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Brecht and Beckett in the Theater I 
Hans-Thies Lehmann, Walter Asmus, and Carl Weber 
Chair: Moray McGowan 
Hans-Thies Lehmann 
B, B, and B. Fifteen minutes to comply. 
f someone has to write about the oriental world, the young Brecht 
   noted, it is no good if he has the feeling of sitting between Persian
   carpets; it is better if he has the feeling of sitting in front of paper.
Each in his way, Brecht and Beckett, separates himself from the theater 
of convention. They both insist on the theatrical moment as a poetic 
and artistic reality in its own right. Creating theater is not creating an
illusion, the realm of Persian carpets. Theater is not transmission of a
text and the fiction it signifies. It is a text in itself, a practice in
space 
and time, here and now, an artistically meaningful moment, which 
therefore participates in the whole range of ambiguity, self-reflection,
doubt, and retreat of meaning which characterizes the modern and/or 
postmodern text and artwork in general. If we have difficulty bringing 
B and B together, this is only in part caused by the differences between
their artistic stances. It is mainly due to difficulties we introduced 
ourselves by the strong tradition of reductive reading of both Bs. 
Neither is Brecht a didactic simplifier who trades in ready-made 
political options, nor Beckett an author of the absurd in the sense of 
absence of sense. But both realize in fact a theater/text where the 
discourse of identification, the discourse of self-identical meaning is 
broken, not repeated. Both "suspend" meaning in an undecidable
ambiguity between seriousness and the artistic use of literary forms like
the parable. Both question even the possibility of identity. 
         Yes, there are profound differences between B and B. But 
there are also great and deep differences between Bertolt and Brecht, 
between Samuel and Beckett. The point must be: thinking the field in 
between; between difference and similarity; between the Bs; within the 
Bs; asking for a theater, and for thinking about the theater. And here is
the beginning: B is not B; S is not B. We must read beyond the 
signatures. Arrive (better: start) at a point where ideally the discourse
would be able to avoid even the names. Speak to B and B, and about 
B and B, where each B is at least two Bs and probably three, or more. I 
will not arrive there, not even come close to this point in fifteen 
minutes. Instead I go back, to have a look at the landscape where both 
Where Extremes Meet: Rereading Brecht and Beckett / Begegnung der Extreme.
Brecht 
und Beckett: Eine Re-interpretation 
Stephen Brockmann et al., eds., The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch
Volume 27 (Pittsburgh: The International Brecht Society, 2002)