This updated edition properly retains much that was in the original Companion, but also introduces new voices and themes. It brings together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners and contains new essays on Brecht's early experience of cabaret, his significance in the development of film theory and his unique approach to dramaturgy. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this thorough overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke. Book jacket.

Peter Brook states unequivocally: "Brecht is the key figure of our time, and all theatre work today at some point starts or returns to his statements and achievement." In Beyond Brecht theatre practitioners, film-makes, and scholars assess the work of those who in their own creative work have absorbed Brecht and sought to move beyond him to create theatre, film, and song for the 1980s. From David Bowie's London Baal production to film in Switzerland, to engaged theatre in Calcutta, to the genius of Fo in Italy, the volume moves us beyond a Brecht fit for the museum, to a Brecht full of life for our turbulent time.

Karen Knorr photographed the building site of the disused Parisian Art-Deco Department store, La Samaritaine, in the summers of 2017 and 2018. In this new book, the resulting photographs, transformed with solarisation and infused with playful fantasy and surrealism are accompanied by lines from Brecht?s poem: 'Questions from a Worker Who Reads' (1935).

This collection examines the influence of Raymond Williams on the work of radical intellectuals. It especially looks at the limitation of Williams' political vision and commitment.

Fredric Jameson argues that Brecht's method was a multi-layered process of reflection and self-reflection, reference and self-reference, which allows individuals to situate themselves historically and think for themselves.