ABSTRACT
This book proceeds from a single overarching idea: the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht constitutes a unique modern aesthetic that opens new avenues of thought about art and life. What follows is not, however, only a consideration of Brecht’s aesthetic. It is an examination of various responses to this aesthetic, while at the same time being itself another response to Brecht’s aesthetic. This book is an attempt to make something new out of Brecht, even as it remains faithful to the core tenets of Brechtian thought. These chapters are a return to Brecht, yet they also ‘go beyond’ Brecht, in a manner which I consider Brechtian, since, as I suggest, a central Brechtian activity is to take up and contain an historicized and perhaps antiquated aesthetic object and remake it, through theatre, into something new and vital.
