• Born into a prosperous, bourgeois family.
• Majored in natural sciences at Munich University, was a drama critic on the side.
• In the 1920s, began writing plays satirizing bourgeois life.
• Most famous for creation of “epic” theatre.
• Changed the course of the modern European theater-and theater around the world-more than any playwright since Ibsen.
• Fled Nazi Germany in 1933.
• Produced much of his work on the run in Sweden, Finland, and Santa Monica.
• Appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.
• Returned to East Germany and founded Berliner Ensemble.
  

Brecht’s critique of realism:

• Realism seduces audiences into buying into capitalist values.
• Realism constantly and subliminally urges the audience to accept its picture of reality as a natural, apolitical image of the world as it is.
• Instead, theatre should expose its own means of production to show that reality-on stage and off, is MADE, not GIVEN. 

Additional Links:

International Brecht Society:

 http://german.lss.wisc.edu/brecht/

Bertolt Brecht’s Biography:

 http://www.leninimports.com/bertolt_brecht.html

Brecht’s Epic Theater:  

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/theatrics/brecht/

Brecht theories and techniques:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bertolt_Brecht_theories_and_techniques