42-579: The Berliner Ensemble ( German pronunciation: [bɛʁˈliːnɐ ʔãˈsãːbl̩] ) is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht , in January 1949 in East Berlin . In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langhoff 's Deutsches Theater and in 1954 moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm , built in 1892, that
84-451: A Renaissance historian. The result was a story about "Giacomo Ui", a machine politician in Padua , a work which Brecht never completed. It was later published with his collected short stories. Brecht left Denmark in 1939, moving first to Stockholm, and then, the next year, to Helsinki, Finland. He wrote the current play there in only three weeks in 1941, during the time he was waiting for
126-699: A visa to enter the United States. The play was not produced on the stage until 1958, and not until 1961 in English. In spite of this, Brecht did not originally envision a version of the play in Germany, intending it all along for the American stage. The play is consciously a highly satirical allegory of Hitler's rise to power in Germany and the advent of the National Socialist state . All
168-607: A World War I flying ace who was Hitler's second in command; Giuseppe Givola representing the master propagandist Joseph Goebbels ; the Cauliflower Trust representing the Prussian Junkers ; the fate of the town of Cicero standing for the Anschluss , when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany ; and so on. In addition, every scene in the play is based, albeit sometimes very loosely, on a real event, for example
210-407: A prologue in the form of a direct address to the audience by an otherwise unidentified "Actor", who outlines all the major characters and explains the basis of the upcoming plot. This allows the audience to better focus on the message rather being concerned about what might happen next in the plot. Brecht describes in the play's stage directions the use of signs or projections, which are seen first on
252-402: A visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally, Hitler's practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking, sitting and orating, which includes his reciting Mark Antony 's famous speech from Julius Caesar . Equivalents for places and things cited in the text are: Source: There are fewer alternative copies of the script than
294-454: Is enough to achieve the desired objective. The play does not pretend to give a complete account of the historical situation in the 1930s. In his 1992 study, Hitler: The Führer and the People , J. P. Stern , a professor of German literature, rejects both Arturo Ui and Chaplin's The Great Dictator , writing: "[T]he true nature of [Hitler] is trivialized and obscured rather than illuminated by
336-426: Is in heat again". In the final episode of the first season of Being Human , the vampire Herrick quotes the play shortly before the werewolf George kills him: "The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him where his kind belong. But don't rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from is still going strong." This mocks the heroes' hopes of stopping his plans for world domination and asserts
378-454: Is usual with Brecht's works, since "most of the revisions, such as they were, [had] been made directly on the first typescript", but he did refer to the play by a number of alternative names, among them The Rise of Arturo Ui , The Gangster Play We Know and That Well-Known Racket . At one point he referred to it as Arturo Ui , labelled it a "Dramatic Poem" and ascribed authorship to K. Keuner ("Mr. Nobody"). The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
420-614: The National Actors Theatre , with Ui played by Al Pacino , co-starring Steve Buscemi as Givola, Billy Crudup as Flake, Charles Durning as Dogsborough, Paul Giamatti as Dullfeet, John Goodman as Giri, Chazz Palminteri as Roma, Lothaire Bluteau as Fish, Jacqueline McKenzie as Dockdaisy, Linda Emond as Betty Dullfeet, and Tony Randall (who also produced) as the actor, with an ensemble that included Sterling K. Brown , Ajay Naidu , Dominic Chianese , Robert Stanton , John Ventimiglia , and William Sadler . It
462-563: The Schiffbauerdamm Theatre , but twenty years before the founding of the Berliner Ensemble. Brecht wrote no new plays for the Berliner Ensemble, but remounted previously staged plays, premiering with Mother Courage and Her Children in 1949. He also directed The Caucasian Chalk Circle , and with Erich Engel, Life of Galileo . After Brecht's death, 3 plays, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , Schweik in
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#1732782896366504-577: The Berliner Ensemble still had not produced Fear and Misery in the Third Reich – which at various times was also called 99% and The Private Life of the Master Race – but Brecht had prepared it for publication, which came out in 1957. That same year, scenes from the work were staged by five young directors of the Ensemble. One of them, Peter Palitzsch , directed
546-486: The Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The Berliner Ensemble achieved success through long and meticulous rehearsals, often spanning several months. Each production was documented with a Modellbuch, or preview album, containing 600 to 800 action photographs. The scenic designer Hainer Hill was among the photographers. Die Dreigroschenoper and Happy End premiered in Berlin in 1928 and 1929 respectively, both at
588-524: The Berliner Ensemble's production – except that Brecht insisted that scenes from his Fear and Misery of the Third Reich , a series of realistic short pieces about life in Nazi Germany that was written around 1935 – needed to be produced first. His fear was that the German audience was still too close to their previous psychic connection to Hitler. When Brecht died in 1956,
630-415: The Berliner Ensemble, as well as being the theatre's first non-German music director; his historic predecessors in that position include the composers Kurt Weill , Hanns Eisler , and Paul Dessau . Under the new artistic management, the Berliner Ensemble changed from a state-owned theatre into a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (limited liability company) subsidized by the city government. In 1993,
672-455: The Berliner Ensemble, directed by Heiner Müller has run in repertory since June 1995, with Martin Wuttke in the title role. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was presented twice on Broadway . The first production was in 1963, with Christopher Plummer in the lead role and Michael Constantine , Elisha Cook , Lionel Stander , Sandy Baron , Oliver Clark and James Coco in the cast. It
714-469: The German people, echoing the complaint of the East German critic Lothar Kusche, who had read the play in manuscript. Brecht's answer was, in part Ui is a parable play , written with the aim of destroying the dangerous respect commonly felt for great killers. The circle described has been deliberately restricted; it is confined to the plane of state, industrialists, Junkers and petty bourgeois. This
756-635: The Greek tragedy; the title role in his civil war play, Señora Carrar's Rifles ; and the iconic Mother Courage . Between 1933 and 1947, as a refugee from Adolf Hitler 's Germany, she was seldom able to pursue her acting craft, even during the family's six-year period in Los Angeles . It was only with the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble in East Germany in 1949 that Brecht's theatre began to be recognized worldwide. She died in 1971, still at
798-538: The Ocean in 1998 to honour the hundredth anniversary of Brecht's birth. On 30 April 1999, the curtain came down on the final production of Heiner Müller's Die Bauern , an early end to the theatre's season that also marked the preliminary end of the ensemble. After Müller had died in December 1995, the difficult decision about who would manage this highly symbolic cultural institution was now exacerbated by another problem:
840-556: The Second World War , and The Visions of Simone Machard , had their premieres with the Ensemble. Under the management of Helene Weigel's successor Ruth Berghaus , the company expanded its selection to that of other European playwrights in the 1970s. Major German actors, including Therese Giehse , Lionel Steckel, and Ernst Busch , appeared in Berliner productions. After German reunification , major changes took place at
882-465: The antics of Charles Chaplin and the deeply unfunny comedy of Bertolt Brecht." The play was listed in 1999 as No. 54 on Le Monde 's 100 Books of the Century . Lines from the play are quoted at the end of Cross of Iron , a 1977 drama war film directed by Sam Peckinpah : "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him
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#1732782896366924-458: The appointment of Hitler as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on the instigation of former Chancellor Franz von Papen . After moving around – Prague, Zürich, Paris – Brecht ended up in Denmark for six years. While there, c. 1934, he worked on the antecedent to The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , a satire on Hitler called Ui , written in the style of
966-638: The characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Röhm , the head of the Nazi brownshirts ; Dogsborough representing General von Hindenburg, a hero of World War I and the President of the Weimar Republic (his name is a pun on the German Hund and Burg ); Emanuele Giri representing Hermann Göring ,
1008-622: The daughter of Leopoldine (née Pollak) and Siegfried Weigel, an accountant-general in a textile factory. Her family was Jewish . She and husband Brecht had two children, Stefan Brecht and Barbara Brecht-Schall . Weigel was a Communist Party member from 1930. Weigel became the artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble on 16 February 1949. She is best remembered for creating several Brecht roles, including: Pelagea Vlassova, The Mother of 1932; Antigone in Brecht's version of
1050-412: The director of Labor Stage , who turned it down as "not advisable to produce", presumably because the United States was still, at the time , a neutral country . The play lingered in the drawer until 1953, after Brecht had founded the Berliner Ensemble , and had produced there his major works. He showed the play around to a larger circle of people than had seen it previously, and this eventually led to
1092-442: The helm of the company, and many of the roles that she created with Brecht are still in the theatre's repertoire today. Weigel died in East Berlin on 6 May 1971, six days before her 71st birthday. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (German: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui ), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht . It chronicles
1134-606: The play was performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London , with Lenny Henry starring as Arturo Ui, and directed by Simon Evans . The role of Ui has been played by such other notable actors as Peter Falk , Griff Rhys Jones , Leonard Rossiter , Antony Sher , Nicol Williamson , Henry Goodman Hugo Weaving , and Jean Vilar . Simon Callow discussed his interpretation of the role in his autobiography, Being an Actor , while Plummer explains why he felt he failed in
1176-415: The position and reopened the theatre in January 2000, after extensive renovations were completed. Peymann's efforts have stabilized the theatre's operations. He assumed his role with a commitment - like Brecht's - to producing political theatre for the public, but more broadly interpreted. In 2019, it was announced that an annex to Das Theater am Schiffbauerdamm would be built in autumn of that year, giving
1218-642: The rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster , and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II . Fearing persecution and blacklisted from publication and production, Brecht – who in his poetry referred to Adolf Hitler as der Anstreicher ("the housepainter") – left Germany in February 1933, shortly after
1260-554: The role on Broadway in his autobiography, In Spite of Me . A production by the Sydney Old Tote Theatre Company was filmed for Australian television in 1972 with John Bell in the title role and Helen Morse as Dockdaisy. At the time of the first stage production, in Stuttgart, Siegfried Melchinger, a West German critic, called it a "brilliant miscarriage", and complained that the play omitted
1302-402: The stage curtain, and later appear after certain scenes, presenting the audience with relevant information about Hitler's rise to power, in order to clarify the parallels between the play and actual events. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare . To highlight Ui's evil and villainous rise to power, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare's Richard III . Like Macbeth , Ui experiences
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1344-461: The theatre a second, fully equipped auditorium for the first time. Helene Weigel Helene Weigel ( German: [heˈleːnə ˈvaɪɡl̩] ; 12 May 1900 – 6 May 1971) was a German actress and artistic director. She was the second and last wife of Bertolt Brecht until his death in 1956; together they had two children. Weigel was born in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ,
1386-524: The theatre building itself was in the process of being bought by a nonprofit foundation in the hands of dramatist Rolf Hochhuth , who seemed to have his own plans for the theatre. After the City of Berlin negotiated a settlement to everyone's satisfaction, the search for a new administration began. Claus Peymann, the provocative and successful manager of the Burgtheater in Vienna , was finally appointed to
1428-429: The theatre company was privatized, but continued to receive $ 16 million in subsidy. Nevertheless, the idea of a joint administration proved a failure and the board of managers finally broke up in 1995, leaving only Heiner Müller. The quarrels, however, did not affect the artistic development of the ensemble: Young directors, including B.K. Tragelehn and Einar Schleef, and the stage designer Andreas Reinhardt, questioned
1470-473: The theatre: in 1992, the Berlin Senate appointed a collective of five stage directors to serve as Intendanten (General Administrators): Peter Zadek , Peter Palitzsch , Heiner Müller , Fritz Marquardt, and Matthias Langhoff. In that same year, the internationally renowned conductor Alexander Frey was appointed music director of the Berliner Ensemble. Frey was the first American to hold a position at
1512-425: The traditions of Brechtian theatre and introduced more contemporary theatre styles. Müller's production of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , with Martin Wuttke playing the title role, became one of the most successful in the history of the Berliner Ensemble. His program Brecht – Müller – Shakespeare remains their guiding legacy. The American director Robert Wilson premiered Brecht's The Flight across
1554-629: The warehouse fire which represents the Reichstag fire , and the Dock Aid Scandal which represents the Osthilfeskandal ( Eastern Aid ) scandal. The play is similar in some respects to the film The Great Dictator (1940), which also featured an absurd parody of Hitler ("Adenoid Hynkel") by Charlie Chaplin , Brecht's favorite film actor. Dramatically Arturo Ui is in keeping with Brecht's "epic" style of theatre . It opens with
1596-595: The world premiere of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in Stuttgart , West Germany, in 1958. The Ensemble itself first produced the play four months later, with Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth co-directing, and Ekkehard Schall as Arturo Ui. This production, "staged in fairground style, with ruthless verve and brassy vulgarity" was presented also in Berlin, London and at the Paris International Theatre Festival. A later production by
1638-537: Was directed by Simon McBurney . The Classic Stage Company tackled it again in 2018, directed by John Doyle with Raúl Esparza in the title role and Eddie Cooper and Elizabeth A. Davis in the supporting cast. In 1986, the play was produced in Canada at the Stratford Festival , running for 46 performances with Maurice Godin in the lead role. Most recently in 2017, Bruce Norris ' adapted version of
1680-693: Was directed by Tony Richardson and ran for five previews and eight performances. The second Broadway production of the play took place in 1968–69 by the Guthrie Theater Company. It starred Robin Gammell as Ui, and was directed by Edward Payson Call. It ran for ten performances. The play has been presented three times Off-Broadway . In 1991 it was produced by the Classic Stage Company , with John Turturro as Arturo Ui, directed by Carey Perloff . In 2002, it played at
1722-524: Was intended by Brecht to be first performed in the United States, but he was unable to get a production mounted. Brecht brought the play to the attention of director Erwin Piscator in New York, suggesting Oskar Homolka to play Ui. Piscator and Brecht's frequent musical collaborator, Hanns Eisler , got H. R. Hay to translate the work, which was completed by September 1941, and submitted to Louis Shaffer,
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1764-513: Was open for the 1928 premiere of The Threepenny Opera ( Die Dreigroschenoper ). Brecht's students Benno Besson , Egon Monk , Peter Palitzsch , and Manfred Wekwerth were given the opportunity to direct plays by Brecht that had not yet been staged. The stage designers Caspar Neher and Karl von Appen , the composers Paul Dessau and Hanns Eisler , as well as the dramaturge Elisabeth Hauptmann , were among Brecht's closest collaborators. After her husband died in 1956, Weigel continued managing
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