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Jungle of Cities and Other Plays: Includes: Drums in the Night; Roundheads and Peakheads
The three plays gathered in this volume are among Bertolt Brecht's most remarkable; the best-known is Jungle of Cities, here translated by the poet Anselm Hollo. Set in Chicago in a climate of rampant capitalism, it is the story of a savage battle waged between two men, whose relationship is at once homosexual and sadomasochistic and whose tightly choreographed hostility is a metaphor for their cultural surround.
283 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,606 books1,931 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 19, 2007
"In the Jungle of Cities" is a revelatory experience. A true undiscovered gem of the theatre.
January 14, 2009
brutally honest. a pretty, eye-opening, examination of the society we live(ed) in.
July 7, 2022
Highlighted quotes:
"Books! What's the use of them? Did libraries stop the San Francisco earthquake?"
"You can't fill your belly with reasoning, you know."
"Learn to suffer without complaining."
"Don't go, you novel-reader!"
"If you have a conscience, the birds shit on your roof. If you have patience, the vultures will get you in the end, Everybody works too hard."
"Should a man with clean shirt-cuffs clean the toilet?"
"And each boot trod us well, d'you catch what's here intended? We do not seek new masters, we want all mastery ended."
"Books! What's the use of them? Did libraries stop the San Francisco earthquake?"
"You can't fill your belly with reasoning, you know."
"Learn to suffer without complaining."
"Don't go, you novel-reader!"
"If you have a conscience, the birds shit on your roof. If you have patience, the vultures will get you in the end, Everybody works too hard."
"Should a man with clean shirt-cuffs clean the toilet?"
"And each boot trod us well, d'you catch what's here intended? We do not seek new masters, we want all mastery ended."
September 10, 2022
I loved Brecht and especially love seeing what he thought of Chicago before he had even thought about living in America.
December 11, 2022
At first blush In the Jungle of Cities might seem to find Brecht in a realist mode, with its newspaper-style section headings that (playfully toying with historiography) position its events on exacting dates (i.e. "the morning of the 8th of August, 1912"). The illusion of Jungle of Cities-as-realist-drama is sustained as the basics of players and elements are set up; the action takes place in Chicago, "this city of iron and dirt" as Mae Garga says, the lurid atmosphere of the gangster story resonates on every page, and the main characters are all rough, physical, working-class sorts of men, all pimps and timbermen and sailors. Yet, as you read the first few scenes, you may sense your comprehension slipping; why do these characters seem to talk right past each other, why are their actions so arbitrary, and their motives so obscure? You may then think back to the instructions Brecht writes under the dramatis personae: to "not rack your brain with motives," but instead to "concern yourself with the human element." And it all seems a little dubious, like perhaps this is just the experimental work of an author who hasn't yet reached his mature period, and you may be scratching your head until you reach a passage of remarkable beauty, such as this one:
"I feel pretty good here. Let the wallpaper peel, I'll buy a new suit, I have steaks for dinner—I can taste the plaster dropping, I get covered in mortar, inches thick, I see a piano. Hang a wreath round the photograph of our beloved sister, Maria Garga, born twenty years ago in the flat country. And put everlasting flowers under the glass. It's good to sit here, it's good to lie here, the black wind doesn't get to blow here."
...at which point you realize that In the Jungle of Cities isn't just Brecht's babbling juvenilia, it's his sophisticated and poetic contribution to expressionist drama. The elliptical images and scraps of masculine Americana are here remixed and recycled to form a beguiling collage that escapes easy definition, that defies the rules of what drama is and isn't, and, in its earthy poetry with its flecks of surrealism, resembles Rimbaud and Strindberg. Jungle of Cities isn't Brecht's "Chicago gangster play" so much as it's his dreamy, homoerotic phantasia of masculine labor, masculine rivalry, and masculine suppression.
The conflict between Asian (Brecht can't seem to decide if he's Chinese or Malaysian) lumber merchant Shlink and hard-nosed American George Garga ("I've got better things to do than to go on wearing out my boots on your ass," he memorably quips to his Shlink) is strangely dispassionate and bloodless. Shlink's assault on Garga never seems anything other than motiveless, and Garga weathers his blows without a modicum of retaliation. But what shines through is the spirit of these men, their essence that plays out through their behavior. Garga's cool-headed stoicism is recognizably American, almost Eastwood-like, and Shlink's gentlemanliness and soft, ailing heart is revealed to us with methodical patience. He is acutely aware of being nonwhite ("I don't want to intrude. I won't touch you. I know my hand has a yellow skin," he says to a prospective host) and is full of small, pitiable remarks of apology ("Don't expect any words out of my mouth," he says, "all I have in my mouth is teeth," or "I was a lumber dealer once. Now I'm just something to catch flies with"). When, in Scene 10, he says "Get a grip on yourself, Garga: I love you," it's shocking not only for its frank depiction of gay longing, but because it truly took all ten of those scenes for his riddling, mysterious and amorous siege upon Garga's heart to finally play out in full.
Clifford Odets this ain't. It's much closer to a Buchner play as directed by Fassbinder, or one of Genet's erotic psychodramas as funneled through the aesthetics of American labor. A dazzling generic detour for the young Brecht, who here paid tribute to his literary heroes before embarking upon the project of epic theatre and the main body of his life's work.
"I feel pretty good here. Let the wallpaper peel, I'll buy a new suit, I have steaks for dinner—I can taste the plaster dropping, I get covered in mortar, inches thick, I see a piano. Hang a wreath round the photograph of our beloved sister, Maria Garga, born twenty years ago in the flat country. And put everlasting flowers under the glass. It's good to sit here, it's good to lie here, the black wind doesn't get to blow here."
...at which point you realize that In the Jungle of Cities isn't just Brecht's babbling juvenilia, it's his sophisticated and poetic contribution to expressionist drama. The elliptical images and scraps of masculine Americana are here remixed and recycled to form a beguiling collage that escapes easy definition, that defies the rules of what drama is and isn't, and, in its earthy poetry with its flecks of surrealism, resembles Rimbaud and Strindberg. Jungle of Cities isn't Brecht's "Chicago gangster play" so much as it's his dreamy, homoerotic phantasia of masculine labor, masculine rivalry, and masculine suppression.
The conflict between Asian (Brecht can't seem to decide if he's Chinese or Malaysian) lumber merchant Shlink and hard-nosed American George Garga ("I've got better things to do than to go on wearing out my boots on your ass," he memorably quips to his Shlink) is strangely dispassionate and bloodless. Shlink's assault on Garga never seems anything other than motiveless, and Garga weathers his blows without a modicum of retaliation. But what shines through is the spirit of these men, their essence that plays out through their behavior. Garga's cool-headed stoicism is recognizably American, almost Eastwood-like, and Shlink's gentlemanliness and soft, ailing heart is revealed to us with methodical patience. He is acutely aware of being nonwhite ("I don't want to intrude. I won't touch you. I know my hand has a yellow skin," he says to a prospective host) and is full of small, pitiable remarks of apology ("Don't expect any words out of my mouth," he says, "all I have in my mouth is teeth," or "I was a lumber dealer once. Now I'm just something to catch flies with"). When, in Scene 10, he says "Get a grip on yourself, Garga: I love you," it's shocking not only for its frank depiction of gay longing, but because it truly took all ten of those scenes for his riddling, mysterious and amorous siege upon Garga's heart to finally play out in full.
Clifford Odets this ain't. It's much closer to a Buchner play as directed by Fassbinder, or one of Genet's erotic psychodramas as funneled through the aesthetics of American labor. A dazzling generic detour for the young Brecht, who here paid tribute to his literary heroes before embarking upon the project of epic theatre and the main body of his life's work.
May 26, 2015
These didn't do a whole lot for me - they weren't realistic enough to be called dramas, and weren't crazy enough to fit into "absurd theater" (which I usually enjoy for some reason).
The title play, "Jungle of Cities", had a decent premise - a stranger enters a man's life, gets him fired for an unknown reason, and proceeds to mess up his life for kicks. However, it quickly bogs down, and never lives up to Brecht's description, "an inexplicable wrestling match, and the destruction of a family that has come from the prairie lands to the great city jungle."
"Drums in the Night" is a little better, but not by much. About a veteran coming home from a P.O.W. camp to find his woman engaged to another man, the plot gets more and more confusing, until, in my favorite part, a bystander asks a waiter what is going on, and the waiter proceeds to sum up the plot to that point. I could have used this waiter a few times myself.
My favorite was "Roundheads and Peakheads". A parable about Hitler, Nazis, and Jews, it's set in the mythical land of Yahoo, where citizens either have round or pointed heads. When things start going bad, an ambitious new leader, Iberin, comes on the scene and blames all the land's problems on the pointed-heads. (Shades of Dr. Seuss's "The Sneetches?") Again, a great premise goes off the rails again in what seemed to me to be a weak ending.
I didn't hate this collection, but I didn't really like it either. I enjoyed "Mother Courage" a little more, so I'll probably give Brecht another chance. One side-note : I'm amazed that plays as strange as his actually got on stage, and were supposedly fairly popular. The dialogue is purposefully unnatural, the premises are strange, and the sheer number of characters must have made it tough to follow the already strange plots. More power to early 20th century theatergoers for going to these - I can't imagine how poorly the reaction would be if they were written and performed today. And it's not just the Germans - a lot of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco seems just as strange to me. Even though I didn't like this collection, my hat's off to Brecht and the audiences who enjoyed it.
The title play, "Jungle of Cities", had a decent premise - a stranger enters a man's life, gets him fired for an unknown reason, and proceeds to mess up his life for kicks. However, it quickly bogs down, and never lives up to Brecht's description, "an inexplicable wrestling match, and the destruction of a family that has come from the prairie lands to the great city jungle."
"Drums in the Night" is a little better, but not by much. About a veteran coming home from a P.O.W. camp to find his woman engaged to another man, the plot gets more and more confusing, until, in my favorite part, a bystander asks a waiter what is going on, and the waiter proceeds to sum up the plot to that point. I could have used this waiter a few times myself.
My favorite was "Roundheads and Peakheads". A parable about Hitler, Nazis, and Jews, it's set in the mythical land of Yahoo, where citizens either have round or pointed heads. When things start going bad, an ambitious new leader, Iberin, comes on the scene and blames all the land's problems on the pointed-heads. (Shades of Dr. Seuss's "The Sneetches?") Again, a great premise goes off the rails again in what seemed to me to be a weak ending.
I didn't hate this collection, but I didn't really like it either. I enjoyed "Mother Courage" a little more, so I'll probably give Brecht another chance. One side-note : I'm amazed that plays as strange as his actually got on stage, and were supposedly fairly popular. The dialogue is purposefully unnatural, the premises are strange, and the sheer number of characters must have made it tough to follow the already strange plots. More power to early 20th century theatergoers for going to these - I can't imagine how poorly the reaction would be if they were written and performed today. And it's not just the Germans - a lot of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco seems just as strange to me. Even though I didn't like this collection, my hat's off to Brecht and the audiences who enjoyed it.
July 20, 2013
Me toco la edición con Baal, Tambores en la noche y En la jungla de las ciudades. Voy a tratarlo como un tríptico pues así lo vi y viví, además de mi forma de ver obras en conjunto con el autor. Aparte de que yo leo no linearmente y mi version de los libros no es su plot o lo que pasa, sino ideas, imágenes, frases. De esta lectura me quedaron imágenes como vacíos al intemperie, apocalípticas, mítico simbólicas, como Baal dios pagano bebiendo y siendo humano (dio-antropomórfico), como los griegos; una noche muy larga en un Africa imaginaria y real a la vez con tambores y fantasmas circulando; ciudades como junglas y conflictos intelectuales e ideas anárquicas, todo anárquico...Brecht es un genio de las códices, muy compleja y poetica interpretación, sumamente "abierta" y multilateral y multidimensional, el teatro como espacio para frases, situaciones, poesía, voces, como estar en un crossroad donde cosas mágicas suceden, nada se espera cualquier cosa se espera. Pocas veces me ha sido tan difícil poner significados y significantes en "orden", por lo cual me gusto mas y mas acercándose al infinito musical y el misterio "silencioso" de lo mítico. Fabuloso!
August 18, 2008
I have to admit, I never really liked Brechtian plays. The main problem is that, more so than most plays, it has to be performed, not read. I didn't fall in love with it until I had the good forutune act in it. Brecht creates a marathon of a story, full of unique characters and outlandish scenes. There are some classic one liners, and again, the play is a decent read and a much better performance to watch.
May 26, 2010
It's hard to give this work a rating, as the plays weren't gripping so much for their plots as how it is possible to see Brecht honing his skills as a playwright and exploring his views on state-sanctioned violence.
July 12, 2014
These are some weird plays you guys
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews