Brecht from page to mouth: a practical approach to Brecht's theatre on foot of an original translation of his Baallearning play fragments of 1930
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Date
2001
Authors
Power, Kevin N.
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University College Cork
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Abstract
Generally there is felt to be a very sharp distinction between learning and amusing oneself. The first may be useful, but only the second is pleasant - Bertolt Brecht
This thesis has at its heart the translation of the fragments of the 1930 learning play project Brecht was planning on the basis of his already well-known and notorious theatrical creation Baal, the protagonist of his eponymous play. The first aim of the translations is to be an introduction of Brecht's mode of writing and thinking to English-speaking students of Drama who do not speak German. The second aim takes issue with the Brecht statement in the heading to this introduction: I would hope to show that it is possible for learning to be useful and pleasant.
In order to demonstrate how a flamboyantly self-centred character like Baal can be transformed into an educational tool, I have presented the main biographical and artistic developments in Brecht's life, from the Nihilistic beginnings to the period in the late 1920s when Brecht espoused Marxism and thereafter devoted part of his talents to writing for educational purposes. The main result of this was the development of the Lehrstück or learning play, which was designed to educate socialist youth by a stimulating use of dialectical thinking. The main theories involved in the genre have been translated in this thesis. I will attempt to show that the learning play, because of its own inner vitality, has transcended its Marxist origins and developed its own dynamic outside Germany, notably in Great Britain.
The different styles and approaches of translation are dealt with and a number of practical examples on the subtleties and complexities of translation; i.e., lifting ideas from one language and rooting them in a second language without doing harm to the ideas or the mode of expression in which they are couched in the original.
Brecht's project was never completed. The fragments, when rearranged, provide for a mini-drama which contains elements a student should know about Brecht: Gestus, "A" effect, paralanguage appropriate to a character, etc. By staying close to the cool, precise language of the original German, it is to be hoped that the humour and intellectual challenge will stimulate students to study and research Brecht on their own account ..
In a final summing up, the steps taken to organize and carry out a workshop devoted to lifting Brecht's translated words off the page and putting them into people's mouths for all to hear and enjoy are described. The
reactions to the texts are given and compared with the theory described by German specialists in the field. Video and written feedback in the questionnaires filled out in the moments immediately after the workshop are
evaluated in the thesis. The outcome of the practical workshop demonstrates that Brecht has lost none of his capacity to shock, amuse and repel a whole new generation.
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Keywords
Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956 , German drama 20th century
Citation
Power, K. N. 2001. Brecht from page to mouth : a practical approach to Brecht's theatre on foot of an original translation of his Baallearning play fragments of 1930. MA Thesis, University College Cork.