The Complete Brecht Toolkit

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by Stephen Unwin

A companion piece to NHB's best-selling The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit.

A practical, hands-on guide - for actors, directors, teachers and students - to Brecht's history and practice of theatre.

The Complete Brecht Toolkit examines, one by one, Brecht's many, sometimes contradictory ideas about theatre - and how he put them into practice. Here are explanations of all the famous key terms, such as Alienation Effect, Epic Theatre and Gestus, as well as many others which go to make up what we think of as 'Brechtian theatre'.
There follows a section which looks at the practical application of these theories in Acting, Language, Music, Design and Direction. And finally, the book offers fifty exercises for student actors to investigate Brecht's ideas for themselves, becoming thoroughly familiar with the tools in the Brecht toolkit.

Even in his lifetime, Brecht was widely misunderstood. The Complete Brecht Toolkit is a vital masterclass that seeks to clear away some of the mystery that surrounds Brecht's theatre, and explains what he was trying to do. Stephen Unwin's book is a practical, hands-on guide to Brecht for actors, directors, teachers and students.