At the time of writing (late 2017), Berlin's cultural politics were undergoing a turn of the wheel. Oliver Reese had just assumed control of the Berliner Ensemble from Claus Peymann, while at the Volksbühne—Berlin's other political theater—Chris Dercon, former director of Tate Modern, succeeded Frank Castorf, who was regarded as carrying the Brechtian baton of making theater politically since reunification. For David Barnett, it was the beginning of Peymann's tenure in 1999 that signaled a decisive rupture with the theater founded by Brecht. Meanwhile, Dercon's appointment detonated a long-running identity crisis in German Stadtand Sprechtheater, prompting open letters, protests, and an occupation of the theater building. Paradoxically, since Dercon is accused of sabotaging the German theater tradition, his program interrogates the role and constitution of theater—and the place of an ensemble within it—to an extent not seen since the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble itself. Barnett's history of the Berliner Ensemble therefore feels timely, not only as a testament to the legacy of Brechtian practice but as a study in the practical challenges of establishing a new type of theater.

Remarkably, Barnett's is the first history of the Berliner Ensemble to appear in any language. Written in English, this volume redresses that balance, reaching beyond Brecht scholars to theater practitioners and general audiences internationally. It begins circa 1946, when the idea of a new type of theater appeared in letters. It ends in 1999 when the Berliner Ensemble was taken over by Peymann, who pointedly preferred its pre-Brechtian name, Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. The Berliner Ensemble functions as a diorama through which other vistas unfold: the cultural politics of the GDR-Berlin; how art practice passes into art history; the realization and entropy of a radical aesthetic project; and the evolution and continued influence of the aesthetics and politics of East German theater. A chronological approach allows these portraits to move in and out of focus, held in tension by two questions: What does it mean to be “Brechtian?” And, what is— or was—the Berliner Ensemble? The first question delimits the second.