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The Rise and Fall of Modelbooks, Notate and the Brechtian Method: Documentation and the Berliner Ensemble's Changing Roles as a Theatre Company

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2016

DAVID BARNETT
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Abstract

Documentation is often descriptive, yet Brecht's approach to the task was to unpack as much of the process as possible in order to share his method and to make it available to other theatre-makers. This article initially examines how such documentation functioned and goes on to consider how and why it gradually declined over time. By the mid-1960s, the Berliner Ensemble had entered a period of crisis, yet the development of post-Brechtian practices in the early 1970s did not lead to a resurgence of documentation. However, at certain points, interest in manufacturing the carefully taken Notate resurfaced. The article thus investigates the relationship between documenting and transmitting Brechtian practices. Documentation becomes a yardstick by which to measure the fêted company's self-understanding as Brecht's theatre.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 106 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 Bertolt Brecht, ‘Theaterprojekt B.’, undated, n.p., LAB (Landesarchiv Berlin) C Rep 120 1504. Subsequent references and quotations relate to this unpaginated document. The document is reproduced in full (in German) in Hecht, Werner, Brecht und die DDR: Die Mühen der Ebenen (Berlin: Aufbau, 2013), pp. 20–1Google Scholar. All translations from the German are mine unless otherwise acknowledged. Giles, Steveunderstands Brecht's as a ‘cognitive realism’ that encourages the spectator to connect characters’ behaviours with social factors, in Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the ‘Threepenny Lawsuit’, 2nd edn (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998), p. 176Google Scholar.

2 See Müller, Klaus-Detlef, ‘Brechts Theatermodelle: Historische Begründung und Konzept’, in Valentin, Jean-Marie and Buck, Theo, eds., Bertolt Brecht: Actes du Colloque Franco-Allemand tenu en Sorbonne (15–19 Novembre 1988) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 315–32Google Scholar, here p. 318. The subsequent five published modelbooks appeared, by necessity, in various state-run imprints. This does not, however, mean that they are to be understood as propaganda. GDR cultural organs actively interfered with the funding and framing of the BE's major early publication, Theaterarbeit, for example (see Kurt Bork to Egon Rentzsch, 7 July 1951, Helene Weigel Archive File 161).

3 See Brecht, Bertolt and Neher, Caspar, Antigonemodell 1948, ed. by Berlau, Ruth (Berlin: Gebrüder Weiß, 1949Google Scholar).

4 See Brecht, Bertolt, Couragemodell 1949, ed. Palitzsch, Peter (Berlin: Henschel, 1958Google Scholar).

5 Ledger, Adam J., ‘The Question of Documentation: Creative Strategies in Performance Research’, in Kershaw, Baz and Nicholson, Helen, eds., Research Methods in Theatre and Performance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 162–85Google Scholar, here p. 162.

6 Lyon, James K., ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany: Dissident Conformist, Cultural Icon, Literary Dictator’, in Lyon, James K. and Breuer, Hans-Peter, eds., Brecht Unbound: Presented at the International Bertolt Brecht Symposium Held at the University of Delaware February 1992 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), pp. 76–88Google Scholar, here p. 85.

7 Carney, Sean, Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 60Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

8 See Brecht, Bertolt, Courage Model, in Kuhn, Tom, Giles, Steve and Silberman, Marc, eds., Brecht on Performance (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 204Google ScholarPubMed (photograph) and 206 (notes). Henceforth BoP.

9 Reason, Matthew, Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bertolt Brecht, ‘Does the Use of the Model Restrict Artistic Freedom?’, BoP, pp. 238–41, here p. 239.

11 Only some sections of this richly illustrated book of over four hundred pages, mostly concerning the problematics of the model, have been translated into English, in BoP, pp. 225–47.

12 See Schöttker, Detlev, ‘Brechts Theaterarbeit: Ein Grundlagenwerk und seine Ausgrenzungen’, Weimarer Beiträge, 53, 3 (2007), pp. 438–51Google Scholar, here p. 438.

13 Fuegi, John, Bertolt Brecht: Chaos According to Plan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

14 Anon., ‘Der Held der westlichen Welt – Notate 20.12.55’, undated, pp. 2 (1), BEA File 22.

15 Entry for 6 March 1953, in Käthe Rülicke, [Untitled documentation of Katzgraben], undated, n.p., BEA File 13.

16 For a more detailed description of the variety of the BE's Notate see Barnett, David, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 162–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Peter Palitzsch, unpublished interview with John Rouse, 7 June 1988, pp. II-2-3; and Hans Bunge, unpublished interview with Rouse, 18 May 1988, p. III-9. Kindly provided to me by Rouse.

18 Monk, Egon, Regie Egon Monk: Von ‘Puntila’ zu den Bertinis: Erinnerungen (Berlin: Transit, 2007), p. 87Google Scholar.

19 See Brecht, Bertolt, ‘The Attitude of the Rehearsal Director (in the Inductive Process)’, in Silberman, Marc, Kuhn, Tom and Giles, Steve, eds., Brecht on Theatre (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 212–13Google Scholar. Henceforth BoT.

20 See Anon., ‘Beispiel von Regienotaten’, in Berliner Ensemble and Helene Weigel, eds., Theaterarbeit: 6 Aufführungen des Berliner Ensembles (Dresden: Dresdner Verlag, 1952), pp. 90–2, here p. 92.

21 See Besson, in Müller, André, Der Regisseur Benno Besson (Berlin: Henschel, 1967), p. 18Google Scholar.

22 For example, Ruth Berlau tells of how Peter Palitzsch pored over a large selection of photographs for hours, evaluating their relative merits. She recommended him for the position of assistant in light of this, and Brecht duly appointed him. See Berlau, in Bunge, Hans, Brechts Lai-Tu: Erinnerungen und Notate von Ruth Berlau (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1985, p. 232Google Scholar).

23 See Berlau, Ruth (the ‘inventor’ of the modelbook form), ‘Modelle des Berliner Ensembles’, in Theaterarbeit, pp. 294–6Google Scholar, here p. 296.

24 See Bertolt Brecht, Courage Modell 1949, in BoP, pp. 183–222, here p. 184.

25 Anon., ‘Berliner Ensemble – Modellbücher-Ausleihe’, undated, n.p, Berliner Ensemble Archive (hereafter BEA) File ‘Modellbücher: Archiv-Statistik’.

26 See, for example, the accounts of the rehearsals at the BE in Barnett, David, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 59–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar or 114–18.

27 Jameson, Fredric, Brecht and Method (London: Verso, 1998), p. 63Google Scholar.

28 Monk, unpublished interview with John Rouse, 10 June 1988, p. II-8.

29 See Küchenmeister, Claus, in Wera, Ditte Buchmann and Küchenmeister, Claus, ‘ Eine Begabung muß man entmutigen . . .’ (Berlin: Henschel, 1986), pp. 38–9Google Scholar.

30 See Anon., ‘Schauspielermaterial’, October 1963, p. 84, BEA File 36.

31 See Wekwerth et al., ‘Zweites, ergänzendes Material zur Tragödie des Coriolan im Berliner Ensemble’, undated, n.p., ibid.

32 Rouse, John, Brecht and the West German Theatre: The Practice and Politics of Interpretation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 76Google Scholar. Indeed, Laurence Kitching traces the evolution of the adaptation and finds two complete drafts that preceded rehearsals, followed by a further three that emerged during the rehearsal period, and a final published text, which slightly amended the last rehearsal draft, in ‘Der Hofmeister’: A Critical Analysis of Bertolt Brecht's Adaptation of Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz's Drama (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976).

33 During a scandal surrounding a controversial production of Seven against Thebes at the BE in 1969, Wekwerth insisted that the directors submit a clear Konzeption to the Ministry of Culture as a way of precluding subversive tendencies onstage (see Manfred Wekwerth to Paul Verner, 26 December 1968, SAPMO BArch (Bundesarchiv) DY 30/IV A 2/2.024/74). In the final years of the GDR, the Konzeption had become a parody of itself, with directors concocting phrases agreeable to the authorities in a bid to get difficult plays staged, as was the case with Heiner Müller's Waterfront Wasteland Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts at the BE in November 1987 (see Peter Konwitschny to Jochen Ziller, 19 October 1987, AdK (Akademie der Künste), Theaterdokumentation ID 626).

34 Dramaturgical work started in January 1963; the production premiered in September 1964.

35 See Dieckmann, Friedrich, ‘Die Tragödie des Coriolan: Shakespeare im Brecht-Theater’, Sinn und Form, 17, 3–4 (1965), pp. 463–89Google Scholar; and Völker, Klaus, ‘Wohin geht das Berliner Ensemble?’, Theater heute, 11 (1964), pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

36 Reich, Bernhard to Weigel, Helene, 22 March 1968, in Helene Weigel et al ., ‘ Wir sind zu berühmt, um überall hinzugehen’: Briefwechsel 1935–71, ed. Mahlke, Stefan (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2000), pp. 200–3Google Scholar, here p. 203.

37 Ironically, it was Brecht's former assistant Benno Besson who reinvigorated the GDR's theatre with landmark productions at East Berlin's Deutsches Theater in the 1960s (e.g. Yevgeny Schwartz's The Dragon in 1965) and his leadership of the Volksbühne in the 1970s.

38 Peter Konwitschny, ‘Notat zum Bühnenbild und [zu den] Kostümen 21.4.71 . . .’, 27 April 1971, n.p., AdK, RBA 945.

39 See Ruth Berghaus in Anon., ‘Stenografische Niederschrift: Kongreß zur Gründung des Verbandes der Theaterschaffenden der DDR am 11. und 12. Dezember 1966’, uncorrected text, undated, pp. 1–95, here p. 84, AdK, Verband der Theaterschaffenden 7.

40 Berghaus in Anon., ‘Regie-Gespräch über Dickicht am 3.11.1970’, undated, pp. 1–4, here p. 4, BEA File 53.

41 See Bertolt Brecht, ‘Verfremdung Effects in Chinese Acting’, in BoT, pp. 151–9, here p. 156.

42 Rolf Michaelis, ‘Ein Stück zum Parteitag’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 June 1971.

43 Margit Vestner, ‘Probe Zement am 3.4.73’, undated, pp. 1–2, here p. 1, BEA File 60. It is worth noting that the title eschews the word Notat for the German word for ‘rehearsal’.

44 Ritter, Angelika in Margaret Setje-Eilers, ‘The Berliner Ensemble Interviews: Angelika Ritter, Eva Boehm, Ursula Ziebarth, Angela Winkler’, Communications from the International Brecht Society, 38 (2009), pp. 118–53Google Scholar, here p. 123.

45 See Peter Palitzsch and Heiner Müller respectively in Sigrid Kunze, ‘Protokoll über eine Leitungssitzung am 25.10.1993’, 30 October 1993, n.p., AdK HMA 7807.

46 Margit Vestner, ‘Der Aufstieg des Arturo Ui: 5. Bild – Stadthaus’, 8 April 1995, n.p., BEA File 182.

47 Müller in Krischan Schroth, ‘Arturo Ui’, 8 March 1995, n.p., ibid.

48 The Deutsches Theater, for example, averaged ten productions per year on its two stages in the 1950s. Data supplied by its archivist, Karl Sand.