The Berliner Ensemble.

The third and final part of Amanda Willett’s 1989 BBC documentary Brecht on Stage features Prof. Hans Mayer discussing Brecht’s establishment of the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 following his return to Berlin. Prof. Mayer talks about Brecht’s working methods at the Ensemble and his role in the Berlin Workers’ Uprising of 1953.

After Brecht’s 1956 death, the company fell into some disrepair, becoming more of a museum for Brecht’s work than a vital new theatre for East Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, it became revitalized, especially with Heiner Müller‘s role in the directorship of the theatre from 1992 to 1995. In 2000, the company named former Vienna Burgtheater artistic director Claus Peymann, who had revitalized that institution, to the directorship, and currently the Ensemble offers a full slate of plays — this summer alone offering drama by Franz Wedekind, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Lessing, Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Kleist and of course Brecht. Here I should note the upcoming visit of the Berliner Ensemble to BAM’s Next Wave Festival; the company will present Robert Wilson’s acclaimed staging of The Threepenny Opera 4-8 October 2011.

Part 1 of the documentary can be found here, and part 2 can be found here.