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Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht's achievement is equally significant in dramaturgy and in theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
 
 
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
 
Wikipedia entry
 
Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (The Ballad of Mack the Knife) as sung by Bertolt Brecht:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXJ3OXWaOY
Und der Haifisch der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und MacHeath der hat ein Messer
doch das Messer sieht man nicht.
An 'nem schönen blauen Sonntag
liegt ein toter Mann am Strand
und ein Mensch geht um die Ecke
den man Mackie Messer nennt.
Und Schmul Meier bleibt verschwunden
und so mancher reiche Mann
und sein Geld hat Mackie Messer
dem man nichts beweisen kann.
Jenny Towler ward gefunden
mit 'nem Messer in der Brust
und am Kai geht Mackie Messer
der von allem nichts gewußt.
Und das große Feuer in Soho
sieben Kinder und ein Greis
in der Menge Mackie Messer den
man nichts fragt und der nichts weiß.
Und die minderjähr'ge Witwe
deren Namen jeder weiß
wachte auf und war geschändet
Mackie welches war Dein Preis!
Wachte auf und war geschändet
Mackie welches war Dein Preis!