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The Week in Germany: Culture March 14, 2008 Exotic Comedy: Brecht's Epic Drama "The Good Woman of Setzuan"
Comes to DC
Three gods descend to earth in search of one good person and discover that kindness and compassion don't pay the rent. Shen Te, a kind and generous prostitute, is driven to disguise herself as the shrewd and unethical male businessman Shui Ta in order to navigate the demands of love, family and hungry neighbors. Bertolt Brecht, the avant-garde father of epic drama, mixes comedy and fantasy to create an exotic world that turns out to be very close to home. The Virginia-based Constellation Theatre Company has produced a presentation of The Good Woman of Setzuan that is the first professional production of this play in the Washington, DC area since Garland Wright directed a translation by Ralph Manheim at Arena Stage in 1985. Brecht was a provocative and daring visionary who created an original style of theatre designed to challenge and enlighten the audience, while engaging them to think about the dilemmas inherent in modern society. He asks how we can remain virtuous in a world that revolves around money and power. An active critic of war and capitalism, Brecht was perceived as "dangerous" at the time by Germany's dictatorship government and he was forced to travel as a refugee from 1933 until he came to California in 1941. An internationally renowned playwright and poet, Brecht founded the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 after he returned to Germany. The company toured throughout Europe, spreading Brecht's influence far and wide. The Good Woman of Setzuan, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle are the most celebrated of Brecht's plays in addition to the musical The Threepenny Opera that he created with composer Kurt Weill. Brecht's brilliance lies in his humor and his ability to inspire while amusing. "Clothing his didactic purpose in dazzling wit and fable-like enchantment, Brecht succeeds magnificently in achieving his distinctive alchemy of entertainment and instruction, art and life," says Eric Bentley, a widely recognized playwright, critic and scholar, one of the foremost authorities on the modern theater, and a longtime intimate of Brecht's. He has created a version of the play that is not a literal translation, but captures the spirit of the work and, in Bentley's words, is "more plausible, has more character, more charm, vivacity, edge." Constellation Theatre Company presented its first show, A Dream Play by August Strindberg in a new version by Caryl Chuchill, in June 2007 at Source. This past October, Constellation brought The Arabian Nights by Mary Zimmerman to Source Theatre. Many of the central talents to A Dream Play and The Arabian
Nights have come together again to create The Good Woman of Setzuan.
Director Allison Arkell Stockman collaborates with Scenic and Lighting
Designer A.J. Guban, Costume Designer Yvette M. Ryan and Choreographer
Ashley Ivey. Tom Teasley, a master percussionist who played live during
The Arabian Nights, has composed and recorded an original score for The
Good Woman of Setzuan. And Katie Atkinson, who played the bewitching
Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights, will star as Shen Te, and her
alter ego Shui Ta. (text courtesy of the Constellation
Theatre Company) Special Discount for TWIG and www.Germany.info readers: The Constellation Theatre Company is located at the Clark Street Playhouse, 601 South Clark Street Arlington, VA 22202. "The Good Woman of Setzan" will be showing from March 27 - April 20, 2008 (including pay-what-you-can previews on March 27 and 28), with shows scheduled for Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3 pm. The theater is offering a *German* discount to everyone that hears
about the show through The Week in Germany and www.Germany.info. You can
enter the code word *German* in at box office tickets to receive your
discount. Links: From Berlin to Broadway: Remembering Bertolt Brecht 50 Years On (TWIG, August 18, 2006) |
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