Bertolt Brecht, arguably the most influential dramatist and theatre theorist of the twentieth century, died in 1956 when his fame was at its zenith. He was already well-known thanks to his own trail-blazing productions at the Berliner Ensemble and after his demise, his reputation was consolidated by numerous international performances.

Brecht’s reputation continued to evidence itself this year, the 50th anniversary of his death, with some outstanding revivals of his plays, notably in his native Germany. It is clear that Brecht’s plays have lost none of their impact in view of urgent social problems.

“Unfortunately, Brecht’s anniversary passed almost unnoticed in Malta,” remarked Mario Azzopardi, head of the Malta Drama Centre, “but we felt a compelling urge, an obligation almost, to mark the memory of this gigantic trend-setter, whose work has profoundly affected theatre by asserting it as an incisive medium.”

The Malta Drama Centre is celebrating Brecht by compiling a montage that explores a variety of material. Senior drama students, directed by Carmel S. Aquilina, are experimenting with the dramatist’s idiom, while exploring the incredible corpus of themes he investigated.

Included are excerpts from The Three Penny Opera, Galileo and Fear and Misery in the Third Reich. The group is also using stories from Brecht’s collection, Stories of Mr Keuner, where the writer gathers fictionalised comments on politics, everyday life and exile. The montage also includes a piece from one of Brecht’s shorter plays, Driving out a Devil, which will bring the performance to a close in a kind of Christmas spirit.

“We have found that the unifying theme of all of the excerpts is the use and abuse of power,” said Mr Aquilina. “Brecht is a technically exciting dramatist and we are employing media techniques, including vox pops, phone-in programmes and chat shows to denote the cultural flux entertained by Brecht throughout his controversial life as a politically committed writer.”

Meanwhile, another group of senior actor-students are working on a collage assembled from the works of Harold Pinter, the British dramatist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. Born in 1930 and acclaimed as Britain’s foremost dramatist, Pinter uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into the closed rooms of oppression.

Both the Brecht and Pinter montages will be given a public performance on the weekends of 9 and 16 December.

For more information call the Malta Drama Centre on 2122 0665 or e-mail [email protected].