Bertolt Brecht in Barcelona: influential play opens this week

Catalonia’s National Theater is bringing Bertolt Brecht to Barcelona, in the form of his play ‘The Good Person of Szechwan.’ At the Sala Gran of the public theater, this production is put on by actor and director Oriol Broggi, and runs from January 31 until March 17.  

The Catalan version, named ‘La bona persona de Sezuan,’ was translated by Feliu Formosa and premiered at the Teatre Lliure in 1988. This year Clara Segura will be interpreting the role of Xen Te, the goodhearted but ill-fated heroine of the play.

A duality portrayed

The play takes place in an imaginary China, where a young prostitute Xen Te is found to be by the gods as the only good person, and is rewarded in gold for such – on the condition that she never change her goodhearted nature. So, to protect herself from the people around her, the protagonist resorts to creating an imaginary cousin who protects her.

‘The Good Person of Szechwan’ (or, in German, ‘Der gute Mensch von Sezuan’) was completed by Bertolt Brecht in 1941 (first started in 1938), at the time in exile in the United States. It deals with the themes of true love, morality, social class, materialism, identity, and more.