The Casuistry of Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit [A Respectable Wedding] by Bertolt Brecht in Slovak Theatre: A Struggle for Values

Abstract

The study explores the one-act play Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit [A Respectable Wedding] by Bertolt Brecht and its productions in Slovak professional theatre.1 The authoress elaborates on expert reflection and viewers’ reception of key productions from the perspective of Brecht’s requirements of theatre, which should be entertaining and informative at the same time. The first staging of Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit under Ivan Krajíček’s direction in 1978 created the basic comparative and evaluative basis for future stage adaptations of the one-act play. The study deliberates the production sequence through a lens of casuistry: individual productions represent how the creative professionals communicated forms of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and declining social morality. They moved from the critique of the petty bourgeois class to capturing an entire modern society in which values are absent. As in other European countries, Brecht became the author through whom the struggle for values was fought in Slovakia. It was the last performance of Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit (Slovenské národné divadlo – Slovak National Theatre, abbr. SND, 2013, directed by Diego de Brea) that provoked controversial social reactions and brought about an interesting shift in expert reflection – from the evaluation of the artwork, the interest of critics and creators shifted to the evaluation of the audience (lack of orientation in art and taste).