Past Show

The Epic Players’ successful 2006 production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Exception and the Rule,” and “The Informer,” was an arduous achievement for us all.Nonetheless, the director took great pride in witnessing his cast evolve from a diverse group of students with no or little experience in theatre, into a dedicated community of actors who endured countless obstacles as they relentlessly prepared for a superb performance.Extra focus ought to be placed on those cast members that attend HWC, amongst other colleges and universities, and therefore have had to skillfully balance school, work and theater with all other responsibilities. For their extremely hard work, the Epic Players were awarded the City Colleges of Chicago Labor Solidarity Awards for this special production.

The Exception and the Rule written in 1930, is one of Brecht’s most famous epic forms of didactic plays.It is in eight episodes, and deals with an oil merchant somewhere in Asia who is making a difficult journey through uncharted desert to beat his competitors to an oil concession.The didactic moral of the play is that, the way the world is now oriented, kind and humane actions lead to death, and conscious exploitation to success.The audience is asked to recognize this and-the last line of the play-“do something about it.”

The Informerwritten in 1938, takes place within the age and terror of Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of WWII and is a title play within the Fear and Misery of the Third Reich collection of twenty-four short plays. The plays are 'realistic', based on reports from inside Germany, but strung together on a long rhythmic poem to create a montage of anti-fascism sketches.

With such provocative socio-political plots, “The Exception and the Rule” and “The Informer” are intense examinations of the powerful influences of the ruling political class forces on human relationships, and examines the struggle that occurs as a result of conflicting social and economic roles. They must be viewed with critical remove, a scientific capacity to see beneath the surface of things rather than accepting conditions as inevitable.

Past Show Images