Tuesday 24 October 2017

Notes Towards the Future

Historically, Brecht differs from
Aeschylus and the others in one obvious way. He is betting on the future where they were betting on the past... Brecht made a bid to be, not just a great writer, but The Writer of the Future.

The Life of the Drama, Bentley
(Atheneum, 1983) pp138-9

I seem to remember a short while ago that Shaw himself formulated his views about the future of the drama. He said that in the future people would no longer go to the theatre to understand something. What he probably meant was that... the mere reproduction of reality does not give an impression of truth.

Three Cheers for Shaw, Brecht
(Berliner Borsen-Courier, July 1936)p11



What's more I would say that, since the decline of tragedy, we have yet to find a way of confronting the great existential issues of life. We live in a culture that, for the most part, either avoids or trivializes amd sensationalizes the key questions of humanity.

The Story of Drama, Day
(Bloomsbury, 2016) p180

The true burden of Meyerhold's Reconstruction of the Theatre, published in 1930, was his reiteration of the principles of the popular theatre anf his call for a revival of spectacle to expose the tedium of so-called 'real-life drama'.

Meyerhold on Theatre, ed. Braun
(Eyre Methuen, 1969) p241



In the remarkable experiments of Mr Gordon Craig, I seem to see the suggestion of a new art of the stage, an art no longer realistic, but conventional, no longer imitative, but symbolical... 

The end of technique is not in itself but in its service to the artist.

A New Art of the Stage, Symons
(ed. Bentley, Pelican, 1976) pp138-147

If we as viewers of modern art are
to keep the faith of what motivated it in the first place, we are committed to an avant-gardist opposition to institutionalized modern art... Do we, then, want art to console us for the shortcomings of capitalism, or to challenge it?

Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction, Cottington
(Oxford, 2005) p141

Hegel calls the work of art a question... asking questins can be an important philosophical and political activity.

Philosophy and Theatre, Stern
(Routledge, 2014) p171


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