As two of the most important twentieth-century theatre directors, Bertolt Brecht and Vsevolod Meyerhold shared striking artistic, personal, and professional similarities. In addition to their middle-class background, both were the sons of merchants, well educated, politically persecuted, and exposed to the cultural innovations that spread throughout Germany and Russia during the 1920s and 1930s. Although Brecht's legacy is more salient, Meyerhold's artistic contributions can be traced to the work of numerous successors, including Brecht himself.

Every so often the field of theatre is gifted with an extraordinary artist whose work inspires a generation of colleagues and students. Heinz-Uwe Haus is one such example, as evidenced by his contr...

This article analyzes the socio-cultural theories of Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht through the lens of the theatre, most especially as it pertains to the work of actors. It explores the forces of capitalism that determine how art is produced, distributed, and consumed. Following Adorno’s reading of Marx, actors are here posited as commodities whose labor is separated from the product they create for public consumption. This commodification raises various questions: How does a market economy shape the production and consumption of (...) art? What is technology’s function in the commodification of art? What is art’s sociopolitical role and how does it apply to theatre? To address these questions I juxtapose the cultural theory of Adorno and Benjamin with Brecht’s epic theatre. This comparison exposes the ritualistic potential of the theatre to bring an audience together as a community through sharing a socially enriching event. (shrink)

Adorno had such an affinity for Beckett that he dedicated his posthumously published work, Aesthetic Theory, to him. In 1961, he wrote a thoughtful—if dizzyingly complex—tribute to Beckett’s play, Endgame, a work that models many aspects of Adorno’s cultural criticism. My aim, accordingly, is to offer an Adornian reading of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot by drawing upon his critiques of music, aesthetics, and the culture industry. My goal is twofold: to offer a refreshing analysis of one of the most significant (...) dramatic achievements of the twentieth century, and, in doing so, to demonstrate Adorno’s relevance to contemporary cultural studies by deploying multiple elements of his oeuvre. (shrink)