form, but from some unexpected and new side, forcing the viewer to be surprised, to look at it in a new way, it would seem. old and already known things, become more actively interested in them. to explore and understand them more deeply. “The meaning of this technique of “alienation effect,” explains Brecht, “is to instill in the viewer an analytical, critical position in relation to the events depicted” 19 > /

In Brecht's Art in all its spheres (drama, directing, etc.), “alienation” is used extremely widely and in the most diverse forms.

The chieftain of the robber gang - a traditional romantic figure of old literature - is depicted bending over a receipt and expenditure book, in which, according to all the rules of Italian accounting, the financial transactions of his “company” are described. Even in the last hours before execution, he balances debits with credits. Such an unexpected and unusually “alienated” perspective in the depiction of the criminal world quickly activates the viewer’s consciousness, leading him to a thought that may not have occurred to him before: a bandit is the same as a bourgeois, so who is a bourgeois - not a bandit? is it?

In the stage adaptation of his plays, Brecht also resorts to “alienation effects.” He introduces, for example, choirs and solo songs, so-called “songs,” into plays. These songs are not always performed as if “in the flow of action”, naturally fitting into what is happening on stage. On the contrary, they often pointedly fall out of the action, interrupt and “alienate” it, being performed on the proscenium and facing directly into the auditorium. Brecht even specifically emphasizes this moment of breaking the action and transferring the performance to another plane: during the performance of songs, a special emblem is lowered from the grate or special “cellular” lighting is turned on on the stage. Songs, on the one hand, are designed to destroy the hypnotic effect of the theater, to prevent the emergence of stage illusions, and, on the other hand, they comment on the events on stage, evaluate them, and contribute to the development of critical judgments of the public.

All production technology in Brecht's theater is replete with “alienation effects.” Changes on stage are often made with the curtain drawn back; the design is “suggestive” in nature - it is extremely sparing, containing “only what is necessary,” i.e., a minimum of decorations that convey the characteristic features of the place And time, And a minimum of props used and participating in the action; masks are used; the action is sometimes accompanied by inscriptions projected onto the curtain or backdrop and conveying in an extremely pointed aphoristic or paradoxical form social meaning plots, etc.

Brecht did not consider the “alienation effect” as a feature unique to his creative method. On the contrary, he proceeds from the fact that this technique is, to a greater or lesser extent, inherent in the nature of all art, since it is not reality itself, but only its image, which, no matter how close it is to life, still cannot be identical to her and therefore, it contains one or another measure convention, i.e. distance, “alienation” from the subject of the image. Brecht found and demonstrated various “alienation effects” in ancient and Asian theater, in the paintings of Bruegel the Elder and Cezanne, in the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Feuchtwanger, Joyce, etc. But unlike other artists, who "alienation" may be present spontaneously, Brecht, an artist of socialist realism, consciously brought this technique into close connection with the social goals that he pursued with his work.

Copy reality in order to achieve the greatest external resemblance in order to preserve its immediate sensory appearance as closely as possible, or “organize” reality in the process of its artistic depiction in order to fully and truthfully convey its essential features (of course, in a concrete image incarnation)—these are the two poles in the aesthetic problems of contemporary world art. Brecht takes a very definite, distinct position in relation to this alternative. “The usual opinion is,” he writes in one of his notes, “that a work of art is the more realistic the easier it is to recognize reality in it. I contrast this with the definition that a work of art is the more realistic, the more conveniently the reality is mastered in it for cognition.” Brecht considered the most convenient for understanding reality to be conventional, “alienated” forms of realistic art, which contain a high degree of generalization.

Being artist thoughts and attaching exceptional importance to the rationalistic principle in the creative process, Brecht always, however, rejected schematic, resonant, insensitive art. He is a mighty poet of the stage, addressing reason viewer, simultaneously searching And finds an echo in his feelings. The impression made by Brecht's plays and productions can be defined as “intellectual excitement,” that is, such a state of the human soul in which acute and intense work of thought arouses, as if by induction, an equally strong emotional reaction.

The theory of "epic theater" and the theory of "alienation" are the key to Brecht's entire literary work in all genres. They help to understand and explain the most significant and fundamentally important features of both his poetry and prose, not to mention his drama.

If the individual originality of Brecht’s early work was largely reflected in his attitude towards expressionism, then in the second half of the 20s, many of the most important features of Brecht’s worldview and style acquired special clarity and certainty, confronting the “new efficiency”. Much undoubtedly connected the writer with this direction - a greedy passion for the signs of modern life, an active interest in sports, the denial of sentimental daydreaming, archaic “beauty” and psychological “depths” in the name of the principles of practicality, concreteness, organization, etc. And at the same time, many things separated Brecht from the “new efficiency”, starting with his sharply critical attitude towards the American way of life. More and more imbued with the Marxist worldview, the writer entered into an inevitable conflict with one from the main philosophical postulates of the “new efficiency” - with the religion of technicalism. He rebelled against the tendency to assert the primacy of technology over social And humanistic principles life: The perfection of modern technology did not blind him so much that he did not weave in the imperfections of modern society, which was written on the eve of the Second World War. The ominous outlines of an impending catastrophe were already looming before the writer’s mind’s eye.

The works of B. Brecht. Brecht's epic theater. "Mother Courage"

Bertolt Brecht(1898-1956) was born in Augsburg, in the family of a factory director, studied at a gymnasium, practiced medicine in Munich and was drafted into the army as an orderly. The songs and poems of the young orderly attracted attention with the spirit of hatred of the war, the Prussian military, and German imperialism. In the revolutionary days of November 1918, Brecht was elected a member of the Augsburg Soldiers' Council, which testified to the authority of a very young poet.

Already in Brecht's earliest poems we see a combination of catchy, catchy slogans and complex imagery that evokes associations with classical German literature. These associations are not imitations, but unexpected rethinking of old situations and techniques. Brecht seems to move them into modern life, makes them look at them in a new, “alienated” way. Thus, already in his earliest lyrics, Brecht groped for his famous (*224) dramatic technique of “alienation.” In the poem “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” the satirical techniques are reminiscent of the techniques of romanticism: a soldier going into battle against the enemy has long been just a ghost, the people accompanying him are philistines, whom German literature has long depicted in the guise of animals. And at the same time, Brecht’s poem is topical - it contains intonations, pictures, and hatred from the times of the First World War. Brecht denounces German militarism and war, and in his 1924 poem “The Ballad of Mother and Soldier,” the poet understands that the Weimar Republic was far from eradicating militant pan-Germanism.

During the years of the Weimar Republic, Brecht's poetic world expanded. Reality appears in the most acute class upheavals. But Brecht is not content with merely recreating images of oppression. His poems are always a revolutionary call: such are “Song of the United Front”, “The Faded Glory of New York, the Giant City”, “Song of the Class Enemy”. These poems clearly show how at the end of the 20s Brecht came to a communist worldview, how his spontaneous youthful rebellion grew into proletarian revolutionism.

Brecht's lyrics are very wide in their range, the poet can capture the real picture of German life in all its historical and psychological specificity, but he can also create a meditation poem, where the poetic effect is achieved not by description, but by the accuracy and depth of philosophical thought, combined with refined, not a far-fetched allegory. For Brecht, poetry is, first of all, the accuracy of philosophical and civil thought. Brecht considered even philosophical treatises or paragraphs of proletarian newspapers filled with civic pathos to be poetry (for example, the style of the poem “Message to Comrade Dimitrov, who fought the fascist tribunal in Leipzig” is an attempt to bring together the language of poetry and newspapers). But these experiments ultimately convinced Brecht that art should speak about everyday life in far from everyday language. In this sense, Brecht the lyricist helped Brecht the playwright.

In the 20s, Brecht turned to the theater. In Munich, he became a director and then a playwright at the city theater. In 1924, Brecht moved to Berlin, where he worked in the theater. He acts both as a playwright and as a theorist - a theater reformer. Already in these years, Brecht’s aesthetics, his innovative view on the tasks of drama and theater, took shape in its decisive features. Brecht outlined his theoretical views on art in the 1920s in separate articles and speeches, later combined into the collection “Against Theater Routine” and “Towards a Modern Theater.” Later, in the 30s, Brecht systematized his theatrical theory, clarifying and developing (*225) it, in the treatises “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, “New Principles of Acting Art”, “Small Organon for the Theater”, “Buying Copper” and some others.

Brecht calls his aesthetics and dramaturgy “epic,” “non-Aristotelian” theater; by this name he emphasizes his disagreement with the most important, according to Aristotle, principle of ancient tragedy, which was subsequently adopted to a greater or lesser extent by the entire world theatrical tradition. The playwright opposes the Aristotelian doctrine of catharsis. Catharsis is extraordinary, highest emotional intensity. Brecht recognized this side of catharsis and preserved it for his theater; We see emotional strength, pathos, and open manifestation of passions in his plays. But the purification of feelings in catharsis, according to Brecht, led to reconciliation with tragedy, life's horror became theatrical and therefore attractive, the viewer would not even mind experiencing something similar. Brecht constantly tried to dispel the legends about the beauty of suffering and patience. In "The Life of Galileo" he writes that a hungry person has no right to endure hunger, that "to starve" is simply not eating, and not showing the patience pleasing to heaven." Brecht wanted tragedy to provoke reflection on ways to prevent tragedy. Therefore He considered Shakespeare’s shortcoming to be that at performances of his tragedies, for example, “a discussion about the behavior of King Lear” is unthinkable and it creates the impression that Lear’s grief is inevitable: “it has always been this way, it is natural.”

The idea of ​​catharsis, generated by ancient drama, was closely related to the concept of the fatal predetermination of human destiny. Playwrights, with the power of their talent, revealed all the motivations for human behavior; in moments of catharsis, like lightning, they illuminated all the reasons for human actions, and the power of these reasons turned out to be absolute. That is why Brecht called Aristotelian theater fatalistic.

Brecht saw a contradiction between the principle of reincarnation in the theater, the principle of the author’s dissolution in the characters and the need for a direct, agitation-visual identification of the writer’s philosophical and political position. Even in the most successful and tendentious traditional dramas, in the best sense of the word, the position of the author, in Brecht's opinion, was associated with the figures of reasoners. This was the case in the dramas of Schiller, whom Brecht highly valued for his citizenship and ethical pathos. The playwright rightly believed that the characters of the characters should not be “mouthpieces of ideas”, that this reduces the artistic effectiveness of the play: “... on the stage of a realistic theater there is a place only for living people, people in flesh and blood, with all their contradictions, passions and actions. The stage is not a herbarium or a museum where stuffed animals are displayed..."

Brecht finds his own solution to this controversial issue: the theatrical performance and the stage action do not coincide with the plot of the play. The plot, the story of the characters, is interrupted by direct author's comments, lyrical digressions, and sometimes even demonstrations of physical experiments, reading newspapers and a unique, always relevant entertainer. Brecht breaks the illusion of continuous development of events in the theater, destroys the magic of scrupulous reproduction of reality. Theater is genuine creativity, far beyond mere verisimilitude. For Brecht, creativity and acting, for which only “natural behavior in the given circumstances” is completely insufficient. Developing his aesthetics, Brecht uses traditions consigned to oblivion in the everyday, psychological theater of the late 19th - early 20th centuries; he introduces choruses and zongs of contemporary political cabarets, lyrical digressions characteristic of poems, and philosophical treatises. Brecht allows a change in the commentary principle when reviving his plays: he sometimes has two versions of zongs and choruses for the same plot (for example, the zongs in the productions of “The Threepenny Opera” in 1928 and 1946 are different).

Brecht considered the art of impersonation to be obligatory, but completely insufficient for an actor. He believed that much more important was the ability to express and demonstrate one’s personality on stage - both civilly and creatively. In the game, reincarnation must necessarily alternate and be combined with a demonstration of artistic skills (recitation, movement, singing), which are interesting precisely because of their uniqueness, and, most importantly, with a demonstration of the actor’s personal civic position, his human credo.

Brecht believed that a person retains the ability of free choice and responsible decision in the most difficult circumstances. This conviction of the playwright manifested faith in man, a deep conviction that bourgeois society, with all the power of its corrupting influence, cannot reshape humanity in the spirit of its principles. Brecht writes that the task of “epic theater” is to force the audience “to give up ... the illusion that everyone in the place of the hero portrayed would act in the same way.” The playwright deeply comprehends the dialectics of social development and therefore crushes the vulgar sociology associated with positivism. Brecht always chooses complex, “non-ideal” ways to expose capitalist society. “Political primitiveness,” according to the playwright, is unacceptable on stage. Brecht wanted the life and actions of the characters in plays from the life (*227) of a proprietary society to always give the impression of unnaturalness. He sets a very difficult task for the theatrical performance: he compares the viewer to a hydraulic engineer who is “able to see the river simultaneously both in its actual channel and in the imaginary one along which it could flow if the slope of the plateau and the water level were different.” .

Brecht believed that a truthful depiction of reality is not limited only to the reproduction of social circumstances of life, that there are universal human categories that social determinism cannot fully explain (the love of the heroine of the “Caucasian Chalk Circle” Grusha for a defenseless abandoned child, Shen De’s irresistible impulse to goodness) . Their depiction is possible in the form of a myth, a symbol, in the genre of parable plays or parabolic plays. But in terms of socio-psychological realism, Brecht's dramaturgy can be placed on a par with the greatest achievements of world theater. The playwright carefully observed the basic law of realism of the 19th century. - historical specificity of social and psychological motivations. Comprehension of the qualitative diversity of the world has always been a primary task for him. Summing up his path as a playwright, Brecht wrote: “We must strive for an ever more accurate description of reality, and this, from an aesthetic point of view, is an ever more subtle and ever more effective understanding of description.”

Brecht's innovation was also manifested in the fact that he was able to fuse traditional, indirect methods of revealing aesthetic content (characters, conflicts, plot) with an abstract reflective principle into an indissoluble harmonious whole. What gives amazing artistic integrity to the seemingly contradictory combination of plot and commentary? The famous Brechtian principle of “alienation” - it permeates not only the commentary itself, but also the entire plot. Brecht's "alienation" is both a tool of logic and poetry itself, full of surprises and brilliance. Brecht makes “alienation” the most important principle of philosophical knowledge of the world, the most important condition for realistic creativity. Getting used to the role, to the circumstances does not break through the “objective appearance” and therefore serves realism less than “alienation”. Brecht did not agree that adaptation and transformation are the path to truth. K. S. Stanislavsky, who asserted this, was, in his opinion, “impatient.” For experience does not distinguish between truth and “objective appearance.”

Epic theater - presents a story, puts the viewer in the position of an observer, stimulates the viewer's activity, forces the viewer to make decisions, shows the viewer another stop, arouses the viewer's interest in the progress of the action, appeals to the viewer's mind, and not to the heart and feelings!!!

In emigration, in the struggle against fascism, Brecht's dramatic creativity flourished. It was extremely rich in content and varied in form. Among the most famous plays of the emigration is “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939). The more acute and tragic the conflict, the more critical, according to Brecht, a person’s thought should be. In the conditions of the 30s, “Mother Courage” sounded, of course, as a protest against the demagogic propaganda of war by the Nazis and was addressed to that part of the German population that succumbed to this demagoguery. War is depicted in the play as an element organically hostile to human existence.

The essence of "epic theater" becomes especially clear in connection with Mother Courage. Theoretical commentary is combined in the play with a realistic manner that is merciless in its consistency. Brecht believes that realism is the most reliable way of influence. That is why in “Mother Courage” the “true” face of life is so consistent and consistent even in small details. But one should keep in mind the two-dimensionality of this play - the aesthetic content of the characters, that is, the reproduction of life, where good and evil are mixed regardless of our desires, and the voice of Brecht himself, not satisfied with such a picture, trying to affirm good. Brecht's position is directly manifested in the zongs. In addition, as follows from Brecht’s director’s instructions for the play, the playwright provides theaters with ample opportunities to demonstrate the author’s thoughts with the help of various “alienations” (photography, film projection, direct address of actors to the audience).

The characters of the heroes in Mother Courage are depicted in all their complex contradictions. The most interesting is the image of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage. The versatility of this character evokes various feelings in the audience. The heroine attracts with her sober understanding of life. But she is a product of the mercantile, cruel and cynical spirit of the Thirty Years' War. Courage is indifferent to the causes of this war. Depending on the vicissitudes of fate, she hoists either a Lutheran or a Catholic banner over her wagon. Courage goes to war in the hope of big profits.

Brecht's disturbing conflict between practical wisdom and ethical impulses infects the entire play with the passion of argument and the energy of preaching. In the image of Catherine, the playwright painted the antipode of Mother Courage. Neither threats, nor promises, nor death forced Catherine to abandon her decision, dictated by her desire to help people in some way. The talkative Courage is opposed by the mute Catherine, the girl’s silent feat seems to cancel out all the lengthy reasoning of her mother.

Brecht's realism is manifested in the play not only in the depiction of the main characters and in the historicism of the conflict, but also in the life-like authenticity of episodic characters, in Shakespearean multicoloredness, reminiscent of a “Falstaffian background.” Each character, drawn into the dramatic conflict of the play, lives his own life, we guess about his fate, about his past and future life and seem to hear every voice in the discordant chorus of war.

In addition to revealing the conflict through the clash of characters, Brecht complements the picture of life in the play with zongs, which provide a direct understanding of the conflict. The most significant zong is “Song of Great Humility”. This is a complex type of “alienation,” when the author speaks as if on behalf of his heroine, sharpens her erroneous positions and thereby argues with her, instilling in the reader doubts about the wisdom of “great humility.” Brecht responds to the cynical irony of Mother Courage with his own irony. And Brecht’s irony leads the viewer, who has already succumbed to the philosophy of accepting life as it is, to a completely different view of the world, to an understanding of the vulnerability and fatality of compromises. The song about humility is a kind of foreign counterpart that allows us to understand the true, opposite wisdom of Brecht. The entire play, which critically portrays the practical, compromising “wisdom” of the heroine, is a continuous debate with the “Song of Great Humility.” Mother Courage does not see the light in the play, having survived the shock, she learns “no more about its nature than a guinea pig about the law of biology.” The tragic (personal and historical) experience, while enriching the viewer, taught Mother Courage nothing and did not enrich her at all. The catharsis she experienced turned out to be completely fruitless. Thus, Brecht argues that the perception of the tragedy of reality only at the level of emotional reactions in itself is not knowledge of the world, and is not much different from complete ignorance.

1. Creation of a theater that would reveal the system of mechanisms of social causation

The term “epic theater” was first introduced by E. Piscator, but it gained wide aesthetic distribution thanks to the directorial and theoretical works of Bertolt Brecht. Brecht gave the term "epic theater" a new interpretation.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) – creator of the theory of epic theater, which expanded ideas about the possibilities and purpose of theater, as well as a poet, thinker, playwright, director, whose work predetermined the development of world theater of the 20th century.

His plays “The Good Man of Szechwan”, “What is This Soldier, What is That”, “The Threepenny Opera”, “Mother Courage and Her Children”, “Mr. Puntila and His Servant Matti”, “The Career of Arturo Ui, Which Might Not Have Been” , “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, “The Life of Galileo” and others - have long been translated into many languages ​​and after the end of World War II they became firmly established in the repertoire of many theaters around the world. The huge array that makes up modern “Brecht studies” is devoted to understanding three problems:

1) Brecht’s ideological platform,

2) his theories of epic theater,

3) structural features, poetics and problematics of the plays of the great playwright.

Brecht brought to public attention and discussion the question of questions: why has the human community, since its inception, always existed, guided by the principle of exploitation of man by man? That is why the further, the more often and more justifiably Brecht’s plays are called not ideological dramas, but philosophical ones.

Brecht's biography was inseparable from the biography of the era, which was distinguished by fierce ideological battles and an extreme degree of politicization of public consciousness. For more than half a century, the life of the Germans took place in conditions of social instability and such severe historical cataclysms as the First and Second World Wars.

At the beginning of his creative career, Brecht was influenced by the expressionists. The essence of the innovative searches of the Expressionists stemmed from the desire not so much to explore the inner world of man, but to discover its dependence on the mechanisms of social oppression. From the expressionists, Brecht borrowed not only certain innovative techniques for constructing a play (refusal of linear construction of action, editing method, etc.). The experiences of the Expressionists prompted Brecht to delve deeper into the study of his own general idea - to create a type of theater (and therefore drama and acting) that would reveal with the utmost nakedness the system of mechanisms of social causality.

2. Analytical construction of the play (non-Aristotelian type of drama),

Brecht's parable plays.

Contrasting epic and dramatic forms of theater

To accomplish the task, he needs to create a structure for the play that would evoke in the audience not a traditional sympathetic perception of events, but an analytical attitude towards them. At the same time, Brecht constantly reminded that his version of theater does not at all reject either the inherent element of entertainment (entertainment) or emotional contagion inherent in the theater. It just shouldn’t be reduced to sympathy alone. This is where the first terminological opposition arose: “traditional Aristotelian theatre” (later Brecht increasingly replaced this term with a concept that more correctly expresses the meaning of his quest - “bourgeois”) - and “non-traditional”, “non-bourgeois”, “epic”. At one of the initial stages of developing the theory of epic theater, Brecht drew up the following scheme:

Brecht's system, initially outlined so schematically, was refined over the next few decades, and not only in theoretical works (the main ones are: notes to “The Threepenny Opera”, 1928; “Street Scene”, 1940; “Small Organon for the Theater”, 1949; “Dialectics on the Theater”, 1953), but also in plays that have a unique structure, as well as during the production of these plays, which required a special way of existence from the actor.

At the turn of the 20-30s. Brecht wrote a series of experimental plays, which he called “educational” (“Baden educational play on consent,” 1929; “Event,” 1930; “Exception and Rule,” 1930, etc.). It was in them that he first tested such an important technique of epicization as introducing a narrator onto the stage, narrating the background of the events taking place before the eyes of the audience. This character, not directly involved in the events, helped Brecht model at least two spaces on stage that reflected a variety of points of view on events, which, in turn, led to the emergence of a “supertext”. This intensified the audience’s critical attitude towards what they saw on stage.

In 1932, when staging the play “Mother” with a “Group of Young Actors”, separated from the theater “Junge Volks-Bühne” (Brecht wrote his play based on the novel of the same name by M. Gorky), Brecht uses this technique of epicization (introduction, if not the the figure of the narrator, then the elements of the story) at the level of no longer a literary, but a director’s device. One of the episodes was called “The Story of May Day, 1905.” The demonstrators on the stage stood huddled together, they were not going anywhere. The actors played an interrogation situation before the court, where their characters, as if during an interrogation, talked about what happened:

Andrey. Pelageya Vlasova walked next to me, closely following her son. When we went to pick him up in the morning, she suddenly came out of the kitchen, already dressed, and to our question: where was she going? - answered... Mother. With you.

Until this moment, Elena Weigel, who played Pelageya Vlasova, was visible in the background as a barely visible figure behind the others (small, wrapped in a scarf). During Andrei’s speech, the viewer began to see her face with surprised and incredulous eyes, and in response to her remark she stepped forward.

Andrey. Four or six of them rushed to capture the banner. The banner lay next to him. And then Pelageya Vlasova, our comrade, calm, unperturbed, leaned over and raised the banner. Mother. Give me the banner here, Smilgin, I said. Give! I'll carry him. All this will change yet.

Brecht significantly reconsiders the tasks facing the actor, diversifying the ways of his stage existence. The key concept of Brecht's theory of epic theater is alienation, or defamiliarization.

Brecht draws attention to the fact that in traditional “bourgeois” European theater, which seeks to immerse the viewer in psychological experiences, the viewer is invited to fully identify the actor and the role.

3. Developing different ways of acting (defamiliarization)

Brecht proposes to consider the “street scene” as the prototype of epic theater, when some event took place in life and eyewitnesses try to reproduce it. In his famous article, which is called “The Street Scene,” he emphasizes: “An essential element of the street scene is the naturalness with which the street storyteller behaves in an ambivalent position; he constantly gives us an account of two situations at once. He behaves naturally as a portrayer and shows the natural behavior of the person portrayed. But he never forgets and never allows the viewer to forget that he is not the one being portrayed, but the one representing. That is, what the public sees is not some independent, contradictory third being, in which the contours of the first (depicting) and second (depicting) have merged, as the theater that is familiar to us demonstrates in its productions. The opinions and feelings of the person depicting and the person depicted are not identical.”

This is exactly how Elena Weigel played her Antigone, staged by Brecht in 1948 in the Swiss city of Chur, based on her own adaptation of the ancient original. At the end of the performance, a choir of elders escorted Antigone to the cave in which she was to be walled up alive. Bringing her a jug of wine, the elders consoled the victim of violence: she would die, but with honor. Antigone calmly replies: “You shouldn’t be indignant about me, it would be better if you accumulated discontent against injustice in order to turn your anger to the common good!” And turning, she leaves with a light and firm step; it seems as if it is not the guardian who is leading her, but she is leading him. But Antigone went to her death. Weigel never played in this scene the direct manifestations of grief, confusion, despair, and anger that are usual for traditional psychological theater. The actress played, or rather, showed the audience this episode as a long-ago accomplished fact, remaining in her – Elena Weigel’s – memory as a bright memory of the heroic and uncompromising act of young Antigone.

What was also important about Antigone Weigel was that the young heroine was played by the forty-eight-year-old actress, who had gone through the difficult trials of fifteen years of emigration, without makeup. The initial condition of her play (and Brecht’s production) was: “I, Weigel, show Antigone.” The personality of the actress rose above Antigone. Behind the ancient Greek story stood the fate of Weigel herself. She filtered Antigone’s actions through her own life experience: her heroine was guided not by an emotional impulse, but by wisdom gained through harsh life experience, not by the foresight given by the gods, but by personal conviction. Here we were not talking about childhood ignorance of death, but about the fear of death and overcoming this fear.

It should be especially emphasized that the development of various methods of acting in itself was not an end in itself for Brecht. By changing the distance between the actor and the role, as well as the actor and the spectator, Brecht sought to present the problem of the play in a diversified way. For the same purpose, Brecht organizes the dramatic text in a special way. In almost all the plays that made up Brecht's classical legacy, the action takes place, to use modern vocabulary, in “virtual space and time.” Thus, in “The Good Man of Szechwan,” the author’s first remark warns that in the province of Szechwan all the places on the globe where man exploits man were generalized. In "Caucasian Chalk Circle" the action supposedly takes place in Georgia, but it is the same fictional Georgia as Sezuan. In “What is this soldier, what is that” - the same fictional China, etc. The subtitle of “Mother Courage” states that this is a chronicle of the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century, but we are talking about the situation of war in principle. The remoteness of the events depicted in time and space allowed the author to reach the level of large generalizations; it is not for nothing that Brecht’s plays are often characterized as parabolas and parables. It was the modeling of “defamiliarized” situations that allowed Brecht to assemble his plays from heterogeneous “pieces,” which, in turn, required the actors to use different ways of existing on stage in one performance.

4. The play “Mother Courage and Her Children” as an example of the embodiment of Brecht’s aesthetic and ethical ideas

An ideal example of the embodiment of Brecht’s ethical and aesthetic ideas was the play “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1949), where the main character was played by Elena Weigel.

The huge stage with a round horizon is mercilessly illuminated by the general light - everything here is in full view, or under a microscope. No decorations. Above the stage there is an inscription: “Sweden. Spring 1624." The silence is interrupted by the creaking of the stage turntable. Gradually the sounds of military horns join him - louder, louder. And when the harmonica began to sound, a van rolled onto the stage in a (second) circle rotating in the opposite direction; it was full of goods, with a drum dangling from the side. This is the camp house of the regimental sutler Anna Fierling. Her nickname - "Mother Courage" - is written in large letters on the side of the van. Harnessed to the shafts, the van is pulled by her two sons, and her mute daughter Catherine is on the trestle, playing the harmonica. Courage herself - in a long pleated skirt, a quilted jacket, a scarf tied at the ends at the back of her head - leaned back freely, sitting next to Catherine, grabbed the top of the van with her hand, the overly long sleeves of the jacket were conveniently rolled up, and on her chest, in a special buttonhole, was a tin spoon . Objects in Brecht's performances were present at the level of characters. Courage constantly interacted with the stirrup: van, spoon, bag, wallet. The spoon on Weigel’s chest is like an order in her buttonhole, like a banner above a column. The spoon is a symbol of overactive adaptability. Courage easily, without hesitation, and most importantly, without a twinge of conscience, changes the banners over her van (depending on who wins on the battlefield), but never parted with the spoon - her own banner, which she worships as an icon, because Courage feeds on war . The van at the beginning of the performance appears full of goods, but at the end it is empty and in tatters. But the main thing is that Courage will carry it alone. She will lose all her children in the war that feeds her: “If you want bread from the war, give it meat.”

The task of the actress and director was not at all to create a naturalistic illusion. The objects in her hands, the hands themselves, her entire pose, the sequence of movements and actions - all these are details necessary in the development of the plot, in showing the process. These details stood out, enlarged, and came closer to the viewer, like a close-up in cinema. Slowly selecting and working out these details during rehearsals, she sometimes aroused the impatience of the actors, who were accustomed to working “by temperament.”

Brecht's main actors at first were Elena Weigel and Ernst Busch. But already in the Berliner Ensemble he managed to train a whole galaxy of actors. Among them are Gisela May, Hilmer Tate, Ekehard Schall and others. However, neither they nor Brecht himself (unlike Stanislavsky) developed a system for educating an actor in the epic theater. And yet, Brecht’s legacy attracted and continues to attract not only theater researchers, but also many outstanding actors and directors of the second half of the 20th century.

Bertolyp Eugen Brecht (Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956) belongs to the largest cultural figures of the 20th century. He was a playwright, poet, prose writer, art theorist, and leader of one of the most interesting theater groups of the last century.

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg in 1898. His parents were quite wealthy people (his father was the commercial director of a paper mill). This made it possible to give the children a good education. In 1917, Brecht entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich, and also enrolled as a student in the Faculty of Medicine and in the theater seminar of the extraordinary Professor Kucher. In 1921, he was excluded from the lists of the university, since in that year he did not take revenge in any of the faculties. He abandoned his career as a respectable bourgeois for the sake of a dubious “ascension to Valhalla,” as his father used to say with an incredulous and ironic grin. Since childhood, surrounded by love and care, Brecht, however, did not accept the lifestyle of his parents, although he maintained warm relations with them.

From his youth, the future writer was engaged in self-education. The list of books he read in childhood and adolescence is huge, although he read them according to the principle of “repulsion”: only what was not taught or was prohibited in the gymnasium. The “Bible” given by his grandmother was of exceptional importance for the formation of his worldview and worldview, as Brecht himself repeatedly spoke about. However, the future playwright perceived the content of the Old and New Testaments in a unique way. Brecht secularized the content of the Bible, perceiving it as a secular work with an exciting plot, examples of the eternal struggle between fathers and children, descriptions of crimes and punishments, love stories and dramas. The first dramatic experience of fifteen-year-old Brecht (interpretation of the biblical story of Judith), published in a gymnasium literary publication, was already instinctively constructed by him according to the principle alienation, which later became defining for the mature playwright: he wanted to turn the source material inside out and reduce it to the materialistic essence inherent in it. In the Augsburg fair theater, Brecht and his comrades staged adaptations of “Oberon,” “Hamlet,” “Faust,” and “Free Shooter” even during his high school years.

Relatives did not interfere with Brecht's studies, although they did not encourage them. Subsequently, the writer himself assessed his path from a bourgeois-respectable way of life to a bohemian-proletarian one: “My parents put collars on me, // Cultivated the habit of servants // And taught the art of commanding. But // When I grew up and looked around me, // I didn’t like the people of my class, // I didn’t like having servants and being in charge // I left my class and joined the ranks of the poor.”

During the First World War, Brecht was drafted into the army as a medical orderly. His attitude towards the Social Democratic Party of Germany was complex and contradictory. Having accepted the revolution, both in Russia and in Germany, subordinating his art in many respects to the propaganda of the ideas of Marxism, Brecht never belonged to any party, preferring freedom of action and belief. After the proclamation of a republic in Bavaria, he was elected to the Augsburg Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, but a few weeks after the elections he retired from work, subsequently citing the fact that “he was unable to think only in political categories.” The fame of a playwright and theater reformer overshadows Brecht’s poetic skill, although already at the front he became popular thanks to his poems and songs (“The Legend of a Dead Soldier”). As a playwright, Brecht gained fame after the publication of the anti-war drama Drums in the Night (1922), which brought him the Kleist Prize.

Since the second half of the twenties, Brecht has been acting both as a playwright and as a theorist - a theater reformer. Already at the beginning of 1924, he felt stuffy in the “province” - Munich, and he moved to Berlin with Arnolt Bronnen, an expressionist writer, author of the play “The Patricide”. At the beginning of the Berlin period, Brecht looked up to Bronnen in everything, who left us with a brief explanation of their “joint platform”: both completely rejected everything that had hitherto been composed, written, published by others. Following Bronnen, Brecht even has the letter in his name (Berthold) d replaces with ha.

The beginning of Brecht's creative path falls on the era of revolutionary disruption, which primarily affected the social consciousness of the era. The war, the counter-revolution, the amazing behavior of a “simple little man” who endured everything to the end, made me want to express my attitude to what was happening in artistic form. Brecht's creative career began at a time when art

In Germany, the dominant movement was expressionism. The ideological influence of aesthetics and ethics expressionism Most writers of that time - G. Mann, B. Kellerman, F. Kafka - did not avoid it. Brecht's ideological and aesthetic appearance stands out sharply against this background. The playwright accepts the formal innovations of the Expressionists. Thus, in the stage design of the play “Drums in the Night” everything is deformed, turbulent, exploded, hysterical: on the stage there are lanterns that are crooked and crippled by the wind and time, crooked, almost falling houses. Nevertheless Brecht sharply opposes the abstract ethical thesis of the expressionists “man is good”, against the preaching of spiritual renewal and moral self-improvement of man, regardless of the social and material conditions of life. One of the central themes of Brecht's work - the theme of the "good man" - goes back to this polemic between the playwright and the expressionists. Already in his early plays “Baal” and “Drums in the Night,” without denying the form of expressionist drama, he strives to prove that a person is what the conditions of his life make him: in a wolf society one cannot achieve high morality from a person, in it he is not may be "kind". In fact, this already contains the main idea of ​​\u200b\u200bThe Good Man of Sichuan. Reflections on the ethical side of human behavior naturally lead him to the social topic. Productions of the plays “Mann ist Mann” (“Mann ist Mann”, 1927), “The Threepenny Opera” (“Dreigroschenoper”, 1928), “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” (“Aufsticg und Fall dcr Stadt Machagonny”, 1929 ) bring B. Brecht wide fame. It was during these years that the writer seriously turned to the study of Marxist theory. A recording from this period has been preserved: “I got into Capital up to my ears.” Now I have to find out everything to the end.” As Brecht later recalled, reading Capital explained to him that he had long sought to find out where “the wealth of the rich comes from.” At this time, the writer attended lectures with the telling title “On the Living and the Dead in Marxism” at the Berlin Marxist Workers’ School, and took part in seminars on dialectical and historical materialism. All this naturally leads him to the fact that he begins to perceive the history of mankind as the history of class struggle, and this in turn leads to the fact that he consciously subordinates his art to propaganda work among the workers. The activity of B. Brecht's life position manifested itself in the fact that now for him

was It is not enough to objectively explain the world, the performance should, from his point of view, stimulate the viewer to change reality, he wanted to influence the depths of consciousness of the class, for which he began to write: “A new goal has been designated - pedagogy!"(1929). This is how the genre appears in Brecht's work "educational" or "instructive" plays, the purpose of which was to show the politically erroneous behavior of workers, and then, by playing out models of life situations, to encourage workers to take correct active actions in the real world ("Mother", "Event"). In such plays, every thought was negotiated to the end, presented to the public in a ready-made form, as a guide to immediate action. They did not have realistic characters endowed with individual human traits. They were replaced by conventional figures, similar to mathematical signs, used only during the course of the proof. The experience of “educational” plays, which the writer abandoned in the early thirties, would be used after the Second World War in the famous “Models” of the forties.

After Hitler came to power, Brecht found himself in exile, “changing countries more often than shoes,” and spent fifteen years in exile. Emigration did not break the writer. It was during these years that his dramatic creativity blossomed, and such famous plays appeared as “Fear and Despair in the Third Empire”, “Mother Courage and Her Children”, “The Life of Galileo”, “The Career of Arturo Ui, which Might Not Have Happened”, “A good man from Sichuan”, “Caucasian chalk circle”.

Since the mid-twenties, Brecht's innovative aesthetics began to take shape, theory of epic theater. The writer's theoretical heritage is great. His views on art are set out in the treatises “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, “New Principles of Acting Art”, “Small Organon for the Theater”, in the theatrical dialogues “Buying Copper”, etc. Having consciously placed his skill at the service of ideological influence, the playwright tried to establish new relationship between the viewer and the theater, sought to embody in stage images content that was not characteristic of traditional theater. Brecht wanted, as he said, to embody on stage “such large-scale phenomena” of modern life as “war, oil, money, railways, parliament, wage labor, land.” This new content forced Brecht to look for new artistic forms, to create an original concept of drama, the so-called "epic theater" Brecht's art has given rise to controversial assessments, but it undoubtedly belongs to the realistic movement. He himself has repeatedly insisted on this.

Brecht. Thus, in the work “Breadth and Diversity of the Realistic Method,” the writer opposed the dogmatic approach to realistic art and defended the realist’s right to fantasy, convention, to create images and situations that are incredible from the point of view of everyday life, as was the case with Cervantes and Swift. The forms of the work, in his opinion, can be different, but the conventional technique serves realism if reality is correctly understood and reflected. Brecht's innovation did not exclude an appeal to the classical heritage. On the contrary, according to the playwright, reproducing classical plots gives them new life and realizes their original potential.

Brecht's theory of “epic theater” was never a set of rigid rules of normative aesthetics. It stemmed from Brecht's direct artistic practice and was in constant development. Placing the task of social education of the viewer at the forefront, Brecht saw the main flaw of traditional theater in the fact that it is a “breeding ground for illusions,” a “dream factory.” The writer distinguishes two types of theater: dramatic (“Aristotelian”) and “epic” (“non-Aristotelian”). Unlike traditional theater, which appealed to the viewer’s feelings and sought to conquer his emotions, “epic” appeals to the viewer’s mind, socially and morally enlightens him. Brecht repeatedly turned to the comparative characteristics of the two types of theater. He states: “1) Dramatic form of theatre: The stage embodies the event. // Involves the viewer into the action and // “Wears out” his activity, // Awakens the viewer’s emotions, // transports the viewer to another setting, // Places the viewer in the center of the event and // makes him empathize, // Arouses the viewer’s interest to the denouement. // Appeals to the viewer's feelings.

2) Epic form of theater: It tells the story of an event. // Puts the viewer in the position of an observer, but // Stimulates his activity, // Forces him to make decisions, // Shows the viewer a different environment, // Contrastes the viewer with the event and // Forces him to study, // Arouses the viewer's interest in the course of action . // Appeals to the mind of the viewer" (The author's spelling has been preserved. - T.Sh.).

Brecht constantly contrasts the purpose, the concept of his innovative theater with the traditional one, or as he calls it "ari-

Stotelian» theater. In classical ancient Greek tragedy, the playwright's resistance and negative attitude was caused by its most important principle of catharsis. It seemed to Brecht that the effect of purifying passions leads to reconciliation and acceptance of imperfect reality. The epithet “epic” should also focus our attention on Brecht’s polemics with the norms of ancient aesthetics: it is from Aristotle’s “Poetics” that the tradition of contrasting the epic and the dramatic in art originates. Artistic consciousness of the 20th century. characterized, on the contrary, by their interpenetration.

Innovations in Brecht's theater also concerned the acting of actors, who had to not only master the art of impersonation, but also had to judge their character. The playwright even stated that a notice should be posted in his theater: “We ask that you do not shoot at the actor, because he is playing the role as best he can.” However, the civic position should not contradict the realistic image, since the scene is “not a herbarium or a zoological museum with stuffed animals.”

What allows Brecht’s theater to create that distance between the viewer and the stage, when the viewer no longer just empathizes with the character, but soberly evaluates and judges what is happening? Such a moment in Brecht’s aesthetics is the so-called alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt, V-Effekt). With its help, the playwright, director and actor show life or other familiar life collisions and conflicts, human types in an unexpected, unusual perspective, from an unusual point of view. This makes the viewer involuntarily surprised and take a critical position in relation to familiar things and known phenomena. Brecht appeals to the mind of the viewer, and in such a theater a political poster, a slogan, and zone, and direct appeal to the viewer. Brecht's theater is a synthetic theater of mass influence, a spectacle with a political orientation. It is close to the German folk theater, in which convention allowed for a synthesis of words, music, and dance. Zongs - solo songs, performed supposedly in the course of the action, actually “alienated”, turned a new, unusual side to what was happening on stage. Brecht specifically draws the audience's attention to this component of the performance. Zongs were most often performed on the proscenium, under special lighting, and were faced directly into the auditorium.

How is the “alienation effect” embodied in artistic practice? The most popular from Brecht's repertoire and still enjoys today “The Threepenny Opera” (“Dreigroshenoper”, 1928), created by him based on the play by the English playwright John Gay “The Beggar's Opera”. The world of the city dweller, thieves and prostitutes, beggars and bandits, recreated by Brecht, has only a distant relation to the English specifics of the original. The problematics of The Threepenny Opera are directly related to the German reality of the twenties. One of the main problems of this work is very precisely formulated by the leader of the bandit gang, Makhit, who asserted the thesis that the “dirty” crimes of his henchmen are nothing more than ordinary business, and the “clean” machinations of entrepreneurs and bankers are genuine and sophisticated crimes. The “alienation effect” helped convey this idea to the audience. Thus, the chieftain of a bandit gang, fanned in classical, especially in German literature, starting with Schiller, with a romantic aura, reminds Brecht of a middle-class entrepreneur. We see him in oversleeves, bending over a receipt and expenditure book. This, according to Brecht, was supposed to instill in the viewer the thesis that the bandit is the same as a bourgeois.

Let's try to trace the technique of alienation using the example of the playwright's three most famous works. Brecht loved to turn to familiar, traditional subjects. This had a special meaning rooted in the very nature of “epic theater.” Knowledge of the denouement, from his point of view, suppressed the spectator's random emotions and aroused interest in the course of the action, and this, in turn, forced the person to take a critical position in relation to what was happening on stage. Literary source of the play “Mother Courage and her children” (“Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder”», 1938 ) was a story by a very popular writer in Germany during the Thirty Years' War, Grimmslshausen. The work was created in 1939, that is, on the eve of the Second World War, and was a warning to the German people, who did not object to the outbreak of war and counted on benefits and enrichment from it. The plot of the play is a typical example of the “alienation effect.” The main character in the play is the canteen Anna Fierling, or as she is also called, Mother Courage. She received her nickname for her desperate courage, since she is not afraid of soldiers, the enemy, or the commander. She has three children: two brave sons and a mute daughter, Catherine. Katrin's muteness is a mark of war; once in her childhood she was frightened by soldiers, and she lost the ability to speak clearly. The play is built on continuous action: a cart is rolling across the stage all the time. In the first scene, a van loaded with popular goods is rolled onto the stage by two strong sons of Courage. Anna Vierling follows the Second Finnish Regiment and fears more than anything that the world will “erupt.” Brecht uses the verb “erupted.” This has a special meaning. This word is usually used when talking about natural disasters. For Mother Courage, the world is such a catastrophe. During twelve years of war, Mother Courage loses everything: her children, money, goods. The sons become victims of military exploits, the mute daughter Catherine dies, saving the inhabitants of the city of Halle from destruction. In the last picture, just like in the first, a van rolls onto the stage, only now it is pulled forward by a lonely, weight-lost, old mother without children, a pitiful beggar. Anna Fierling expected to enrich herself through the war, but paid this insatiable Moloch a terrible tribute. The image of an unhappy poor woman, crushed by fate, a “little man” traditionally evokes pity and compassion among viewers and readers. However, Brecht, using the “alienation effect,” tried to convey a different idea to his audience. The writer shows how poverty, exploitation, social lack of rights and deception morally deform the “little man”, giving rise to selfishness, cruelty, public and social blindness. It is no coincidence that this topic was extremely relevant in German literature of the 1930s and 1940s, since millions of average, so-called “little” Germans not only did not oppose the war, but also approved of Hitler’s policies, hoping, like Anna Vierling, to get rich through war, at the expense of the suffering of others. So, to the question of the sergeant major in the first film: “What is war without soldiers?” Courage calmly replies: “Let the soldiers not be mine.” The sergeant-major naturally draws the conclusion: “Let it mean that your war eats the stub and spits out the apple? So that the war feeds your offspring - that’s welcome, but so that you pay rent to the war, it’s a pipe call?” The picture ends with the prophetic words of the sergeant major: “If you want to live through war, you have to pay for it!” Mother Courage paid for the war with the three lives of her children, but she did not learn anything, did not learn a bitter lesson from this. And even at the end of the play, having lost everything, she continues to believe in the war as a “great nurse.” The play is built on a continuous action - the persistent repetition of the same disastrous mistake. Brecht was much criticized for the fact that at the end of the play the author did not lead his heroine to insight and repentance. To this he replied: “The audience sometimes in vain expects that the victim of a disaster will definitely learn a lesson from this... What is important for the playwright is not that Courage sees the light at the end... It is important for him that the viewer sees everything clearly.” Social blindness and public ignorance do not indicate mental poverty, but it is kind and humane just as much as it is beneficial, as much as it corresponds to the usual “common sense” of the average “little man,” which turns him into a cautious philistine. Courage capitulated and, as the songs say about the “Great Surrender,” marched under this familiar banner all her life. Of particular importance in the play is the zong about “Great People”, which largely contains the key to the ideological concept of the play and brings together all the main motives, in particular, the problem of good and evil in human life is solved, the question of whether virtues what is the evil of human life? Brecht debunks this cozy position of the average “little man.” Using the example of Catherine’s act, the playwright asserts: goodness is not only disastrous, goodness is humane. This idea is addressed by Brecht to his contemporaries. Catherine’s act does not only strengthen the subjective guilt of the sutler, but also unambiguously accuses the Germans, who are not speechless, but are silent in anticipation of the military threat. Brecht affirms the idea that there is nothing fatal in human destiny. Everything depends on his conscious life position, on his choice.

When considering the program of an epic theater, one might get the impression that Brecht neglects the emotions of the spectator. This is not so, but the playwright insisted that very specific places should make you laugh and shock. One day, Elena Weigel, Brecht's wife and one of the best performers of the role of Courage, decided to try a new acting device: in the final scene, Anna Vierling, broken by adversity, falls under the wheels of her van. Behind the scenes, Brecht was indignant. Such a technique only indicates that the old woman has lost her strength and evokes compassion among the audience. On the contrary, from his point of view, in the finale the actions of the “incorrigible ignorant” should not relax the viewer’s emotions, but stimulate the correct conclusion. Weigel's device prevented this.

Drama is considered one of the most life-like in Brecht's works. “Life of Galileo” (“Leben des Galilei”, 1938-1939, 1947, 1955), located at the intersection of historical and philosophical issues. It has several editions, and this is not a formal question. Associated with them is the history of the concept, the changing concept of the work, and the interpretation of the image of the main character. In the first version of the play, Brecht's Galileo is, of course, a bearer of a positive principle, and his contradictory behavior only testifies to the complex tactics of anti-fascist fighters seeking the victory of their cause. In this interpretation, Galileo's renunciation was perceived as a far-sighted tactic of struggle. In 1945-1947 the question of the tactics of the anti-fascist underground was no longer relevant, but the atomic explosion over Hiroshima forced Brecht to evaluate Galileo’s defection differently. Now the main problem for Brecht becomes the moral responsibility of scientists to humanity for their discoveries. Brecht associates Galileo's apostasy with the irresponsibility of modern physicists who created the atomic bomb. How is the “alienation effect” realized in the plot of this play? For centuries, the legend of Galileo, who proved Copernicus’s guess, was passed down from mouth to mouth, how, broken by torture, he renounced his heretical teaching, and then nevertheless exclaimed: “But still she is spinning!” The legend is not confirmed historically; Galileo never uttered the famous words, and after his renunciation he submitted to the church. Brecht creates a work in which famous words are not only not spoken, but it is argued that they could not have been spoken. Brecht's Galileo is a true Renaissance man, complex and contradictory. For him, the process of cognition is included on equal terms in the chain of life’s pleasures, and this is alarming. Gradually, it becomes clear to the viewer that this attitude to life has dangerous sides and consequences. So Galileo does not want to sacrifice comfort, pleasure, even in the name of the highest duty. Among others, it is alarming that the scientist, for the sake of profit, is selling to the Venetian Republic a spyglass that was not invented by him. The incentive for this is very simple - he needs “pots of meat”: “You know,” he tells his student, “I despise people whose brains are not able to fill their stomachs.” Years will pass, and Galileo, faced with the need to choose, will sacrifice the truth for the sake of a calm, well-fed life. The problem of choice one way or another faces all of Brecht's famous heroes. However, in the play “The Life of Galileo” it is central. In his work "Small Organon" Brecht argued: "Man must be considered as he could be." The playwright diligently maintains in the audience the belief that Galileo could have resisted the Inquisition, because the Pope did not sanction the torture of Galileo. The scientist's weaknesses are known to his enemies, and they know that it will not be difficult to get him to renounce. Once, when expelling a student, Galileo said: “He who does not know the truth is simply ignorant, but he who knows it and calls it a lie is a criminal.” These words sound like a prophecy in the play. Condemning himself later for his weakness, Galileo exclaims, addressing the scientists: “The gap between you and humanity may one day become so enormous that your cries of triumph over some discovery will be answered by a universal cry of horror.” These words became prophetic.

Every detail in Brecht's dramaturgy is meaningful. The scene of the vestments of Pope Urban VIII seems significant. There is a kind of “alienation” of his human essence. As the rite of vestment progresses, Urban the man, who opposes the interrogation of Galileo in the Inquisition, turns into Urban VIII, authorizing the interrogation of the scientist in the torture chamber. The Life of Galileo is often included by theaters in their repertoires. The famous singer and actor Ernst Busch is rightfully considered the best performer of the role of Galileo.

As you know, Brecht’s focus was always on the simple, so-called “little” man, who, from his point of view, by his very existence upset the plans of the greats of this world. It was with the simple “little” man, with his social enlightenment and moral revival, that Brecht connected the future. Brecht never flirted with the people, his heroes are not ready-made models to follow, they always have weaknesses and shortcomings, so there is always the possibility of criticism. The rational grain sometimes lies in stimulating critical thought in the viewer.

Brecht's work has its own leitmotifs. One of them - theme of good and evil, embodied, in fact, in all the works of the playwright. “The Good Man from Sichuan” (“Der gute Mensch von Sezuan” f 1938-1942) - a play-parable. Brecht finds an amazing form for this thing - conventionally fabulous and at the same time concretely sensual. Researchers note that the impetus for writing this play was Goethe’s ballad “God and the Bayadere,” based on the Hindu legend about how the god Magadev, wanting to experience human kindness, descends to earth and wanders the earth in the form of a beggar. Not a single person allows a tired traveler into his home because he is poor. Only the bayadera opens the door to her hut for the wanderer. The next morning, the young man she loved dies, and the bayadera voluntarily, like a wife, follows him to the funeral pyre. For her kindness and devotion, God rewards the bayadera and takes her alive to heaven. Brecht will “alienate” a well-known plot. He poses the question: does the bayadera need God’s forgiveness and isn’t it easy for her to be kind in heaven and how to remain kind on earth? The gods, concerned about the complaints that rise to heaven from the lips of people, descend to earth to find at least one good person. They are tired, they are hot, but the only friendly person who met on their way, the water carrier Van, also turned out to be not honest enough - his mug with a double bottom. The doors of rich houses are slammed before the gods. Only the door of the poor girl Shen De remains open, who cannot refuse to help anyone. In the morning, the gods, having rewarded her with coins, ascend on a pink cloud, pleased that they have found at least one good person. Having opened a tobacco shop, Shen De begins to help everyone in need. After a few days, it becomes clear to her that if she does not become evil, she will never be able to do good deeds. At this moment, her cousin appears: the evil and calculating Shoi Da. People and gods are concerned about the disappearance of the only good person on earth. During the trial, it becomes clear that the cousin hated by the people and the kind “angel of the suburbs” are one person. Brecht considered it unacceptable when, in individual productions, the leading lady tried to create two diametrically opposed images, or when Shoi Da and Shen De were played by different performers. “The Good Man of Sichuan” states clearly and concisely: by nature, man is good, but life and social circumstances are such that good deeds bring ruin, and bad deeds bring prosperity. By deciding to consider Shen De a good person, the gods did not essentially solve the problem. Brecht deliberately does not put an end to it. The viewer of the epic theater must draw his own conclusion.

One of the remarkable plays of the post-war period is the famous “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” (“Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis”, 1949). It is curious that in this work Brecht “alienates” the biblical parable of King Solomon. His heroes are both bright individuals and bearers of biblical wisdom. The timid attempt of a high school student-Brecht to read the Bible in a new way in the adaptation play “Judith” is realized on a large scale in the parable play “Caucasian Chalk Circle”, just as the didactic tasks of “educational” plays will find their vivid embodiment in “model” plays: "Antigone-48", "Coriolanus", "Governor", "Don Juan". The first in a series of post-war “models” was “Antigone”, written in 1947 in Switzerland and published in the book "Antigone-48 model" in Berlin in 1949. Choosing the famous tragedy of Sophocles as the first “model”, Brecht proceeded from its social and philosophical issues. The playwright saw in it the possibility of a relevant reading and rethinking of the content from the point of view of the historical situation in which the German people found themselves during the days of the death of the Reich, and from the point of view of the questions that history posed to them at that time. The playwright was aware that “models” that are too clearly associated with specific political analogies and historical situations are not destined to have a long life. They will quickly become morally “obsolete,” therefore, to see only an anti-fascist in the new German Antigone meant for the playwright to impoverish the philosophical sound of not only the ancient image, but also the “model” itself. It is interesting how, in this context, Brecht gradually clarifies the theme and purpose of the play. So if in the production of 1947-1948. the task of showing “the role of violence in the collapse of the ruling elite” came to the fore, and the remarks accurately pointed to the recent past of Germany (“Berlin.

April 1945. Dawn. Two sisters return from a bomb shelter to their home”), then after four years such “attachment” and straightforwardness began to fetter the directors of the play. In the new Prologue for the production of Antigone in 1951, Brecht highlights a different moral and ethical aspect, a different theme - “the great moral feat of Antigone.” Thus, the playwright introduces the ideological content of his “model” into the area of ​​problems characteristic of German literature of the 30-40s of the confrontation between barbarism and humanism, human dignity, and the moral responsibility of man and citizen for their actions.

Concluding the conversation about Brecht’s “epic theater,” it should be emphasized once again that the writer’s aesthetic views developed and became more specific throughout his life. The principles of his “non-Aristotle” drama were modified. The text of his famous plays did not remain unchanged, always “turned” to the corresponding historical situation and the social and moral needs of the viewer. “The most important thing is people” - this is the will Bertolt Brecht leaves to his like-minded people and successors.