Berlin Opera - the largest concert hall cities. This elegant, minimalist building dates back to 1962 and was designed by Fritz Bornemann. The previous opera building was completely destroyed during World War II. About 70 operas are staged here every year. I usually go to all Wagner productions, the extravagant mythical dimension of which is fully revealed on the stage of the theater.

When I first moved to Berlin, my friends gave me a ticket to one of the productions at the Deutsches Theater. Since then it has been one of my favorite drama theaters. Two halls, a varied repertoire and one of the best acting troupes in Europe. Every season the theater shows 20 new performances.

Hebbel am Ufer is the most avant-garde theater, where you can see everything except classical productions. Here the audience is drawn into the action: they are spontaneously invited to weave lines into the dialogue on stage or to scratch on the turntables. Sometimes the actors do not appear on stage, and then the audience is invited to follow a list of addresses in Berlin to catch the action there. The HAU operates on three stages (each with its own program, focus and dynamics) and is one of the most dynamic modern theaters in Germany.

"Epic Theater"

Brecht dramatic epic theater

In the works “On the way to modern theater", "Dialectics on the Theater", "On Non-Aristotelian Drama" and others, published in the late 20s and early 20s, Brecht criticized contemporary modernist art and outlined the main provisions of his theory of "epic theater". Certain provisions relate to acting, construction dramatic work, theatrical music, scenery, film use, etc. Brecht called his dramaturgy “non-Aristotelian”, “epic”. This name is due to the fact that traditional drama is built according to the laws formulated by Aristotle in his work “Poetics”. They required the actor to become emotionally involved in the character.

Brecht based his theory on reason. “Epic theater appeals not so much to the senses as to the reason of the spectator,” wrote Bertolt Brecht. In his opinion, the theater was supposed to become a school of thought, show life from a truly scientific position, 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 empathize, but to argue , take a critical position, take an active part. At the same time, the writer himself did not at all shy away from the desire to influence both feelings and emotions.

If drama presupposes active action and a passive viewer, then epic, on the contrary, presupposes an active listener or reader. It was precisely from this understanding of theater that Brecht’s idea of ​​an active spectator, ready to think, emerged. And thinking, as Brecht said, is something that precedes action.

However, it was impossible to create an existing theater using aesthetics alone. Brecht wrote: “In order to eliminate this theater, that is, in order to abolish it, remove it, sell it off, it is already necessary to involve science, just as to eliminate all kinds of superstitions we also involved science” B. Brecht “Conversation on Cologne Radio.” And such a science, according to the writer, should have become sociology, that is, the doctrine of the relationship of man to man. She had to prove that Shakespearean drama, which is the basis of all drama, no longer has the right to exist. This is explained by the fact that those relationships that made it possible for the drama to appear have historically outlived their usefulness. In the article “Shouldn’t we eliminate aesthetics?” Brecht directly pointed out that capitalism itself destroys drama and thereby creates the preconditions for a new theater. “The theater must be revised as a whole - not only the texts, not only the actors, or even the entire character of the production, this restructuring must involve the viewer, must change his position,” writes Brecht in the article “Dialectical Dramaturgy.” In epic theater, the individual ceases to be the center of the performance, so groups of people appear on stage, within which an individual takes a certain position. At the same time, Brecht emphasizes that not only the theater, but also the viewer himself must become collectivist. In other words, epic theater must involve whole masses of people in its action. “This means,” Brecht continues, “the individual, even as a spectator, ceases to be the center of the theater. He is no longer a private citizen who “honors” the theater with his visit, allowing the actors to act out something before him, consuming the work of the theater; he is no longer a consumer, no, he must produce himself.”

To implement the provisions of the “epic theater”, Brecht used in his work the “alienation effect”, that is artistic technique, the purpose of which is to show the phenomena of life from an unusual side, to force you to look at them differently, to critically evaluate everything that happens on stage. To this end, Brecht often introduces choruses and solo songs into his plays, which explain and evaluate the events of the play, revealing the usual unexpected side. The “alienation effect” is also achieved by the acting system. With the help of this effect, the actor presents the so-called “social gesture” in an “alienated” form. By “social gesture” Brecht understands the expression in facial expressions and gestures of social relations that exist between people of a certain era. To do this, it is necessary to depict every event as historical. “A historical event is a transitory, unique event associated with a certain era. In the course of it, relationships between people are formed, and these relationships are not just universal, eternal in nature, they are distinguished by their specificity, and they are criticized from the point of view of the subsequent era. Continuous development alienates us from the actions of people who lived before us.”B. Brecht " Short description a new acting technique that causes the so-called “alienation effect.” This effect, according to Brecht, makes it possible to make striking those events of everyday life that seem natural and familiar to the viewer.

According to Brecht's theory, epic theater should tell the viewer about certain life situations and problems, while maintaining conditions under which the viewer would maintain, if not calm, then control over his feelings. So that the viewer would not succumb to the illusions of stage action, would observe, think, determine his principled position and make decisions.

In 1936 Brecht formulated comparative characteristics dramatic and epic theater: “Spectator drama theater say: yes, I already felt it too. That's how I am. This is quite natural. It'll be this way forever. The suffering of this man shocks me, because there is no way out for him. This is great art: everything in it goes without saying. I cry with those who cry, I laugh with those who laugh. The spectator of the epic theater says this I would never have thought. This should not be done. This is in highest degree amazing, almost incredible. This must end. The suffering of this man shocks me, because a way out is still possible for him. This is great art: nothing in it goes without saying. I laugh at those who cry, I cry at those who laugh” B. Brecht “The Theory of Epic Theater”. To create such theater requires the joint efforts of a playwright, director and actor. Moreover, for an actor this requirement is of a special nature. 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, that is, be not only its embodiment, but also its judge.

This does not mean that Bertolt Brecht completely denied feelings in theatrical practice, that is, the merging of the actor with the image. However, he believed that such a state could occur only momentarily and, in general, should be subordinated to a reasonably thought-out and consciously determined interpretation of the role.

Bertolt Brecht paid great attention to scenery. He demanded that the stage builder thoroughly study the plays, take into account the wishes of the actors and constantly experiment. All this served as the key to creative success. “The stage builder should not put anything in a once and for all fixed place,” Brecht believes, “but he should not change or move anything for no reason, for he gives a reflection of the world, and the world changes according to laws that are far from completely open” B. Brecht "On the design of the stage in the non-Aristotelian theater." At the same time, the stage builder must remember the critical gaze of the viewer. And if the viewer does not have such a look, then the task of the stage builder is to endow the viewer with it.

Music is also important in the theater. Brecht believed that in the era of the struggle for socialism, its social significance increases significantly: “Whoever believes that the masses who have risen to fight unbridled violence, oppression and exploitation are alien to serious and at the same time pleasant and rational music as a means of promoting social ideas, he I did not understand one very important aspect of this struggle. However, it is clear that the impact of such music depends largely on how it is performed” B. Brecht “On the use of music in the “epic theater”. Therefore, the performer must comprehend social meaning music, which will evoke in the viewer an appropriate attitude towards the action on stage.

Another feature of Brecht's works is that they have rather overt subtext. Thus, one of the most famous plays, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” was created at the time when Hitler unleashed the Second world war. And although historical basis this work became the events Thirty Years' War, the play itself, and especially the image of its main character, acquires a timeless sound. Essentially this is a work about life and death, about the influence historical events for a person's life.

At the center of the play is Anna Fierling, who is better known as Mother Courage. For her, war is a way of existence: she pulls her van after the army, where everyone can purchase the necessary goods. The war brought her three children, who were born from different soldiers from different armies, the war became the norm for Mother Courage. For her, the reasons for the war are indifferent. She doesn't care who the winner is. However, the same war takes everything away from Mother Courage: one by one, her three children die, and she herself is left alone. Brecht's play ends with a scene in which Mother Courage herself is pulling her wagon after the army. But even in the finale, mother did not change her thoughts about the war. What is important for Brecht is that the epiphany came not to the hero, but to the viewer. This is the meaning of “epic theater”: the viewer himself must condemn or support the hero. Thus, in the play “Mother Courage and Her Children,” the author makes the main character condemn the war and ultimately understand that war is destructive and merciless to everyone and everything. But Courage never receives an “epiphany”. Moreover, the very business of Mother Courage cannot exist without war. And therefore, despite the fact that the war took her children, Mother Courage needs war, war is the only way its existence.

“...at the heart of stage theory and practice Brecht lies the “alienation effect” (Verfremdungseffekt), which is easily confused with the etymologically similar “alienation” (Entfremdung) Marx.

To avoid confusion, it is most convenient to illustrate the alienation effect with an example theatrical production, where it is carried out at several levels at once:

1) The plot of the play contains two stories, one of which is a parabola (allegory) of the same text with a deeper or “modernized” meaning; Brecht often takes well-known plots, pitting “form” and “content” in irreconcilable conflict.

3) Plasticity informs about the stage character and his social appearance, his attitude to the world of work (gestus, “social gesture”).

4) Diction does not psychologize the text, but recreates its rhythm and theatrical texture.

5) In acting, the performer does not transform into a character in the play, he shows him as if from a distance, distancing himself.

6) Refusal of division into acts in favor of a “montage” of episodes and scenes and the central figure (hero), around which classical drama was built (decentred structure).

7) Addresses to the audience, zongs, changing the scenery in full view of the viewer, introducing newsreels, titles and other “comments on the action” are also techniques that undermine the stage illusion. Patrice Pavy, Dictionary of theatre, M., “Progress”, 1991, p. 211.

Separately, these techniques are found in ancient Greek, Chinese, Shakespearean, Chekhov’s theater, not to mention the contemporary productions of Brecht by Piscator (with whom he collaborated), Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Eisenstein(which he knew about) and agitprop. Brecht's innovation lay in the fact that he gave them systematicity and turned them into the dominant aesthetic principle. Generally speaking, this principle is valid for any artistic self-reflective language, a language that has achieved “self-consciousness.” In relation to the theater we're talking about about the purposeful “exposure of the technique”, “showing the show”.

Brecht did not immediately come to the political implications of “alienation,” as well as to the term itself. It required acquaintance (through Karl Korsch) with Marxist theory and (through Sergei Tretyakov) with the “defamiliarization” of Russian formalists. But already in the early 1920s, he took an irreconcilable position in relation to the bourgeois theater, which had a soporific, hypnotic effect on the public, turning it into a passive object (in Munich, where Brecht began, then National Socialism with its hysteria and magical passes towards Shambhala). He called such theater “cooking,” “a branch of the bourgeois drug trade.”

The search for an antidote leads Brecht to understanding fundamental difference two types of theatre, dramatic (Aristotelian) and epic.

Drama theater strives to conquer the emotions of the viewer so that he surrenders “with his whole being” to what is happening on stage, losing the sense of the boundary between theatrical performance and reality. The result is purification from affects (as under hypnosis), reconciliation (with fate, fate, “human destiny,” eternal and unchanging).

Epic theater, on the contrary, must appeal to the analytical abilities of the viewer, awaken doubt and curiosity in him, pushing him to realize the historically determined social relations behind this or that conflict. The result is critical catharsis, awareness of unconsciousness (“the audience must realize the unconsciousness reigning on stage”), the desire to change the course of events (no longer on stage, but in reality). Brecht’s art absorbs a critical function, the function of a metalanguage, which is usually assigned to philosophy, art criticism or critical theory, and becomes a self-criticism of art - the means of art itself.”

Skidan A., Prigov as Brecht and Warhol rolled into one, or Golem-Sovietikus, in Collection: Non-canonical classic: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov (1940-2007) / Ed. E. Dobrenko et al., M., “New Literary Review”, p. 2010, p. 137-138.

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.
One list characters the plays 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 time the play was staged as an incriminating document against 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 that the course master chose National artist Russia Grigory Aredakov for the graduation performance of graduates theater institute, 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 one so emotionally warns about theater critic 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 bit of a 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

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 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. Key concept Brecht's theory of epic theater becomes alienation, or defamiliarization.

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

3. Development in various ways 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 passed Antigone's actions through her own life experience: her heroine was guided not by an emotional impulse, but by wisdom acquired by harsh everyday experience, not by 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 places on globe, where man exploits man. 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 main character 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.