We have drifted a bit from MacColl to Brecht ~~ tho there is the connection of their being both avowedly left-wing propagandists with an avowedly didactic purpose. What I always feel so off-putting in Brecht {alienatory in a sense quite other then the Verfremdungseffekt at which he claimed to be aiming}is that he never seemed to know when he had made his point, but would pertinaciously go on making it over and over and over again, and then make it once more, & then one more time: till one could scream. Was it because he thought the proletarian audience at which he was aiming was too thick to get it the first [or even the second or third or nth] time? How patronising. And this from one who prided himself as a thoroughly professional man of the theatre. I always valued the story of his rehearsing the Berliner Ensemble while there was some sort of anti-authoritarian riot going on outside. A few rioters threatened by Soviet tanks crept into his Schiffbauerdamm Theatre for refuge and disturbed the concentration of his cast and himself. "Get those bloody amateurs out of my theatre," he yelled. Perhaps apocryphal, but se non è vero, è ben trovato & all that.

~M~