From Antigone to Mother Courage: The Quest for “Lyricism and Societal Truth”

Every so often the field of theatre is gifted with an extraordinary artist whose work inspires a generation of colleagues and students. Heinz-Uwe Haus is one such example, as evidenced by his contributions to Cypriot and Greek theatre over the past forty-seven years. Since his 1975 staging of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in Nicosia, his oeuvre as a director/scholar/teacher has changed lives and reimagined theatre’s sociopolitical role in these two countries. Uwe Haus’s illustrious career as such is resourcefully cataloged in Heinz-Uwe Haus and Theatre Making in Cyprus and Greece. The book opens with a lengthy yet informative Introduction that puts Haus’s work in Cyprus and Greece in perspective. It is organized in four parts that include a conversation with his co-editor Meyer-Dinkgräfe, as well as well as a section entitled “Brecht’s ‘Use Value’ and Aristotle’s Artistic Proof.’” While the Introduction neither signals nor explains the book’s trajectory, it effectively contextualizes the “indelible mark” that Haus has left on Cypriot and Greek theatre (32). Meyer-Dinkgräfe’s interview offers an overview of Haus’s work in Greece and Cyprus, wherein the latter recounts his harrowing experiences in dealing with the Stasi and German Democratic Republic (CDR), his country of origin and where he has been living for most of his life. His tireless advocacy for liberalism unleashed a “creative force” that has been germane to his aesthetic (3). It is little wonder that Brecht became the benchmark of Haus’s theatre-making. Transferring Brechtian principles to his productions in Cyprus and Greece would be especially important to him and became the genesis of this book. As such, the monograph is jointly an artistic and political enterprise. Haus’s comparison of Brecht and Aristotle proves as much in that he positions the social and philosophical ethos of the latter in relationship to the artistry of his contemporary and fellow German. The opening chapter recounts Haus’s Brechtian productions in Greece between 1975 and 1990. From The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Mother Courage to The Good Person of Szechuan and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Haus and Dinkgräfe source reviews and testimonials that provide a remarkable archive of Brechtian performance under the former’s direction. It is a treatise offering insights into his expert staging of Brecht’s