"This selection from Brecht's notes and theoretical writing is meant to give English-language readers the main texts and set these in chronological order so as to show how his ideas evolved, gradually forming a quite personal aesthetic which applied to other spheres besides the theater. Too often the theory is treated as if it were a coherent whole which sprang from Brecht's head ready-made. The endless working and re-working which it underwent, the...

The two works collected in this volume sprang from the same fruitful collaboration that gave rise to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. Both are set in America, but an America of myth. In The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Brecht's parable of greed and indifference, Mahagonny is a boom-town fusing Miami with Sodom and Gomorrah. Founded on the principle that it is easier to prospect gold from people's pockets than from the earth,...