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                             Hans-Thies Lehmann, Walter Asmus, and Carl Weber
                                                    Chair: Moray McGowan
Carl Weber 
Beckett and Brecht: Comparing their "Scenic Writing" 
recht began to direct early in his life and later regarded none of 
       his texts as completed until he had translated the text on the 
       page into the text's "scenic writing" on the stage. 
         Beckett didn't begin to direct until late in his life, after he
had 
been established as one of the great playwrights of his century. But 
then, wherever and whenever possible, he directed his own texts, 
which he had already inscribed with precise instructions for their 
scenic writing. 
Some aspects B & B texts have in common: 
B oth Beckett and Brecht used objects or props constituting visual 
    metaphors that embody or anchor the play's fable or meaning. For 
example: 
         Beckett: 
         The tree in Godot 
         The cell, wheelchair, ladder, and trash bins in Endgame 
         The table, tape deck, and banana in Krapp's Last Tape 
         The mound, parasol, purse, and cosmetic utensils in Happy Days 
         The urns in Play 
         The rocker in Rockaby 
         Brecht: 
         The railway canteen car in Man Equals Man 
         The boxing ring in Little Mahagonny 
         The fishing net and oven in Senora Carrar's Rifles 
         The wagon in Mother Courage 
         The telescope(s) and globe in Galileo 
         The large tables in Puntila (first, third last, and last scene)
         Beckett liked to insert quotations from the Bible into his texts.
So did Brecht, for whom the Luther Bible (and especially its language) 
was his favorite source text. There is, as far as I know, no other 
twentieth-century playwright who shared to a similar degree Brecht's 
and Beckett's predilection for biblical quotations. 
        Another, quite amusing propensity they shared was for the 
ditty "A dog came to the kitchen..."  Beckett used it in Waiting
for 
Godot, and it certainly was much liked by Brecht. 
        Beckett admired clowns and comedians, as did Brecht. 
Beckett's favorite was Buster Keaton, Brecht's Charlie Chaplin. 
        There is a text by Brecht that in an uncanny way anticipated 
Beckett's Godot: Fluchtlingsgesprache, written in 1941 in Finland. 
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