I believe that a good production of CCC should engage the audience within initially the linear narrative from the start. To do Brecht justice on stage in bringing this off, one must embrace the paradox that he presents throughout – that of empathy and distance. And it IS a paradox, not a contradiction, as I hope to demonstrate.

A view of BB might be that he was simply too good a playwright and poet to fulfill his own fierce didacticism concerning the eschewing of the former and the implementation of the latter. Grusha IS a character, not a cipher. Simon IS a character, not a cardboard cutout. Azdak IS a character, not a bloodless assemblage of political symbols. Each must be played as character fearlessly. Brecht has incorporated distancing devices aplenty to enable the processes of thought and reflection required of the audience. Play them as director as hard as the actors must play the characters and the paradox will work. You’ll end up with an audience that will have had its moments of Brecht’s despised empathy from the start. But they will have been subverted by songs in which music counterpoints lyrical sentiment, switchback narrative that interrupts emotional identification, staging techniques that distort and objectify naturalism, and a set that sets a visual context full of symbolism.

Sorry, John, I seem to be addressing a tutorial! Once a teacher…

jb says: Thanks, Dick. No need for the apology. It’s good to begin to see it from the inside.