York Drama Lays Out a Dramatic Feast with Brecht-Fest

York Drama is presenting its second festival this season, Brecht-Fest; an evening of nine short plays celebrating a playwright that changed modern drama. Bertolt Brecht is known for Epic Theatre, plays dealing with grand topics but featuring ordinary people rather than royalty or high society. His Three-Penny Opera with its signature song Mack the Knife, changed the face of musical theatre. He may be best known for the Verfremdungseffekt, a technique now used extensively in theater and film that prevents the audience from losing itself completely in the narrative, instead making it a conscious critical observer. For Brecht, theatre needed to be owned by the people and speak to the people about the socio-political issues at the center of their lives.

While Brecht is known for a handful of his masterpieces that forged a new dramatic vision, Brecht-Fest offers a glimpse at a few less commonly produced works from his early career. Act one consists of eight short plays written during Brecht’s exile in the US. These little gems offer glimpses of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, taking the audience from laughter to tears. Act two finishes the bill with The Wedding Party, a literal knock-down, drag-out farce Brecht wrote at the tender age of twenty-one, and arguably the funniest piece he would write for the rest of his career.

Brecht-Fest can be seen Feb 1st – 3rd at 7:30pm and Sunday Feb 4th at 2:00pm at Baker Auditorium, York High School.

Brecht-Fest is recommended for Middle School and above. All tickets are $10 and available online at www.ticketpeak.com/yorkdrama and at the door. York students are admitted free at the door with ID.

York Community High School is located at 355 W. St. Charles Road, Elmhurst, Illinois.