The Pioneers of Bertolt Brecht in America

THE PIONEERS OF BERTOLT BRECHT IN AMERICA Now THAT BERTOLT BRECHT IS SAFELY "in," at least in advanced American theatrical circles, it is only natural that a host of courageous pioneers in the cause of Brecht will be proclaimed. For instance, in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, Mark Harris asserted that the San Francisco Actor's Workshop and its former directors-Jules Irving and Herbert Blau-Hpioneered Brecht . . . before America had heard of him." In basing this claim on a 1956 production of Mother Courage in San Francisco, Mr. Harris was almost a quarter of a century off. The Actor's Workshop may have introduced Mother Courage to the American stage, but America had heard of Brecht many years before that. For the record, it should be noted that Brecht was introduced to the United States in the 1930'S when two of his plays were produced here. The Threepenny Opera, adapted by Gifford Cochran and Jerrold Krimsky, was performed a dozen times in April, 1933, at the Empire Theatre on Broadway, after a brief tryout in Philadelphia . In November, 1935, Mother, Paul Peters' version of Die Mutter, was presented for thirty-six performances in New York by Theatre Union, a professional Marxist company. In the same year, too, Americans had the opportunity to meet Brecht himself when he made his first trip to the United States to attend the premiere of Mother. Unfortunately, the failures of these two plays gave him such a bad name in the American theater that New York did not see another professional production of a Brecht script for ten yearsthat is, not until 1945 when The Private Life of the Master Race (Eric Bentley's version of Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) was given briefly off Broadway.! Not until 1947 was another Brecht drama -Charles Laughton's version of Galileo-presented on Broadway.2 ! There were a couple of minor performances in between. In 1939 the Theatre Union of San Francisco did Senora Carrar's Rifles (translated by Keene Wallis) and The Informer (a scene from Fear and Misery of the Third Reich translated by Ruth Norden). The Private Life of the Master Race was given in a fuller version at UCLA shortly before the New York presentation in 1945. 2 A professional but noncommercial production by The Experimental Theatre (sponsored by ANTA by special arrangement with Equity) at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. The Experimental Theatre produced plays for limited engagements but with the hope of moving them to other theaters for commercial runs. Galileo closed after its six scheduled performances. 178 1966 BRECHT IN AMERICA 179 Since Bertolt Brecht was a professional playwright of great renown in Europe and a Marxist as well, he had potential appeal for both "bourgeois" and left-wing audiences here. But he pleased neither. The Threepenny Opera (1933) gave him the reputation on Broadway of being arty and dull-a reputation intensified by Mother (1935). The local Marxists found The Threepenny Opera too pessimistic for their cause, and Mother~ though optimistic enough, too simple-minded in its politics. He had had two chances with both audiences. So much for Bertolt Brecht! In retrospect, we can see that Brecht did not have much of a chance to score a hit with either production. Ironically, much effort had gone into both presentations, but the effort was not enough in the case of The Threepenny Opera and misguided in the case of Mother. John Krimsky2a and Gifford Cochran, the producers of The Threepenny OPera~ worked to match the artistic and popular triumph that Brecht and Kurt Weill, his musical collaborator, had achieved in 1928 with the original Berlin production at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. In the Playbill for the Empire Theatre, Krimsky and Cochran advertised that their director, Francesco von Mendelsohn , had been "associated with Erich Engel in the direction of the original company" in Berlin. They also noted that the sets by Cleon Throckmorton were based on the designs that Caspar Neher had used in the same illustrious production. Furthermore, they retained most-but not all-of Weill's sweetly ironic score. But authentic German staging and music did not insure· a successful American...