How Brecht became Brecht.
“This is my first attempt at a sonnet. I must work harder”. (Bertolt Brecht).
I have been listening to the 'In our Time' (BBC Radio 4) programme about Bertolt Brecht. It was first broadcast in the Spring last year.
Melvyn Bragg has now presented over a thousand of these programs on an incredible range of topics. They’re a great way into a subject. Bragg is adept at getting his guests to provide the key concepts in a clear way. They also provide a reading list for each subject on the website. Gold dust.
In this programme, they talked about Brecht's learning journey. How did he become the person that transformed the theatrical landscape and literary culture of Germany? These are some of the strands which I noticed in the conversation.
To quote Prince - “Sometimes it takes years for a person to become an overnight success.”
Brecht was a ‘scenious’ (a word coined by Brian Eno). He was part of a scene which developed his ideas, craft, connections and sense of what was possible. From an early age he collaborated with people. Some of these relationships were very long lasting. He worked with people who had complimentary creative skills and he developed his thinking about his own work through these collaborations.
He worked on getting better. From a young age, Brecht wanted to see himself as a writer and he put in the work. He wrote. Even when he was unhappy with the results, he carried on. He learnt about the existing canon of work and he found mentors.
He was willing to fail. The first play he directed in 1922 didn’t go well. He carried on. As one of the program contributors said - ‘he worked terribly hard.’
He was a voracious reader and theatre goer. One of his school friends said that in 1915 alone, he went to the theatre with Brecht forty times. He worked as a theatre critic. He would sometimes bother other theatre goers so much that they would write to the paper in his home city of Augsburg to complain about his behaviour. He was an opinionated and provocative spectator.
Show. Business. He was aware of the business side. He and his friends managed to get a marionette theatre, then charged his friends and family for performances. They would then spend the money on more props.
He engaged with the wider world of ideas - The key idea he encounters after moving to Berlin in the mid 1920s is Marxism. He encounters Dialectics - the idea that reality is not harmonious, but is built on contradiction. This is different to ‘conflict’, which is also named as a driving engine of drama. Contradiction is defined as two things that shouldn’t be able to exist at the same time, but do. This led Brecht to consider how to make theatre dialectically.
Hard work, persistence, self-reflection, embracing failure as part of the process. As Arnold H. Glasow said “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” (Arnold H. Glasow).
The programme is available on BBC Sounds till the end of April.
Thanks for reading.
