ARTS The Michigan Daily Thursday, November 5, 1987 Page 7 Brecht Co. 'Embraces' two By Jennifer Kohn Ann Arbor's Brecht Company brings to the stage not only performances but provocative social and political themes for its audience to consider. Today marks the opening of Embracing the Butcher, a composite program including Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken and Heiner Miller's Mauser. According to Bob Brown, director of The Measures Taken and artistic director of the company, the two plays "constitute a modernist and post-modernist debate of theatrical technique and political ideology." Brecht wrote The Measures Taken in 1930, as an approach to the struggle between the individual's subjugation of emotions and the needs of the community. Muller then wrote Mauser in 1970 as his response to the themes presented in Brecht's Measures. The Brechtian view of the power of the theatre varies greatly from the more familiar, current use of the stage. Brecht suggested that the Aristotlean theatre employs the audience as an immature mob, accessible only through their predictable emotional weaknesses. In contrast, Brecht evolved his theory of Lehrstack, or the "learning play." The audience is comprised of mentally and emotionally mature individuals who can make judgments even while they are in the theatre. Hereby Brechtian theatre forces self- instruction on the part of the audience. In addition, Brecht's plays approach issues of political and social depth.'He shows the world as it changes and as it may be changed. Herein lies the common theme between these two plays: "Embrace the Butcher, but change the world, it needs it." The Measures Taken is the antecedent and Mauser, the consequent. Between the two plays, each of which subscribes to the Lehrstuck format, there is a contrast in the means of communication between the players. Brecht employs retrospective narrative and epic acting; Muller employs an almost Becketian monologue technique. The Measures Taken is a retro- spective report by a group of agitators who have been sent from Moscow to China to enlighten the ignorant, both oppressed and class conscious. They must remain anonymous in adherence with the Party Doctrine as set forth by the Control Chorus. When a con rade reveals his identity, a violati '