A History of the Berliner Ensemble

Berliner Ensemble（BE）是一家剧院公司，由Bertolt布雷希特和他的妻子Helene Weigel于1949年在即将成为德意志民主共和国（GDR）的地方成立。该公司迅速确立了自己作为一个高质量的戏剧生产者，这是由于两个主要原因：一。布雷希特戏剧创作激进方法的新奇和有效性; BE的构建方式。布雷希特和魏格尔试图让公司的所有成员参与进来，从而发展出一个功能齐全的合奏团，以集体生产方法的名义攻击职业等级制度。在成功的图尔斯巡演巴黎（1954年）和伦敦（1956年）之后，BE获得了国际知名度，这吸引了来自欧洲和其他地区的兴趣，因为戏剧制作者从一家致力于布雷希特思想的公司寻求灵感和想法。在布雷希特于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造力的意愿使其成为剧院组织的新模式。当然，大英帝国也不是没有问题的，创新的时期伴随着停滞和混乱的时期。然而，BE仍然是欧洲最有趣的公司之一，并专注于其布莱希特遗产，作为谈判的一种方式，复杂的民主德国和1990年后，联邦共和国的德国。因此，令人惊讶的是，没有学术研究存在这个了不起的公司。也许这是因为有太多的档案材料可用，没有咨询的历史不能适当地研究。布雷希特本人坚持对他的作品以及其他直接针对BE的作品进行完整的记录，这种做法在他去世后仍然保持着。毕竟，BE将自己视为一台发动机，用来产生使戏剧具有政治性的方法，并试图将其发现输出到其他剧院，尤其是通过完整的生产档案。此外，德国广播公司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，试图通过其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。当局建立了一个为国家安全部工作的广泛的告密者网络。史塔西档案也为理解秘密情报界之间的相互作用及其对BE的影响提供了丰富的来源。因此，对BE的这一开创性研究将寻求解决一些核心问题，这些问题不仅涉及激进戏剧如何达到最高标准，而且还涉及它如何与政府政策和干预相交，同时试图保持自己独特的方法。在英国学院研究发展奖的支持下，在柏林进行了二十个月的档案研究后，我计划利用AHRC奖学金撰写我的发现。研究的广泛范围表明，我应该将结果分为两卷：1949-1971（从BE成立到Weigel去世和BE第一阶段结束的那一年）和1971-1999（从Ruth Berghaus成为Intendantin的新血液注入到现任Intendant Claus Peymann的任命）。该项目不仅为读者提供了该机构的权威历史，而且还提供了一系列案例研究，首先说明了布雷希特如何建立了一种连贯而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它们。

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.