Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht; 1898–1956) was a German playwright and poet whose work helped redefine modern theatre. The surname Brecht is German in origin and is most closely associated with him in the arts. Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, and studied medicine at the University of Munich before turning to theatre. He produced a series of influential plays in the 1920s and, with composer Kurt Weill, created The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) in 1928, a groundbreaking collaboration that blended satire, social critique, and popular music.

Among his later works are Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) and The Life of Galileo (also 1939), as well as The Good Person of Szechwan and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Brecht developed epic theatre, a form intended to encourage critical reflection rather than emotional identification. Techniques associated with epic theatre include direct address to the audience, narrator figures, episodic structures, visible stage machinery, and songs that interrupt action to comment on its meaning; a related concept is the Verfremdungseffekt, or distancing effect.

Persecuted by the Nazi regime, Brecht went into exile in the 1930s, residing in Denmark, Sweden, and the United States before returning to Germany after World War II. He helped establish and lead the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin, where he continued to work until his death in 1956. Brecht's ideas have influenced theatre, film theory, and literary criticism, with the term Brechtian used to describe his distinctive approach to performance.