The Visions of Simone Machard

The Visions of Simone Machard is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written in 1942, the play is the second of three treatments of the Joan of Arc story that Brecht created (after Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written 1929-1931) and before The Trial of Joan of Arc of Proven, 1431 (1952)). The play was jointly written with Lion Feuchtwanger and was completed during their exile in Los Angeles. Set in France in 1940, it portrays Joan as the patron saint of the resistance movement against the Germans. It was first staged in Frankfurt am Main, in 1957.^[1]

In the play, an adolescent girl named Simone works at a gas station in central France. Her older brother is a soldier in the army, and the Wehrmacht forces are approaching. While engrossed in a book about Saint Joan, she slips into a series of dreams in which the real persons in her life take on other identities. Her brother appears as an angel, her boss as the coward Connetand, and herself as Saint Joan who helps starving refugees and defies her employer. In real life she sets fire to a secret supply of gasoline before the Germans can get to it. In her dream she is captured and sentenced to death, but in real life she is not yet considered a saboteur. The Germans hand her over to the French as a mere arsonist, and she is led away by nuns to a mental institution.

Bibliography

Calabro, Tony, Bertolt Brecht and the Art of Dissemblance, Longwood Academic, 1990.
Squiers, Anthony (2014). An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 9789042038998.

Bertolt Brecht

Plays	Baal Drums in the Night A Wedding Driving Out a Devil Lux in Tenebris Mysteries of a Barbershop In the Jungle of Cities Edward II Man Equals Man Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer The Elephant Calf Little Mahagonny The Threepenny Opera The Flight Across the Ocean The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent Happy End Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Der Jasager / Der Neinsager The Decision Saint Joan of the Stockyards The Exception and the Rule The Mother Kuhle Wampe The Seven Deadly Sins Round Heads and Pointed Heads The Horatians and the Curiatians Fear and Misery of the Third Reich Señora Carrar's Rifles Life of Galileo How Much Is Your Iron? Dansen Mother Courage and Her Children The Trial of Lucullus Mr Puntila and his Man Matti The Good Person of Szechwan The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Hangmen Also Die! The Visions of Simone Machard The Duchess of Malfi Schweyk in the Second World War The Caucasian Chalk Circle Antigone The Days of the Commune The Tutor Die Verurteilung des Lukullus Report from Herrnburg Coriolanus Joan of Arc Turandot Don Juan Trumpets and Drums

Theories and techniques	Epic theatre Non-Aristotelian drama Lehrstücke Fabel Gestus Defamiliarization Demonstration Not / But Historicization Refunctioning Separation of the elements Interruptions Complex seeing The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre The Street Scene A Short Organum for the Theatre Messingkauf Dialogues

References

↑ Squiers, Anthony (2014). An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht: Revolution and Aesthetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 190. ISBN 9789042038998.

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