THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE – 2014
by Bertolt Brecht. Director: Richard Turpin. Bryggeriteatern, Malmö.

The Days of the Commune is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. It dramatises the rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871.

The work forgoes the individual dramatic hero and focuses on the Paris Commune itself, a collective composite of people. The scenes shift between the different lives of people, going from the street corners of Montmartre to the Paris City Council. On this council, the enemies of the Commune, Thiers and Bismarck, engineer the collapse of the Commune.

The play details an event that is considered to be the original proletarian revolution and a major event in the socialist revolution. Karl Marx viewed the Commune – which remained the only attempt at a decidedly socialist government in the world during his lifetime – as the prelude of a classless communist society. Brecht’s play develops a Leninist interpretation of the Commune.

It is one of the main sources for the first act of Luigi Nono’s opera Al gran sole carico d’amore.

It was performed on the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune, in March, 1971, in two performances at Harvard University and at Yale University under the direction of Leonard Lehrman.

By: Bertolt Brecht
Director: Richard Turpin
Assistant Director: Frida Engström
Set Design: Sören Brunes
Light: Carina Persson
Costumes: Eva immortelle.
Music: Hanns Eisler