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Baal (play)
''Baal'' was the first full-length play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht.Willett (1967, 22-23). It concerns a wastrel youth who becomes involved in several sexual affairs and at least one murder. It was written in 1918, when Brecht was a 20-year-old student at Munich University, in response to the expressionist drama ''The Loner'' (''Der Einsame'') by the soon-to-become-Nazi dramatist Hanns Johst. The play is written in a form of heightened prose and includes four songs and an introductory choral hymn ("Hymn of Baal the Great"), set to melodies composed by Brecht himself. Brecht wrote it prior to developing the dramaturgical techniques of epic theatre that characterize his later work, although he did re-work the play in 1926. Characters * Baal - ''poet'' * Mech - ''merchant and publisher'' * Emilie - ''Mech's wife'' * Dr. Piller - ''critic'' * Johannes Schmidt * Pschierer - ''director of the water rates'' * A Young Man * A Young Woman * Johanna * Ekart ...
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote '' The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic '' Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time col ...
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Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They are sometimes divided into a petty (), middle (), large (), upper (), and ancient () bourgeoisie and collectively designated as "the bourgeoisie". The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities, recognized as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system. In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in socie ...
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Peter O'Toole
Peter Seamus O'Toole (; 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company. In 1959 he made his West End debut in '' The Long and the Short and the Tall'', and played the title role in ''Hamlet'' in the National Theatre's first production in 1963. Excelling on the London stage, O'Toole was known for his "hellraiser" lifestyle off it. Making his film debut in 1959, O'Toole achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award another seven times – for playing King Henry II in both '' Becket'' (1964) and ''The Lion in Winter'' (1968), '' Goodbye, Mr. Chips'' (1969), '' The Ruling Class'' (1972), ''The Stunt Man'' (1980), '' M ...
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Phoenix Theatre, London
The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located in Charing Cross Road (on the corner of Flitcroft Street). The entrances are on Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. The Phoenix Theatre was built on the site of a former factory and then music hall Alcazar before. Description Built for Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein, the theatre was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe and Cecil Massey. It has a restrained neoclassical exterior, but an interior designed in an Italianate style by director and designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. Vladimir Polunin copied works by Tintoretto, Titian, Pinturicchio, and Giorgione. It has a safety curtain that holds Jacopo del Sellaio's ''The Triumph of Love''. There are golden engravings in the auditorium, and red seats, carpets and curtains. This look is based on traditional Italian theatres. There are decorated ceilings and sculpted wooden doors throughout the building. It opened on 24 Sept ...
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Caspar Neher
Caspar Neher (born Rudolf Ludwig Caspar Neher; 11 April 1897 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht. Neher was born in Augsburg. He and Brecht were school friends who were separated for a time by the First World War, during which Neher was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class (on 2 February 1918). In 1919, he studied under Angelo Jank at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He was first engaged professionally by the Munich Kammerspiele in 1922, although his designs for its production of Brecht's ''Drums in the Night'' were rejected.Willett (1986, 119). On 18 August 1923, Neher married Erika Tornquist in Graz. Their son, Georg, was born on 14 October 1924.Willett (1986, 120). In autumn of 1926, Neher became the staff designer at the Berlin Staatstheater. A year later, he became head of design at the Grillo-Theater in Essen, Germany, where he designed 8 operas and 11 p ...
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Scenic Design
Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are mostly trained professionals, holding B.F.A. or M.F.A. degrees in theatre arts. Scenic designers create sets and scenery that aim to support the overall artistic goals of the production. There has been some consideration that scenic design is also production design; however, it is generally considered to be a part of the visual production of a film or television. Scenic designer The scenic designer works with the director and other designers to establish an overall visual concept for the production and design the stage environment. They are responsible for developing a complete set of design drawings that include the following: *''basic ground plan'' showing all stationary and scenic elements; *''composite ground plan'' showing all moving scenic ...
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Oskar Homolka
Oskar Homolka (August 12, 1898 – January 27, 1978) was an Austrian film and theatre actor, who went on to work in Germany, Britain and America. Both his voice and his appearance fitted him for roles as communist spies or Soviet officials, for which he was in regular demand. By the age of 30, he had appeared in more than 400 plays; his film career covered at least 100 films and TV shows. Career After serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War, Homolka attended the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, the city of his birth, and began his career on the Austrian stage. In 1924 he played Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, Mortimer in the premiere of Bertolt Brecht, Brecht's play ''The Life of Edward II of England'' at the Munich Kammerspiele, and from 1925 in Berlin where he worked under Max Reinhardt. Other stage plays in which Homolka performed during this period include: The first Ger ...
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Dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults authors, and does public relations work. Its modern-day function was originated by the innovations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th-century German playwright, philosopher, and theatre theorist. Responsibilities One of the dramaturge's contributions is to categorize and discuss the various types of plays or operas, their interconnectedness and their styles. The responsibilities of a dramaturge vary from one theatre or opera company to the next. They might include the hiring of actors, the development of a season of plays or operas with a sense of coherence among them, assistance with and editing of new plays or operas by resident or guest playwrights or composers/librettists, the creation of programmes or accompanying educational service ...
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Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, most populous city, as measured by population within city limits having gained this status after the United Kingdom's, and thus London's, Brexit, departure from the European Union. Simultaneously, the city is one of the states of Germany, and is the List of German states by area, third smallest state in the country in terms of area. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg's capital Potsdam is nearby. The urban area of Berlin has a population of over 4.5 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan reg ...
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Deutsches Theater (Berlin)
The Deutsches Theater is a theater in Berlin, Germany. It was built in 1850 as Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtisches Theater, after Frederick William IV of Prussia. Located on Schumann Street (Schumannstraße), the Deutsches Theater consists of two adjoining stages that share a common, classical facade. The main stage was built in 1850, originally for operettas. Adolf L'Arronge founded the Deutsches Theater in 1883 with the ambition of providing Berliners with a high-quality ensemble-based repertory company on the model of the German court theater, the Meiningen Ensemble, which had been developed by Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen and his colleagues to become "the most widely admired and imitated company in Europe", thanks to its historically accurate sets and costumes, vividly-realized crowd scenes, and meticulous directorial control.Banham (1998a) and (1998b). Otto Brahm, the leading exponent of theatrical Naturalism in Germany, took over the direction of the theater in 1894, and ...
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Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he is regarded as one of the most prominent directors of German-language theatre in the early 20th century. In 1920, he established the Salzburg Festival with the performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's '' Jedermann''. Life and career Reinhardt was born Maximilian Goldmann in the spa town of Baden near Vienna, the son of Wilhelm Goldmann (1846–1911), a Jewish merchant from Stupava, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and his wife Rachel Lea Rosi "Rosa" Goldmann (''née'' Wengraf; 1851–1924). Having finished school, he began an apprenticeship at a bank, but already took acting lessons. In 1890, he gave his debut on a private stage in Vienna with the stage name ''Max Reinhardt'' (possibly after the protagonist Reinhard Werner in Theodor Storm's novella '' Immensee''). In 1893 he perf ...
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Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht. She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year she came to Berlin. She worked as a secretary for the German-American poet and writer Herman George Scheffauer.See Sabine Kebir Ich fragte nicht nach meinem Anteil Elisabeth Hauptmanns Arbeit mit Bertolt Brecht (Aufbau-Verlag GmbH: Berlin 1997), p. 22. She began collaborating with Brecht in 1924, and is listed as co-author of '' The Threepenny Opera'' (1928). She purportedlyBrecht & Co.: Sex, Politics and the Making of the Modern Drama by John Fuegi wrote the majority of the text as well as providing a German translation of John Gay's '' The Beggar's Opera'', on which the musical play is based, as working material for Brecht and Kurt Weill, the composer. She reportedly wrote at least half of the '' Mahagonny-Songspiel'', but was not credi ...
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