This exhibition would be the first devoted to the visible manufacturing of legendary German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). It options authentic materials from the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin, most of it never-before exhibited, alongside performances of a set of scenes from his early unfinished performs.

All through his working life, Brecht lower out and organised visible materials from sources starting from newspapers and magazines to labels and packaging. He collected pictures to tell his theatre, from medieval work and Chinese language theatre to up to date clothes and industrial manufacturing, and in addition recorded social and political occasions and their actors—politicians, troopers, employees and folks on the road—in a collage undertaking that performed out throughout notebooks, journals and manuscripts. Brecht’s dramatic works have been typically constructed in fragments of textual content, lower out and reorganised as montages on giant sheets of paper. Alongside a number of these, the exhibition will show authentic manuscripts, made by Brecht whereas in exile, that doc the devastation of the Second World Battle. Except for Battle Primer, Brecht’s image-text essay about conflict below capitalism, most of this materials stays little-known.

Twice a day all through the exhibition, actors will lead guests via Raven

Row, performing dramatic fragments from 4 of Brecht’s unfinished performs from the Twenties, exhibiting how montage and snapshot methods performed an important half in his conception of playwriting. Audiences might be requested to think about class battle and poverty in The Breadshop, the excesses of inventory buying and selling in Fleischhacker, a man- made apocalypse in The Flood and a tank crew deserting the entrance line in Fatzer.

Units for these performances will additional animate Brecht’s archive, reproducing his writing concerning the performs in addition to analysis materials he gathered to tell them, and revealing the profound function that visible conceptualisation performed in his artistic and political pondering.

Curated by
Phoebe von Held, in collaboration with Tom Kuhn, Alex Sainsbury, and Iliane Thiemann from the Bertolt Brecht Archive on the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

at Raven Row, London
till August 18, 2024