Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/27/2020
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
Portland State University
Categories
What influence did Friedrich Schiller’s work have on Bertolt Brecht’s? How do Schiller and Brecht’s major works on figures of the Thirty Years War inform one another? And had Schiller already established techniques in the late 18th century that scholars and theater practitioners of the 20th century would readily term “Brechtian” and “Epic”? This talk will answer these questions and redefine Brecht’s contentious attitude toward Schiller to analyze Schiller’s engagement with a theatrical aesthetic that would become so broadly attributed to Brecht over a century later.
Matthew D. Straus is completing his dissertation in the School of Drama at the University of Washington. His research interests include Brechtian performance techniques in foreign language pedagogy, developments of Verfremdungseffekte in 18th-19th century German drama and American Musicals, and Spanish Golden Age theater. He received his BA in German Studies and Theatre Studies, and his MA in German Studies from California State University, Long Beach. He was an Austrian Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, has taught courses on Büchner-Wedekind-Brecht, and has directed all-student productions of Woyzeck, Threepenny Opera, Leonce und Lena, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He is currently teaching German at Portland State University.
February 27, Fariborz Maseh Hall 334, 3pm. Reception to follow
