The Measures Taken: A Learning Play by Bertolt Brecht
Start: Friday, April 21, 2023• 7:00 PM
End: Friday, April 21, 2023•11:00 PM
ACCESS NOTE: The venue has relocated this performance from the main space to the basement, which is down a flight of stairs.
Doors open at 7 with light refreshments; the performance begins at 8.
Join CBK-DSA and friends for a performance of Bertolt Brecht's "learning play," The Measures Taken! The performance will be followed by a moderated discussion. To help cover the costs of putting on this event and to compensate the actors, a suggested donation of $15 is encouraged (collected at the door or in advance via Venmo @nycdsaCBK or Cashapp $nycdsaCBK).
About the play:
After mounting a successful revolution, four political agitators report back to their party leader and reveal that in the course of their struggle they had to execute a comrade. In order to explain themselves they stage a play. In The Measures Taken, Bertolt Brecht leads us to question the nature of solidarity and sacrifice, as we follow the four agitators' mission to spread class consciousness, to organize labor movements, and to overthrow the evils of capitalist society.
This production of The Measures Taken has sought to use Brecht’s learning play as a way to engage people in radical movements and to discuss its highly relevant issues, from the role of unions in revolutionary work to the complexity of vanguardism. During the Spring and summer of 2022, this show was performed in public parks, community gardens, and activist spaces throughout NYC including collaborations with Brooklyn Eviction Defense, Club A, the Gym, DSA North Brooklyn, Interference Archive, and Haymarket’s Socialist Conference in Chicago. Each show was followed by a facilitated
conversation focusing on building interorganizational connections and to reflect on the current state of organizing in Brooklyn and beyond.
About Bertolt Brecht:
Considered one of the most important dramatists, poets, and thinkers of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht was a German Marxist playwright and poet who sought new ways to bring together art and politics. His work was performed for audiences of socialists, unionists, and a growing working-class in interwar-Berlin, and has been an important touchstone for leftist artists ever since. Brecht's The Measures Taken was written in 1930 as a learning play, a form of radical experimental theater meant for non-actors to embody and reflect on communism, revolution, the ills of capitalism, and the impact of living in a class-based society.
This production is brought to you by:
written by Bertolt Brecht
staging and concept by Jurrell Lewis and Lucas Kane
directed by Lucas Kane
performed by Malachi Brown, Ava Kaplan, Nashwa Zaman, Adi Blaustein Rejto, and
Kaiden Talesh
music by Malachi Brown and Livia Reiner
costumes by Willa Schwabsky and Zelda Mazor-Freedman
set design by Eliza Williamson
painting by Adi Blaustein Rejto
