You artists who perform plays
In great houses under electric suns
Before the hushed crowd, pay a visit some time
To that theatre whose setting is the street.
The everyday, thousandfold, fameless
But vivid, earthy theatre fed by the daily human contact
Which takes place in the street.
In the parks at night
Young fellows show giggling girls
The way they resist, and in resisting
Slyly flaunt their breasts.
A drunk
Gives us the preacher at his sermon, referring the poor
To the rich pastures of paradise. How useful
Such theatre is though, serious and funny
And how dignified! ... You
Great artists, masterly imitators, in this regard
Do not fall short of them! Do not become too remote
However much you perfect your art
From that theatre of daily life
Whose setting is the street.
The mysterious transformation
That allegedly goes on in your theatres
Between dressing room and stage - an actor
Leaves the dressing room, a king
Appears on the stage: that magic
Which I have often seen reduce the stagehands, beerbottles in hand
To laughter -
Does not occur here.
Our demonstrator at the street corner
Is not a sleepwalker who must not be addresssed... At any moment
You can interrupt him; he will answer you
Quite calmly and when you have spoken with him
Go on with his performance.
But you, do not say: that man
Is not an artist. By setting up such a barrier
Between yourselves and the world, you simply
Expel yourselves from the world. If you thought him
No artist he might think you
Not human, and that
Would be a worse reproach. Say rather:
He is an artist because he is human. We
May do what he does more perfectly and
Be honored for it, but what we do
is something universal, human, something hourly
practiced in the busy street, almost
As much a part of life as eating and breathing.
- From Bertolt Brecht's On Everyday Theatre, (Trans. Edith Anderson) from "Poems of the Crisis Years, 1929-1933."