IBS Announcements

This page contains announcements regarding current and recent events. Older material can be found in the Achive. If you have any announcements you would like to see posted here, please contact us.

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General Announcements

The Bertolt Brecht-Archiv in Berlin announces that it has just purchased the Brecht collection of Victor N. Cohen (father of long-standing IBS member, Robert Cohen, New York University). The contents are even richer than the “Renata Mertens Bertozzi” collection acquired in 2004. The new collection includes unpublished manuscripts, notes, passports, checkbooks, contracts, invoices, photographs, and numerous documents related to Brecht’s biography and works. Of notable importance are the 140 unpublished letters of Brecht and 220 letters to Brecht, as well as many letters to and from Helene Weigel. Among those who wrote letters are Elisabeth Bergner, Stefan Brecht, Paul Dessau, William Dieterle, Alfred Döblin, Hanns Eisler, Lion Feuchtwanger, Christopher Isherwood, Kurt Kläber, Fritz Kortner, Wolfgang Langhoff, Heinrich Mann, Charles Laughton, Erwin Piscator, Peter Suhrkamp, Paul Tillich, Berthold Viertel, und Carl Zuckmayer. The material, which had been in the possession of graphic artist and union functionary Victor N. Cohen, relates to the exile years in the United States and Switzerland. Thirtysix handwritten letters and 3 telegrams that Brecht sent from New York City to Helene Weigel in Santa Monica between the years 1944 and 1947 are especially interesting. More details will be forthcoming as the Archive catalogues the material.

The Kurt Weill Foundation

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music offers research and performance grants to scholars and artists working on Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. Contact the Foundation for information and grant applications. The Weill Foundation also has complete information on publications, performances, and events in celebration of the Kurt Weill centenary (2000).
7 East 20th Street
New York, NY 10003-1106
Tel. 212 / 505 5240
Fax 212 / 353 9663
email: wlrc@kwf.org
homepage: http://www.kwf.org

Kurt Weill Foundation 2010 Grant Program

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music welcomes applications for support of research and performance projects relating to the composer Kurt Weill and his wife, actress-singer Lotte Lenya.

Applications are accepted in the following categories:

1. Research and Travel
2. Kurt Weill Dissertation Fellowship
3. Publication Assistance
4. Educational Outreach
5. College/University Performance
6. Professional Performance
7. Broadcast.

The general application deadline for 2010 grants is 2 November 2009. For
College and University Fall semester performances, there is an
additional 1 June 2010 deadline for the following Fall semester.

Further information on the program, including grant guidelines and
application forms, is available on the Kurt Weill Foundation website
(www.kwf.org) or by telephone (212.505.5240).

Publications

Eric Bentley's "The Brecht/Eisler Song Book", which contains 42 songs, has just been reprinted by Music Sales Corporation in New York. There are 19 more Eisler Songs in a slim volume entitled "Eisler and the Poets," privately printed by Ilse Schreiber-Noll (ilsenoll@msn.com); contact at 56 Grove Street, Tarrytown, NY 10591. Texts appear in both volumes in both German and English; all English lyrics are by Eric Bentley.

Calls for Papers

The IBS will sponsor two sessions at the next conference of the Modern Language Association, to be held in Los Angeles, 6-9 January 2011. One-page abstracts are sought by 15 March 2010 for:

1) Brecht in Exile - Roundtable session focusing on Brecht and his circle in exile during 1933-48 in Scandinavia and especially in the USA and Los Angeles.
Contact: Marc Silberman (mdsilber@wisc.edu)

2) Epic and Ethics in the Brechtian Mode - How are Brechtian narrative practices linked to ethical questions of otherness, violence, and justice? Does Brechts approach engage tensions between Marxist and postmodernist ethics?
Contact: Dorothee Ostmeier (ostmeier@uoregon.edu) and Claudia Breger (clbreger@indiana.edu)

Note: Presenters must be paid-up members of the MLA by 1 April 2010, to participate in the conference.

Call for Essays
“Brecht, Marxism, and Ethics” – Special Topic for The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht Jahrbuch 35 (December 2010):
How do Brecht's satires and parodies of bourgeois morality link to ethical questions of otherness, violence, and justice? How does his work elaborate on the tensions between Marxist and postmodernist ethics? Possible topics include: Brecht’s deconstruction of bourgeois moral codes; Brecht’s concepts of learning; gendering, de-gendering, and transgendering in Brecht; Brecht as a critic of judgment; Brecht on power and violence; Brecht on freedom; political and ideological diversity in Brecht; Brecht’s destruction of bourgeois subjectivity and identity; Brecht on sex and business codes, etc.

Submission deadline: May 31, 2010 (final corrected submissions by July 31, 2010)

For submission and formatting requirements, please refer to the "Brecht Yearbook Style Sheet" at: http://german.lss.wisc.edu/brecht/

Send Submissions to Co-editors:
Dorothee Ostmeier (ostmeier@uoregon.edu)
Friedemann Weidauer (friedemann.weidauer@uconn.edu)

The Call for Papers for the 13th IBS Symposium on "Brecht in/and Asia" can be found here:
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/brecht2010/index.html

Suggestions are now being solicited for the IBS sponsored panels at the next Modern Language Association conference, to be held in Los Angeles from January 6-9, 2011. Please send your suggestions at the latest by Dec. 14, 2009, to Marc Silberman: mdsilber@wisc.edu and indicate if you would yourself be interested in organizing a panel. The decision on the Jan. 2011 panels will be made at the IBS business meeting at this year’s MLA conference in Philadelphia (see below).

Conferences

IBS panels at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association (Philadelphia, 27-30 Dec 2009):

Sunday, 27 December 2009
Session 36. Brecht, Marxism, and Ethics
5:15–6:30 p.m., Loews Philadelphia
Program arranged by the International Brecht Society
Presiding: Marc David Silberman, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
1. “The Dramaturgy of Debt: Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” Daniel Cuonz, Yale Univ.
2. “Irony, Belief, and Estrangement: Ethics and Other Selves in Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan,” Marton Merrick Marko, Univ. of Montana
3. “‘All Together Now: We All Live by the V-Effect, the V-Effect, the V-Effect, the V-Effect’: Brechtian Elements in East and West German Musicals of the 1960s,” Sunka Simon, Swarthmore Coll.
Respondent: Martina Kolb, Penn State Univ., University Park

Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Session 683. Postcommunist Brecht
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Loews Philadelphia
Program arranged by the International Brecht Society
Presiding: Vera S. Stegmann, Lehigh Univ.
1. “Brecht Really Combines East and West?” Shaojing Wu, New Mexico State Univ.
2. “‘Die Wahrheit ist konkret’ or ‘Verdunkelung der Tatbestände’? Brecht and Images of War in Contemporary Context,” Kristopher Imbrigotta, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
3. “1980–2010: Brecht after the Great Awakening,” Norman Roessler, Temple Univ.
Respondent: Vera S. Stegmann

NOTE: the IBS business meeting / dinner will be held immediately after session 36, on Dec. 27, at 7:00 pm. Meet at Penang Restaurant, 117 N. 10th St. (near the Loews Hotel):
http://www.penangusa.com/location_philly.html

Productions & Screenings

John Walters, Theater of War (2008, documentary)
The film is a behind-the-scenes look at the 2006 production of "Mother Courage and Her Children" with Meryl Streep playing Courage, directed by George Woolf, produced by Oscar Eustis, and in a new translation by Tony Kushner.
For info: www.imdb.com/title/tt1134673/
For film clips: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKK37mSRFV4

British actor Peter Thomson goes on the road with his new performance piece:
"Changing the Wheel: Bert Brecht and Me"
For information, click here.

Videos / DVDs

Georg Wilhelm Pabst. The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper / L’Opéra de Quat’Sous).
Based on the original musical play by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. German and French versions of 1931 with English subtitles. London: British Film Institute. BFIVD 661 [2 DVDs, Region 2 only].

A new film by Peter Voigt just released called "Bertolt Brecht: Bild und Modell"
Click here for more information.

Philippe Vincent (director). Fatzer: Ein Film nach dem Fragment von Bertolt
Brecht und nach der Montage von Heiner Müller. Aus dem Deutschen von
François Rey. Lyon: Compagnie Scènes, 2003. [DVD 100 min., b/w, in French
with German subtitles]

Order from:
Compagnie Scenes
Les Subsistances
8 bis quai St. Vincent
69001 Lyon
France
Email: vinscenes@wanadoo.fr

Bertolt Brecht Practice Pieces
1964; 28 mins.
Facets VHS-S30994 (www.facets.org)
Lotte Lenya, Roscoe Lee Browne, Micki Grant, and Oliver Clark are shown rehearsing two of Bertolt Brecht's largely unknown and seldom performed "Übungstücke für Schauspieler" (Practice Pieces for Actors). Brecht wrote these scenes to train actors in his own method for doing classical drama. Contains scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and a brief discussion of the theater of Brecht with Lenya and translator Michael Lebeck.

The Jewish Wife
New York: Phoenix Films [1978], 29 min.
A dramatization of Brecht's scene from “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich”. Director, Jeff Young; produced by Daniel Wigutow, Clark Worswick. Viveca Lindfors, Harris Yulin. Originally released by Play/Data Bureau, Inc., Strolling Players, Inc., 1971.

Bertolt Brecht
Princeton, NJ : Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1998. 53 min.
A Clark Television production for BBC Worldwide Television. Producer: Bob Portway; camera: Steve Cripps; music: Ed Kielb. Voice of Brecht: Philip Hurdwood. Originally produced in 1996.
"The German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer who developed the drama as a social and ideological forum is the subject of this program, in which those who knew him discuss his life and many works. Excerpts from plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Antigone highlight the development of Brecht's austere form of irregular verse. A later work, “The Short Organum for the Theater”, is the embodiment of Brecht's idea of true Marxist drama."

Brecht on Stage
Cicero, IL: Roland Collection of Films on Art, 1989. 25 min. A production for the Open University, BBC.
Director, writer: Richard Bessel; producer: Amanda Willett. Contemporaries and scholars of Bertolt Brecht discuss his work and its impact on modern theater.

Syberberg filmt bei Brecht 1953 (Puntila, Urfaust, Die Mutter)
Mit eingesprochenem Kommentar von Hans Mayer
Alexander Verlag, 90 min. ISBN 3-923854-80-3 By Hans Jürgen Syberberg. (www.alexander-verlag.com/Neuer/audis3.htm)
The documentary images of scenes filmed at the Berliner Ensemble are silent and often blurred, but they are valuable as the only available cinematic documentation of Brecht rehearsing scenes at this own theater.

See additional links to lists of videos and television documentations.

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