Drums in the Night
Drums in the Night | |
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Written by | Bertolt Brecht |
Characters | Andreas Kragler, missing World War I soldier Anna Balicke, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Balicke Karl Balicke Amalie Balicke Friedrich Murk, Anna's fiancé Babusch, a journalist Maid Waiter Marie, a prostitute Glubb, a bartender Bulltrotter, newspaper vendor Auguste, a prostitute Drunk[1] |
Date premiered | 29 September 1922 |
Place premiered | Deutsches Theater |
Original language | German |
Genre | Comedy in Five Acts |
Setting | Berlin, January 1919 |
Drums in the Night (
Drums in the Night is one of Brecht's earliest plays, written before he became a
Plot summary
Brecht's play revolves around Anna Balicke, whose lover (Andreas) has left to fight in World War I. The war is now over but Anna and her family have not heard from him for four years. Anna's parents try to convince her that he is dead and that she should forget him and marry a wealthy war-materials manufacturer, Murk. Anna agrees to this arrangement eventually, just as Andreas returns, having spent the missing years as a prisoner-of-war in some remote location in Africa. Believing that the poor
The play dramatizes many of the grievances of the Spartacists in their uprising. The soldiers returning from the front felt that they had been fighting for nothing and that what they had before they left had been stolen. Murk, the war-profiteer who did not fight and who instead made a fortune from the fighting, and who attempts to steal the soldier's fiancée, symbolizes that feeling by the working class of having been cheated.
Production history
Drums in the Night, a "Comedy in Five Acts by
The play received another production at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, also directed by Falckenberg, which opened on 20 December 1922, with a cast of leading actors then in Berlin, including Alexander Granach as the soldier Andreas Kragler.[5]
Falckenberg, who was the head of the Kammerspiele along with Benno Bing, directed the play in a manner that we would not now recognize as 'Brechtian', utilizing the angular, contorted poses typical of the theatre of Expressionism.[6] Similarly, Reigbert's design consisted of contorted, angular lines and foreshortened perspectives (similar to those used in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920).[7] "Brecht's sense of irony was misunderstood", Meech suggests; he was "far from happy with the result."[8]
Elements of Expressionism, or perhaps "realistic-Expressistic" elements (according to Erwin Faber),[9] can be found in designs for the Munich production. Reigbert's rendering for the set design for Act V of Drums in the Night, for example, contains a figure standing by the bridge that is very much like Edvard Munch's figure (also standing by a bridge) in his painting of 1893, The Scream.
According to Erwin Faber, whom Brecht had requested to play the principal role of Andreas Kragler, a German soldier who returns home after to the war:
- The play was...expressionistic, that is, realistic-expressionistic. It was born of the times, and I played it as such...By the time Brecht arrived, the period of Expressionism in Munich had already passed...The heyday of Expressionism came in the aftermath of World War I, when we were all exhausted by the war: hunger, suffering, and grief was in every family who had lost a loved one. There was a tension that could only be resolved by an outcry...[Drums in the Night] was perhaps one of the last dramas to be played expressionisitically.[10]
Works cited
- ISBN 0-416-03280-X. pp. 63–115.
- Meech, Tony. 1994. "Brecht's Early Plays." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41446-6. pp. 43–55.
- Molinari, Cesare. 1975. Theatre Through the Ages. Trans. Colin Hamer. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-29448-9.
- McDowell, W. Stuart. 2000. "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years", The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin, Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000) pp. 71–83.
- Sacks, Glendyr. 1994. "A Brecht Calendar." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41446-6. p.xvii-xxvii.
- ISBN 0-413-34360-X.
- ISBN 0-416-03280-X. p.vii-xvii.
- Calabro, Tony. 1990. Bertolt Brecht's Art of Dissemblance. Longwood Academic.
Notes
- ^ Brecht, Bertolt (1992). Die Stücke von Bertolt Brecht in einem Band. Suhrkamp Verlag.
- ^ Willett (1967, 23-24), Willett and Manheim (1970, viii-ix), and Meech (1994, 50).
- ^ Willett and Manheim (1970, ix).
- ^ Willett (1967, 24).
- ^ Willett (1967, 23-24) and Willett and Manheim (1970, viii-ix).
- ^ McDowell (2000, 73).
- ^ See Willett and Manheim (1970, viii); a photograph from this production is reproduced in Willett (1967, 23). There is a good colour reproduction of Reigbert's sketch for his design for the production in Molinari (1975, 306).
- ^ Meech (1994, 50).
- ^ McDowell (2000, 76).
- ^ McDowell (2000, 74-5).