A History of the Berliner Ensemble

柏林剧团(BE)是由Bertolt Brecht和他的妻子Helene Weigel于1949年在不久后成为德意志民主共和国(DDR)的地方创立的戏剧公司。该公司很快就确立了自己作为高质量戏剧制作人的地位，这主要归因于两个原因：一、布莱希特激进的戏剧制作方法的新颖性和有效性。BE的结构方式。布莱希特和魏格尔试图吸引公司的所有成员，从而发展出一个功能齐全的整体，以集体生产方式的名义攻击专业等级制度。在巴黎(1954年)和伦敦(1956年)成功巡演后，BE获得了国际知名度，这吸引了欧洲和其他地区的兴趣，因为戏剧制作人从一家致力于布莱希特想法的公司寻求动力和想法。在布莱希特1956年去世后，剧院继续参与并扩展他的思想，其方法的活力和利用集体创作能量的意愿使其成为如何组织剧院的新模式。当然，BE并非没有问题，创新时期伴随着停滞和困惑。然而，尽管如此，BE仍然是欧洲最有趣的公司之一，并专注于其布莱希特式的遗产，以此作为谈判民主德国和1990年后德意志联邦共和国复杂性的一种方式。因此，令人惊讶的是，没有关于这家非凡公司的学术研究。也许这是因为有太多的档案材料可用，如果没有查阅，就不能适当地研究历史。布莱希特本人坚持要完整地记录他的工作，甚至是针对BE的其他人的工作，这种做法在他死后一直保持着。毕竟，BE将自己视为产生制作戏剧的政治方法的发动机，并寻求将其调查结果输出到其他剧院，尤其是通过完整的制作档案。此外，文化部不能自由选择自己的剧目或制定自己的节目：民主德国是一个独裁政权，试图通过文化部和其他机构集中控制文化生产。因此，还有40年的政府文件需要咨询和评估，包括斯塔西的文件。当局建立了一个广泛的线人网络，这些线人为国家安全部工作。斯塔西的档案也为了解秘密情报界之间的互动及其对BE的影响提供了丰富的来源。因此，这项开创性的研究将寻求解决一些核心问题，这些问题不仅涉及如何以最高标准制作激进的戏剧，而且还涉及如何在努力保持自己独特方法的同时，与政府政策和干预相交叉。在柏林进行了20个月的档案研究后，在英国科学院研究发展奖的支持下，我计划与AHRC奖学金一起写下我的发现。这项研究的范围很广，建议我将结果分成两卷介绍：1949-1971年(从BE成立到魏格尔去世和BE第一阶段结束的那一年)和1971-1999年(从Ruth Berghaus成为Intendantin时注入新鲜血液到任命现任监督员Claus Peymann)。该项目不仅将为读者提供该机构的权威历史，还将提供一系列案例研究，首先说明布莱希特如何建立一种连贯但灵活的戏剧制作方法，然后他的继任者如何继承他的想法，只是为了进一步发展这些想法。

The Berliner Ensemble (BE) is a theatre company founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949 in what was soon to become the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The company quickly established itself as a high-quality producer of theatre, and this was attributable to two main reasons: i. the novelty and effectiveness of Brecht's radical approaches to making theatre and ii. the way in which the BE was structured. Brecht and Weigel sought to engage all members of the company and thus developed a fully functioning ensemble which attacked professional hierarchies in the name of collective production methods. After successful tours to Paris (1954) and London (1956), the BE gained an international profile and this attracted interest from Europe and beyond as theatre-makers sought impulses and ideas from a company devoted to Brecht's ideas. The theatre continued to engage with and expand upon Brecht's ideas after his death in 1956, and the dynamism of its approach and its willingness to make use of collective creative energy led it to become a new model for how theatres could be organized. The BE was not without its problems, of course, and periods of innovation were matched by those of stagnation and confusion. Yet, the BE nonetheless remained one of the most interesting companies in Europe and focused on its Brechtian legacy as a way of negotiating the complexities of the GDR and, after 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany. It is thus surprising that no scholarly study exists of this remarkable company. Perhaps this is because there is simply so much archival material available, without consultation of which a history cannot be properly researched. Brecht himself insisted on full documentations of his work and indeed that of others who directed at the BE, and this practice was maintained after his death. After all, the BE saw itself as a motor for generating approaches to making theatre politically, and sought to export its findings to other theatres, not least through full production dossiers. In addition, the BE was not free to choose its own repertoire or develop its own programme: the GDR was a dictatorship which sought to control cultural production centrally through its Ministry of Culture and other organs. There are thus also forty years of government papers which need to be consulted and evaluated, including those of the Stasi. The authorities constructed an extensive network of informers who worked for the Ministry of State Security. The Stasi archive also provides a fecund source for understanding the interaction between the covert intelligence community and its effects on the BE. This pioneering study of the BE will thus seek to address some central issues concerning not only how radical theatre is made to the highest standards but how it also intersects with government policy and interference while trying to maintain its own distinctive approaches. After twenty months of archival study in Berlin, supported by a British Academy Research Development Award, I plan to write up my findings with an AHRC Fellowship. The broad scope of the study suggests that I should present the results in two volumes: 1949-1971 (from the BE's founding to the year in which Weigel dies and the first phase of the BE ends) and 1971-1999 (from the injection of new blood when Ruth Berghaus becomes Intendantin until the appointment of the current Intendant, Claus Peymann). The project will offer readers not only an authoritative history of the institution but also a series of case studies illustrating first how Brecht established a coherent but flexible method of making theatre and then how his successors took on his ideas only to develop them further.