Театральная компания ЗМ
Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill

BRECHT CABARE

Lensoviet Theatre, St. Petersburg
Presented in the frame of Russian Case


Участник программы «Russian Case» Фестиваля 2016 года

Director: Yury Butusov


The production is the result of students’ training activity. Director Yury Butusov set his students from St. Petersburg the task to make musical sketches on Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The production was then included into the repertoire of the Lensoviet Theatre and became a hit of the St. Petersburg theatre season. It was also entered on the list of Russia’s most interesting theatre premieres. The unsystematic collage of Brecht`s songs on a bare stage offers a surprisingly integral social statement about today whilst at the same time providing a kind of a lecture on Brecht: a narrative about his life and his method, which is illustrated with Brechtian acting and accompanied by songs.

The connection between the state of the world in the 1930s and the world of the 2010s is revealed in the esthetic of the performance. The Brechtian method becomes the only possible instrument to express the idea: the weapon of reason, paradox and doubt.

This is an anti-war production depicting the mechanism of transformation of a polarized society, deformed by propaganda, into a society of war.
Pieces from Brecht`s plays are centered around the personality of the author who believed that theatre can change life directly, without any allegories or metaphors. The euphoria of theatre and the intense theatricality make us believe in the power of man to change the world by means of artistic satirically-grotesque intellect.

Pavel Rudnev






The show is very much about dance, choreography... The director and stage designer succeeded in turning the short novel into true poetry on stage.

"Power of Labour" Newspaper





RECHT CABARE is not a linear life-and-death story of the famous playwright and director, one of the founders of political theatre, but a story of how his literary and drama works were born. His private life is also touched upon, "incredibly complicated, beautiful, difficult, diverse in its makeup", as the director puts it. Kurt Weills's music in the show is not only from Brecht's productions, but also from musicals that the playwright had nothing to do with. The songs are performed in their original language - German, English and French.

Rossiyskaya Newspaper