The German-born playwright, poet and director, Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany in February 1898.
Following a period working as assistant to Max Reinhardt at the famous Deutsches Theater, he established himself as a playwright and director during the 1920s and early 1930s with plays such as BAAL, MAN IS MAN, THE THREEPENNY OPERA and THE MOTHER. It was during this period that he started to form his theories of epic theatre which informed so much of his later work.
In 1930, the premier of Brecht and Weill’s THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY, caused a riot as the increasingly influential Nazi party objected to its morality and critical tone. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Brecht and his wife, actress Helene Weigel, left Germany and lived in a number of European cities before eventually settling in the USA in 1941 where he remained until 1947. During the war years, he wrote many of his best known plays, including THE LIFE OF GALILEO, THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN and THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, and also published an anthology of poetry, POEMS IN EXILE. He returned to Europe in 1947 and shortly after his arrival formed the Berliner Ensemble. His post-war plays include MR PUNTILA AND HIS MAN MATTI and an adaptation of Sophocles’ ANTIGONE.
Brecht died in Berlin on 14th August 1956 and remains a hugely influential theatre practitioner throughout the world.
ABR represents English language stage performance rights outside of North America to existing and new English language translations of Brecht’s plays. Translations we handle include those by David Hare, Tony Kushner, Anna Jordan, Stephen Sharkey, David Edgar, Stephen Unwin, John Willett, Mererid Hopwood, Steve Waters, Bruce Norris, Hanif Kureshi, Judith Malina, W. H. Auden, Tanika Gupta, Howard Brenton, Nina Segal and C.P. Taylor. Please get in touch with the ABR office for details of all available English translations for Brecht titles.
Enquiries for productions of Brecht plays in the USA and Canada should be directed to The Law Offices of Richard Garmise in New York.
A note on Brecht and copyright:
Bertolt Brecht died on 14 August 1956. This means that the original German works for which Bertolt Brecht was the sole author will enter the public domain on 1 January 2027 in the UK and most of the rest of the world. The English translations of these works will remain protected until the end of each translator’s copyright term and will continue to require a licence. It’s important to note that the USA has different copyright terms for older plays and so anyone wishing to produce new translations of his work in America, or create publications or films which require worldwide rights, should check the work’s public domain status in the USA very carefully.
There are also a number of Brecht’s plays where the text was created in collaboration with other artists and which are therefore considered joint works for copyright purposes. The original German will not enter the public domain in 2027 but will remain protected by the copyright term of Brecht’s collaborators. These titles are as follows:
THE THREEPENNY OPERA
THE MEASURES TAKEN
ROUND HEADS AND POINTY HEADS
LIFE OF GALILEO
THE MOTHER
ST. JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS
MR PUNTILA AND HIS MAN MATTI (Berlin version 1949)
VISIONS OF SIMONE MARCHARD
THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC AT ROUEN
DON JUAN OF MOLIERE
TRUMPETS AND DRUMS
MOTHER COURAGE (Berlin version 1948/49)
DAYS OF THE COMMUNE
THE DOWNFALL OF THE EGOIST JOHANN FATZER - the adaptation by Heiner Müller 1995. Brecht’s FATZER fragment will enter the public domain in 2027.
For further information on these titles and Brecht’s artistic collaborators, please visit the website for Suhrkamp Verlag, Brecht’s overall agent in Berlin.