Bertolt Brecht was in some ways exemplary. Literally: an important part (though not all) of (leftist) thinking about the relationship between “theatrical art” and politics has been constructed in his shadow. He seems to have resolved contradictions and found practical and theoretical ways to maintain a demand for formal innovation and invent radical politics with aesthetic means. Epic theatre, the Verfremdungseffekt, and poetry based on popular forms (“domestic sermon”, song, operetta), which is therefore clear, readable, and “accessible” to the “people” addressed, as well as aiming to transform their relationship to art and effect political change: this is all transparent. Brecht's work is related to the trobar leu.

In contrast, Arnold Schoenberg produced a body of work whose coherence could not be less obvious: it is difficult, complex, and “hermetic”, but after all the man was not particularly democratic and it probably did not displease him that he only reached a small “elite” of fifty people around the world. Of course, Moses and Aaron deals with more complex questions, but it seems rather easy to forget them.

Huillet and Straub could simply have been Brechtians. They work in film of course, which means finding transpositions, but here again, it should not be too difficult not to look too closely.