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Chapter 18 - Gestus in Context

from Part II - Brecht’s Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2021

By
Sabine Hake
Edited by
Stephen Brockmann
Stephen Brockmann
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
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Summary

Gestus remains an important but elusive concept in the scholarship on Brecht’s writings and continues to inform contemporary theater practices as well as new theories of performance and performativity. This article provides a brief overview of Brecht’s evolving definitions of Gestus, including in, and through, key plays and productions, followed by an assessment of the larger literary, political, and theoretical debates associated with Weimar theater, communist agitprop, and Marxist theory. Throughout, the productivity of Gestus as a concept and practice is reconstructed through its dialogic qualities, heuristic functions, and intertextual effects.

Keywords

Bertolt BrechtgestusagitpropperformancecommunismsocialismWeimar culturepolitical theater
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Chapter
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Bertolt Brecht in Context , pp. 158 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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