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Theatre and Performance Studies

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

1995

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Choices Of Evil: Brecht's Modernism In The Work With Eisler And Dessau, William Grange Jan 1995

Choices Of Evil: Brecht's Modernism In The Work With Eisler And Dessau, William Grange

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Brecht wanted composers of music for his mature work who were capable of creating an idiom complementary to his own modernist ideas of theatrical performance. That idiom he called "gestic" music, the kind capable of "conveying particular attitudes adopted by the speaker towards other men" [bestimmte Haltungen des Sprechenden anzeigt, die dieser anderen Menschen gegenüber einnimmt]. When playing a fascist, for example, the actor was not merely to present the character's pompousness; he or she was to illustrate a political stance toward that pompousness. Nor was the actor to reveal layers of the character's motivation, like girls in Broadway burlesque …


"The Blondest Of The Blondes", William Grange Prof. Dr. Jan 1995

"The Blondest Of The Blondes", William Grange Prof. Dr.

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

The German theatre underwent a revolution of shattering magnitude in 1933 when the National Socialists assumed power. The Nazis had an avid interest in theatre as an expression of “the peoples’ will,” even as they viewed the theatre of the Weimar Republic as a Babylon of “hyper-modern, bolshevistic, mollusk-like, and neurasthenic aesthetics.”