To commemorate the 70th

iversary of the birth of Ber-
tr jolt Brecht, on ‘10th February
S this year “Brecht Dialogue 1968”

f
n
d |
S
ey
‘
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vill bring two hundred produc- .

actors, stage designers,
- fritics and translators from Ger-
ny and abroad to Berlin,
. fapital of the German Democrat-

Republic and home of Brecht’s
yenowned theatre company The
8erliner Ensemble.

BRECHT DIALOGUE 1968

Figures of note attending the
discussions and Brecht produc-
tions will include Giorgio Streh-
ler (Italy), a representative of
the Comedié Canadienne, Peter
Weiss (Sweden), and Peter Brook
of the Royal Shakespeare Com-
pany.

The event is being held under
the auspices of the International
Theatre Institute and the Acade-
my of the Arts of the GDR.

Make it not your goal

That in the hour of death,

You yourself be better.

Let it be your goal

That in the hour of death,

You leave a bettered world.

—From Saint Joan of

the Stockyards

On February 10, seventy years
ago, Bertolt Brecht was born in
Augsburg, Germany. His whole
life’s story was that. of a man
contributing to the struggle to
make the world better.

Brecht’s contribution was far
greater than -ever the. rich store
of plays that he wrote—for his
mark can be found on all sub-
sequent drama, on all artistic
development.

His first published writing was
at the age of 10. When he was
still a young man in Augsburg,
working as a hospital orderly,
Brecht. wrote his Ballad of the
Dead Soldier, describing how
they dug up a soldier, patched
him up and sent him back to
the front.

Of this period in his life,
Brecht said: “I was a member of
the Augsburg Revolutionary
Committee. Nearby, in Munich,
Levine raised the banner of So-
viet power. Augsburg lived in
the reflected glow of Munich.
The hospital was the only mili-
tary unit in the town. It elected
me to the Revolutionary Com-
mittee.” Brecht, at the’ time of
Hitler's beerhall putsch, was
fifth on the fascist murder list.

Brecht’s first play was written
and produced in 1922, Drums in
the Night; and the list of his fu-
ture works (A Man’s a Man, The

- Rise and Fall of the City of Ma-

hagonny, Saint Joan of the
Stockyards, Mother Courage, Ga-
lileo, Three Penny Opera among
them) are now well known to
people throughout the world.

From 1933 Brecht was in exile,
Prague, Vienna, Sweden, Fin-

‘land, Moscow and the United

Leave a bettered world...

States. In 1947 he returned to
Europe and in the next year to
Berlin. Here, was in now the
German Democratic Republic, in
1948 the Berliner Ensemble was
established with Brecht as “a
member of the artistic advisory
board.” It was here in Berlin in
1956 that Brecht died.

In an article entitled, On the
Artistic Originality of Bertolt
Brecht’s Drama, the author says:
‘In all his works, Brecht tire-

lessly condemns deceit as a -

weapon of the exploiting classes.
A lie is always resourceful: it
emerges in imposing dress, in
a cloak of pretty words, together
with skillful demagogy;. it at-
tempts to arouse and manipulate
the dark emotions and instincts
stripped of rational control, the
lie is unselfishness itself, indeed
self-effacing altruism, but when
unmasked and pinned to the
wall, in self-defense it calls itself
a ‘good,’ ‘holy,’ ‘saving’ lie...
But Brecht dedicated to a sober
and severe truth without verbal
decorations and suspicious feel-
ings (because of their ‘good
origins’) unfailingly exposes
every pose of social deceit and
the machinations of the . most
‘ideal’ lie. Every kind of appeal
to universal, classless, moral ca-

tegories, which soar above the ~

‘vain and earthly,’ always elicits
from him an ironically skeptical
grin and a sharp, infallibly aim-

ed response. Brecht often clothes |

this response in the dress of
parody...”

In death, Brecht, as in life,
wherever his:plays are produc-
ed, his poems are read, his songs
are sung, continues the fight for
a better world.

Forward. March on the tower,
through the city, by land
the world;

Forward. Advance it on: Just
whose city is the city? Just
whose world is the world?

Forward, we’ve not forgotten

our union in hunger and pain,

|

no matter what may threat-
en, forward, we’ve not for-
gotten.

We have a world to gain. We
shall free the world of sha-
dow; every shop.and every
room, every road and every
meadow.

All the world will be our own.

“Instead of increasing your
wages, I’m referring you to my
psychiattist!”’

ead

~ Worthington and 57 million-d

By TOM MORRIS

ETER Worthington is looking for
the “motive”.

His series in the Toronto Tele-
gram, which zeros in on the peace
movement is a bucketful of good old-
fashioned red-baiting. So much so
that Worthington repeats over and
over that “. . . these people are doing

--nothing illegal” and ‘“. . . to discuss

individuals .. . is not McCarthyism,
witch-hunting or Red-Mania.”
It’s a good thing that readers are

often not as naive as writers. But ~

thousands of people will read his
words, skillfully weaving a sinister
web (complete with easy-read charts),
and think that all this garbage is ob-
jective reportage. Worthington and

- the Telegram shouldn’t feel the need

to apologize. Why not say it straight,
boys; it’s the tired, old red herring
that you’re dragging around. No Tele-
gram reader will-be shocked. Do we
detect a power-struggle here between
Worthington and Lubor Zink?

Want the motive, Mr. Worthington?

The hidden, underground, com-
munist-inspired, anti-Canadian motive
is: These people are sick of war.
They are tired of dying for lousy,
rotten causes to make General Motors
rich. They are tired of the phonies
who send young men off to die to
preserve empires whose time has
come. They have the gall to suggest

that someone is responsible. And
they have the courage to stand up
to smear jobs like yours for peace
and, yes; Peter, for democracy too.

A ghastly toll of 37,508,686 men
died and were battered casualties in
World War I so that capitalist na-
tions could re-divide the spoils. Were
they not cheated out of life as they
marched off to the sounds of bands
and high-sounding phrases? Almost
17 million soldiers died in World War
II because the West urged on a
maniac like Hitler hoping to smash
socialism. And then, to our undying
shame we took part in the demolition
of Korea even as the rubble from the
Second World War was being clear-
ed away. Have you heard, Mr. Worth-
ington, that there is a dirty rotten
war going on in Vietnam? And that
some Canadians are getting rich on
it? And that your newspaper sup-
ports that? :

Aren’t 20 million dead soldiers (not
counting: Spain, Vietnam, Philippines,
Cuba, Santo Domingo, Cyprus, Egypt,
Malaya) enough in 54 years? How’s

that for motive, Peter? ~

I won’t bore you with the millions
of civilian casualties or the dreams
that went up in the scream of ex-
ploding shells. Perhaps you may not
be too touched by the cost in sweat
and blood or the indescribable ma-
terial destruction. And there is noth-

ing so un-camp these days as writing -

about The Bomb and what it means.
It’s enough to say that, given World
War- III, the grist mill known as the
Toronto Telegram will be blown to
smoking hell along with the rest of
the world.

There may be hope after all. After
circling around, Worthington becomes
hopelessly lost:

“Regardless of whether or not the
anti-war movement of today is Com-
munist-inspired — and certainly the
bulk of its supporters are not — there
can be little dispute it aids the Com-
munist program. . .

“The average citizen is caught in
a bind. If he is against the war how
can he register his protest ‘without
giving comfort to those who oppose
the system he lives under?

“There is no easy answer.

“In fact the only answer seems to
be for the US to review its Vietnam
policies and to get out of an im-
possible situation as quickly and as
gracefully as possible.”

Mr. “Average Citizen” isn’t the only
one caught in a bind. Consider Mr.
Worthington’s bind: if peace is the
Communist program and the peace
movement, thereforé, aids the Com-
munist program, and Peter Worthing-
ton aids the Vietnam war by attack-
ing the peace movement, and every-
one knows that a war is required to

“give a peace movement a meaning,

we discover that Mr. Worthington and
the Telegram are also helping the
“Communist cause”. :

Is‘ there no room left for honest
men?

/FEBRUARY:16, 1968—PACIFIG TRIBUNE—Page 9: *

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