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STRANGER THAN THE MOON BERLINER ENSEMBLE

TEXTBYBERTOLTBRECHT WITHMUSICBYHANNS EISLERANDOTHERS

ADAPTEDFORSTAGEBY ADAMBENZWI,OLIVER REESEANDLUCIEN STRAUCH

STRANGER THAN THE MOON

Fremder als der Mond

TEXT BY BERTOLT BRECHT WITH MUSIC BY HANNS EISLER AND OTHERS

Adapted for the stage by Adam Benzwi, Oliver Reese and Lucien Strauch

Starring PAUL HERWIG

KATHARINE MEHRLING and

ADAM BENZWI (Live-Music)

DIRECTOR Oliver Reese

MUSICAL DIRECTOR Adam Benzwi SET DESIGNER Hansjörg Hartung

COSTUME DESIGNER Elina Schnizler

VIDEO Andreas Deinert

LIGHTING DESIGNER Steffen Heinke

CHOREOGRAPHER Leslie Unger

DRAMATURG Lucien Strauch

Technical Director: Stephan Besson Technical Production Manager: Edmund Stier

Lighting Manager: Hans Fründt. Sound Manager / Scenic Media Technician: Afrim Parduzi. Video Manager: Susanne Oeser. Costume Manager: Elina Schnizler. Costume Designers: Uta Rosi, Anja Sonnen. Prop Manager: Matthias Franzke. Make-up Manager: Verena Martin Extras: Peter Luppa

The costumes were made in the workshops of the Berliner Ensemble

The Coronet Theatre is a risk-taking, international arts venue in a restored and re-imagined Grade II listed building in Notting Hill Both its programme and the building’s restoration are curated by Artistic Director, Anda Winters.

Our year-round multi-disciplinary programme of world-class drama, dance, music, poetry and visual arts in our main auditorium and studio space welcomes our own productions as well as visiting artists, including many UK and World Premieres.

We offer memorable and often unexpected experiences to audiences, while supporting established artists and nurturing new talent Our mission is to entertain, educate and excite UK audiences with the art and cultures beyond our borders.

TO SING A LIFE

By Lucien Strauch

What was he like? Where can he be found in his work? "Everywhere! In every verse, in every sentence", wrote Ruth Berlau in 1958, two years after Bertolt Brecht's death Brecht himself had ambivalent views on the question of how the artist and his work intertwine On the one hand, he is known as a master of self-dramatisation: combining ragged smocks with fine silk shirts to create an artist's look, cultivating an olfactory signature by not washing himself, and never giving up his Augsburg accent, even after a decade and a half of involuntary stays abroad He knew his effect and cleverly designed the "Brecht" brand. On the other hand, he is also known as the tireless creator: always concerned with the 'third thing' and, in exile, pragmatically noted: "The fact that these notes contain so little private information is not only because I am myself not particularly interested in private matters (and hardly have a method of representation that satisfies me) but primarily because in the first place, I expect that my notes would have to exceed limits of incalculable number and quality."

From his life, full of both rich success and austerity, Brecht draws two of his alter egos, interpreted by Katharine Mehrling and Paul Herwig in Stranger than the Moon. A fragmented collage of songs, poems, autobiographical notes and letters, which are structured more according to thematic context than to historical chronology, show us B B in three phases of his life:

Initially - the first act - here is the young Brecht in Augsburg, Munich and Berlin in the years between the wars. Driven by an unconditional urge to create, he seeks his place as a poet and singer. His own radical-nihilistic worldview must first be outsourced to the dramatic figure of Baal; he himself is still "too soft". He has his first successes with pieces such as Drums in the Night and the poetry collection Hauspostille and finally becomes an overnight star with The Threepenny Opera. But his fame is soon overshadowed by Hitler's rise to power One day after the Reichstag fire, Brecht leaves Berlin.

Here begins the second act - a long period of exile in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and finally California. He comments sharp-tongued on the devastation of the World War from a distance In the middle of his life he is particularly productive, but dramatic masterpieces such as Life of Galileo, Mother Courage, Arturo Ui and The Caucasian Chalk Circle are all initially shelved. There is no stage to play them

The third act - after the end of the war he leaves the USA and returns to the now divided Germany in 1948/49 after a short stopover in Switzerland. He settles in East Berlin and Buckow and starts the Berliner Ensemble with Helene Weigel After a period of unpopular residency at the Deutsches Theater, the company moves into the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1954. Now things can get going for the revolutionary-playwright Brecht, death is knocking on the door

He suffered from a lifelong heart condition and was unable to travel to the London performance of Mother Courage. He died at just 58 years of age, however perhaps reconciled: "For some time / I had no fear of death Because nothing / can ever be lacking for me, provided / I myself am missing. Now / I managed to be happy / all the blackbirds sing for me too," he wrote in May 1956, just three months before his death

That blackbird song - the song of the "folk singer in the age of skyscrapers" arranged by Adam Benzwi especially for this project - is the connecting element of the evening. It tells of stories in themselves and yet always also something about its author

WHAT WAS BRECHT LIKE?

BY RUTH BERLAU

BRECHT’S DAILY LANGUAGE a small dictionary

WORDS OF PRAISE normal friendly useful helpful talented funny real

SWEAR WORDS corrupt bought exploiter undialectical un-Marxist

IN THE THEATRE show try contradict speak sharply fable why why and again and again: why?

FAVOURITES Chaplin Talented actors

FAVOURITE COLOUR grey

COLLECTOR OF Pictures of Hitler for his gangster piece Ui pictures of gestures pictures pictures and always pictures

FAVOURITE MATERIAL leather wood

WHAT HE NEEDED tables, lots of tables typewriters reading lamps lots of light nice typewriter paper scissors for cutting out pictures glue for assembling them

WHAT ELSE HE NEEDED students, lots of students more talented actors composers conversations scientists crime novels peace and quiet

This questionnaire was created by Ruth Berlau, Brecht's collaborator and lover, and published in 1958, two years after Brecht's death on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

THE WATER-FIRE PERSON

A conversation with the musicologist Albrecht Dümling

SONGS ARE CENTRAL TO ALMOST ALL OF BRECHT’S MAJOR PLAYS, AND MANY OF HIS POEMS BECAME POPULAR THANKS TO THEIR MUSICAL SETTING. WHAT WAS BRECHT’S RELATIONSHIP TO MUSIC?

Brecht received piano and violin lessons at an early age. He played the guitar passably and lightly studied counterpoint and harmony At the symphony concerts in his hometown of Augsburg, he watched the conductors particularly closely. At times he imitated them. He bought himself a baton, a music stand and the score to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde Brecht's early musical experiences conjured up dreams and mental images, all of which he wanted to put on paper as a poet or as a music critic In fact, he wrote reviews for a daily newspaper in Augsburg He disliked the preference given to opera over spoken theatre. As a young poet he loved music but also feared it at the same time. He even increasingly viewed it as dangerous

WHAT WAS HE SCARED OF?

Going to concerts could trigger extremely intoxicating experiences for him Bach's St Matthew Passion, for example, caused his heart to palpitate so much that he feared for his health. Brecht drew conclusions about others based on himself. He assumed that the majority of concert audiences used music like a drug Most of all, Brecht considered Richard Wagner a seducer and creator of intoxicating experiences. However, his warning "Don't let yourself be seduced" also refers to the church's promise of life after death

HOW DID BRECHT RESPOND TO THESE TEMPTATIONS?

"Don't stare so romantically" was his motto. The stage designer Caspar Neher once portrayed his trusted friend Brecht as a "water-fire person " , a figure who vacillated between emotion and hardness. Brecht evidently found this portrait to be valid and adopted it in Hauspostille. The strong emotional fire that burned within him and which he considered dangerous had to be extinguished by reason. Since the drug-like effect of music was based on the elimination of reality, he contrasted so-called "absolute music" with musical forms that were connected to people's lives and actions, to their everyday lives.

SO MUSIC IS NOT JUST FOR ENJOYMENT, IT IS ALWAYS CONNECTED TO A PURPOSE. VERY EARLY ON AT THE AUGSBURG FOLK FESTIVALS, HE DISCOVERED THE FIGURE OF THE BALLAD SINGER, THIS ALSO HE FOUND IN HIS ROLE MODEL FRANK WEDEKIND. HOW DID THIS IMPACT HIS WORK?

These experiences were of the greatest importance to Brecht. For the ballad singers, music had a subservient role; it was meant to convey the texts. Ballad singing was also a culture based on oral tradition. There were neither books nor music stands at the fair. People made music and sang from memory and for a specific occasion. Many of Brecht's texts were created while speaking aloud, while fantasising freely. They were transcripts from speech. Consistently, Brecht also published his Lesebuch für Städtebewohner (Handbook for City Dwellers) as a record of speech. Like the ballad singers and Wedekind, he preferred simple, easily memorable melodies. They provided a rhythm. With a melody in mind, a poem was easier to learn by heart. It also fixed a certain way of speaking. Brecht therefore published his most important poems in his Hauspostille also with the melodies. Later on, he also combined poems with melodic ideas. His composers benefited from this.

THE MAJORITY OF THE SOMGS WE USED WERE WRITTEN BY HANNS EISLER. WHAT WAS SPECIAL ABOUT THE BRECHT/EISLER COLLABORATION COMPARED TO THE OTHER COMPOSERS WHO WROTE FOR HIM?

The first professional composer with whom Brecht worked was Franz Servatius Bruinier, who died young. His successor was Kurt Weill, who was enthusiastic about the songs of the Hauspostille. This resulted in the opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. When Weill insisted on the leading role of music, a dispute arose. Hanns Eisler, a student of Schönberg, was unfamiliar with such demands and conflicts. Despite his success with avant-garde compositions, he distanced himself from the bourgeois music business. He sought contact with a broad audience and wanted to use music to support the left-wing workers' movement. Brecht had similar interests. Politically and aesthetically, there was a great deal of agreement between him and Eisler. They spent most of their years of exile together, first in Denmark, then in California. Their collaboration was a truly productive exchange, with creative impulses often coming from Eisler. Brecht's only real theatrical success in the USA, the Galileo performance of 1947, emerged from his cooperation with Eisler.

DID HIS ENCOUNTER WITH EISLER CHANGE BRECHT’S RELATIONSHIP TO MUSIC OVER THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE?

Eisler was even able to persuade his friend Brecht to listen to music by Beethoven and Schönberg. The playwright did not become an avid concert-goer. However, the polarity of feeling and reason, of fire and water, increasingly came into balance. This is evident not least from the children's anthem with which both creators cast a hopeful view of Germany's future after the war: "Grace spares neither effort / passion nor reason / that a good Germany may flourish / like another good country". The song begins with a word that Brecht had probably never used before: grace. This term from German classicism belongs to an ideal of humanity to which Eisler was the first to give him access. For me, Children's Hymn is the most beautiful result of the collaboration between the two friends.

This interview was conducted by Lucien Strauch

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PERFORMANCE COPYRIGHTS

Compositions by Hanns Eisler/ arrangement by Adam Benzwi: © by Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig The use of poems and text excerpts by Bertolt Brecht was made with the kind permission of the Bertolt Brecht heirs and the Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin

TEXT REFERENCES

The texts “Singing a Life” and the conversation “The Water-Fire-Man” (June 5, 2023) are original contributions to this program booklet The text “What was Bert Brecht like?” (printed here in an abridged form) first appeared in “Das Magazin” Publisher Das Neue Berlin, 2/1958, © by Ruth Berlau/Hoffmann

The quote on the back comes from: Hanns Eisler: “Conversations with Hans Bunge Ask more about Brecht” German Publisher for “Musik Leipzig” 1975, p 172

COMPANY CREDITS

Registered name

Berliner Ensemble GmbH

Season 2023/24 #102

Artistic director Oliver Reese

Editors

Lucien Strauch, Lukas Nowak

Design

Birgit Karn

Photos

Julian Röder

Printing Druckhaus Sportflieger, Berlin

Berliner Ensemble GmbH / Managing Director: Oliver Reese, Jan Fischer / HRB No : 45435 at the Berlin Charlottenburg District Court / VAT ID No DE 155555488

Media partners (logos of )

EXBERLINER

RBB KULTUR

TIP BERLIN

We would like to thank the Brecht-Weigel-Haus in Buckow and Ms Juliane Grützlemacher for their kind support

When Brecht moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm with the Berliner Ensemble in 1954, he immediately had the eagle of the Prussian coat of arms above the imperial box crossed out with a red cross during his first visit to the stage – a gesture that was as offensive as it was conservative, showing that one must be aware of a danger in order to be able to counteract it

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