Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a theater man, true homo theatralis, director, playwright, playwright, theorist and reformer of theater. He was also a poet and writer. But which of this was the first and most – it is perhaps impossible to determine quite clearly. Fredric Jameson therefore proposes to speak of the" Brecht complex " as a set of heterogeneous, discontinuous and fragmentary layers of history – after all, such an assembly of contradictory fragments was also Brecht's favorite theatrical and artistic form. Around the same time, Alain Badiou defends a similar position, namely to take Brecht as an "emblematic figure of the twentieth century". Both authors, both Jameson and Badiou, therefore, start from the observation that Brecht's life coincides with the history of the century to which he belonged. There is therefore no simple disjunction between the life and Times of Bertolt Brecht, there is no insurmountable gap, quite the opposite – the conjunction from the title of the performance suggests that between one and the other is an irreversible dialectical interplay, that they must be deciphered in a common, interplay and that, therefore, one cannot speak of one without saying something about the other at the same time. The life and times of Bertolt Brecht is thus not a classic biography, whether in Brecht's case it is full of interesting and unusual anecdotes, myths, legends and almost completely incredible destinies. Rather, an attempt, together with and through Brecht, to say something about the historical context in which he lived, about fascism and exile, and about gloomy times in which talking about trees, as Brecht wrote in the famous poem "behind us born", meant silence about so many bad deeds. Moreover, perhaps the staging is an attempt at historization, that characteristic travel technique of Brecht, the effect of which is to talk about the events of the past in order to tell something about the events of our present from a mental and temporal distance.
At the same time, the staging tries to deconstruct the myth of Brecht-as-a genius, a great author and an outstanding individual. These are all ideological categories that resisted Brecht and which continued to be woven around him during his lifetime, spreading to the sprids mainly after his death. Brecht does not represent the name of a purely individual, but primarily of collective authorship, and thus enables a new rethinking of different types of collectivity in times of hyper-individualized and atomized society. Art-and especially theatre-is a collective work, with emphasis on both words. Brecht's theater was created by a community of many collaborators and collaborators, but at the same time it was a very meticulously organized, dedicated and self-sacrificing work. Bertolt Brecht thus represents, First and foremost, the name of the workshop or the Amkerkstatt, to which many of Brecht's contemporaries contributed, many only indirectly, through the discussions and conversations they had with him, from which he later drew his inspiration, and others entirely directly. In particular, Brecht's co-workers, Helene Amakteigel, Ruth Berlau, Margarete Steffin and Elisabeth Hauptmann, were instrumental in this, who were constantly sidelined by the historical account of Brecht at the crossroads of bourgeois-patriarchal enthusiasm for the individual (male).
The staging of the life and times of Bertolt Brecht focuses primarily on Brecht's period of exile (from 1933 to 1949). It was at this time, which was also the period of fascism and World War II, that Brecht created the fundamental concepts of epic or dialectical theatre, such as the concept of travel or Verfremdung, and at the same time he also wrote both key theoretical works, buying brass and the small organon for theatre, and his so-called "great plays", such as Galileo's life, the good man from Sichuan, the Caucasian circle with chalk, and mother Korajza and her children. If the European theatre tradition is largely derived from the heritage of Brecht's theatre, then we must not forget that it arose precisely from the experience of the exile, in which one of the key political messages for the present time can be recognized.
All these narrative threads are intertwined with a montage of various fragments and materials: poems, testimonies, diary notes, philosophical quotes, transcription of Court interrogation, lists, memoirs and letters. In this way, the performance is not only about Brecht, but it is always trying to do it in a completely Brecht way.
Jacob The Fisherman
Trajanje: 2 uri, brez odmora
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) je bil gledališki človek, pravi homo theatralis, režiser, dramatik, dramaturg, teoretik in reformator gledališča. Bil je tudi pesnik in pisatelj. Toda kaj od tega je bil najprej in najbolj – to je nemara nemogoče povsem jasno določiti. Fredric Jameson zato predlaga, da o »kompleksu Brecht« govorimo kot o skupku heterogenih, diskontinuiranih in fragmentiranih slojev zgodovine – navsezadnje je bila takšna montaža protislovnih fragmentov tudi Brechtova priljubljena gledališka in umetniška forma. V približno istem času Alain Badiou zagovarja podobno stališče, namreč da Brechta vzamemo kot »emblematično osebnost dvajsetega stoletja«. Oba avtorja, tako Jameson kot Badiou, torej izhajata iz ugotovitve, da Brechtovo življenje sovpada z zgodovino stoletja, ki mu je pripadal. Med življenjem in časi Bertolta Brechta potemtakem ni preproste disjunkcije, ni nepremostljive vrzeli, prav obratno – veznik iz naslova uprizoritve namiguje, da gre med enim in drugim za nepovratni dialektični preplet, da ju je treba razbirati v skupnem, medsebojnem učinkovanju in da zato ne moremo govoriti o enem, ne da bi hkrati kaj povedali tudi o drugem. Uprizoritev Življenje in časi Bertolta Brechta tako ni klasična biografija, najsibo ta v Brechtovem primeru še tako polna zanimivih in nenavadnih anekdot, mitov, legend in domala že povsem neverjetnih usod. Namesto tega je poskus, da skupaj z Brechtom in prav skozi njega nekaj povemo o zgodovinskem kontekstu, v katerem je živel, o fašizmu in pregnanstvu ter o mračnih časih, v katerih je pogovor o drevju, kot je Brecht zapisal v slavni pesmi »Za nami rojenim«, pomenil molk o tolikerih slabih dejanjih. Še več, nemara je uprizoritev poskus historizacije, tiste značilne Brechtove potujitvene tehnike, katere učinek je, da o dogodkih preteklosti govorimo zato, da z miselne in časovne distance povemo nekaj o dogodkih naše sedanjosti.
Hkrati uprizoritev poskuša dekonstruirati mit o Brechtu-kot-geniju, velikem avtorju in izjemnem posamezniku. Vse to so ideološke kategorije, ki so se Brechtu upirale in ki so se okrog njega spletale še za časa njegovega življenja, spridom pa razširile predvsem po njegovi smrti. Brecht ne predstavlja imena zgolj individualnega, pač pa predvsem kolektivnega avtorstva, in tako v času hiperindividualizirane ter atomizirane družbe omogoča nov premislek o različnih vrstah kolektivnosti. Umetnost – in še posebej gledališče – je namreč kolektivno delo, pri čemer poudarek stoji na obeh besedah. Brechtovo gledališče je ustvarjala skupnost številnih sodelavcev in sodelavk, hkrati pa je šlo za zelo natančno organizirano, predano in požrtvovalno delo. Bertolt Brecht tako v prvi vrsti predstavlja ime delavnice ali Werkstatta, h kateri so prispevali številni Brechtovi sodobniki, mnogi samo posredno, skozi razprave in pomenke, ki so jih imeli z njim in iz katerih je ta kasneje črpal svoj navdih, drugi pa docela neposredno. Ključne pri tem so bile predvsem Brechtove sodelavke, Helene Weigel, Ruth Berlau, Margarete Steffin in Elisabeth Hauptmann, ki jih je zgodovinska pripoved o Brechtu na križišču buržoazno-patriarhalnega navdušenja nad Posameznikom (moškega spola) stalno odvračala na rob.
Uprizoritev Življenje in časi Bertolta Brechta se osredotoča predvsem na Brechtovo obdobje pregnanstva (od leta 1933 do leta 1949). Prav v tem času, ki je bil hkrati tudi obdobje fašizma in druge svetovne vojne, je namreč Brecht ustvaril temeljne koncepte epskega oziroma dialektičnega gledališča, denimo pojem potujitve oziroma Verfremdunga, hkrati pa je tedaj napisal tudi obe ključni teoretski deli, Kupovanje medenine in Mali organon za gledališče, ter svoje tako imenovane »velike igre«, kot so denimo Galilejevo življenje, Dobri človek iz Sečuana, Kavkaški krog s kredo in Mati Korajža in njeni otroci. Če evropska gledališka tradicija v veliki meri res izhaja iz dediščine Brechtovega gledališča, potem ne smemo pozabiti, da je ta nastala prav iz izkušnje pregnanca, v tem pa je mogoče prepoznati enega od ključnih političnih sporočil tudi za današnji čas.
Vse te pripovedne niti so prepletene z montažo različnih fragmentov in materialov: pesmi, pričevanj, dnevniških zapiskov, filozofskih citatov, transkripcije sodnega zasliševanja, seznamov, spominov in pisem. Na ta način uprizoritev ne govori le o Brechtu, pač pa to vseskozi skuša napraviti tudi na docela brechtovski način.
Jakob Ribič