Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht on February 10, 1898 in Sugburg Germany, was a German playwright, performer, author, poet, and dramatic theorist. In his early adult life, Brecht studied medicine and served in an army hospital during World War I. In this period, he began his literary, dramatic, and artistic pursuits. He was surrounded by both Dadaism and Marxism, and began to adopt Communism as a world-view. His works from this time include Baal (1923), Drums in the Night (1922), and The Threepenny Opera (1928).

In 1933, his German citizenship was revoked, and he was exiled from Germany. He migrated to Denmark before establishing himself in the United States. In his time in the states (1941-1947), Brecht wrote many of his most notable and acclaimed plays, namely Mother Courage and Her Children. In 1949, after traveling to Zurich, Brecht returned to Germany permanently, where he founded The Berliner Ensemble with his wife, actress Helene Weigel. In 1955, he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. He died of a heart attack a year later.

Brecht’s 1949 theoretical work A Little Organum for the Theatre (Kleines Organon für das Theater) discusses his theories of “epic theatre” and episodic drama. These theories are deeply rooted in his Marxist ideology. In this work, he disputes Aristotle’s emphasis on reality and realism. Instead, he emphasized distance – emotional, spatial, and temporal – between the audience and the action of the drama. His “epic theatre” style was meant to force the audience to see the action on stage as an account of the past; his audience should not be able to empathize with his dramatic characters. This Brechtian convention is called Verfremdungseffekt, meaning alienation effect. In this way, Brecht’s drama was made to be viewed critically and with detachment. For Brecht, the theatre was not meant to be dramatic illusion of reality or a mirror of life, but simply a space for drama, storytelling, and social and artistic critique.

Brecht’s other works include Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930); The Life of Galileo (1943); The Good Woman of Setzuan (1943); The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948); and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1957).