New York Times (Free subscription) | 10/15/2009
Is art a mirror that reflects reality, or a hammer used to shape it? Taking a cue from Bertolt Brecht, the Croatian collective WHW asks powerful questions about life and capitalism at the Istanbul Biennial.
Green Integer Blog (Free subscription) | 10/04/2009
Bertolt Brecht and son Stefan Stefan Brecht and his wife Rena Gill Theater historian and poet Stefan Brecht died, at the age of 84, on April 13th of this year. The son of German playwright Bertolt Brecht and actress Helene Wiegel, Stefan was born in Berlin, but came to the United States at the age of 17, when his family escaped Nazi Germany by moving to Santa Monica, California where they joined the...
rob mclennan's blog (Free subscription) | 09/23/2009
Andrew Steinmetz was born in Montreal in 1965. He pushes a pen, and strums guitar for a living. He is the author of a memoir, Wardlife: The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk (Vehicule Press, 1999) and two collections of poetry, Histories (Signal Editions, Vehicule Press, 2001), and Hurt Thyself (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). Eva's Threepenny Theatre (Gaspereau Press,...
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 09/15/2009
"He was a communist whose mission was to peddle what is now a defunct ideology. His theories, once revered as theatrical scripture, seem patronising and dated today." So why does Brecht still have such a hold on us'...
Marty Nemko (Free subscription) | 09/03/2009
I was musing on our most influential political playwrights. All were anti-capitalists. Were they influential because no right-of-center plays were worthy? More likely, leftist plays were boosted because conservative plays usually don't get reviewed in, let alone praised by, for example, the New York Times . I worry about a society with inadequate intellectual checks and balances. All of society's mindmolders...
FreeThoughtManifesto (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
The Radical Works Which Can Make Sense Of These Extraordinary Times By John Pilger, August 08, 2009 Courtesy Of Anti-War News These are extraordinary times. Flag-wrapped coffins of 18-year-old soldiers killed in a failed, illegal and vengeful invasion are paraded along a Wiltshire high street. Victory in Afghanistan is at hand, says the satirical Gordon Brown. On the BBC’s Newsnight , the heroic...
The Writing Life II (Free subscription) | 08/07/2009
My short list of books that absolutely blew me away -- and still do. Love's Body by Norman O. Brown Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny , a libretto by Bertolt Brecht Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell The Physicists by Friedrich Durrenmatt The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles Genesis Angels by Aram Saroyan Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 06/25/2009
"German actress Hanne Hiob, a daughter of playwright Bertolt Brecht, has died, officials said Wednesday. ... Among other parts, she played the title roles in her father's plays 'Saint Joan of the Stockyards' and 'Carrar's Rifles.'"...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 06/25/2009
Ms. Hiob was a German actress who was a daughter of the playwright Bertolt Brecht.
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