Grand-peur et misère du IIIe Reich

If Bertolt Brecht is known as the dramatist and theorist of epic theater, he is no less a great storyteller, a fabulous inventor of situations. Great Fear and Misery of the Third Reich was written between 1935 and 1938: as a keen observer of his time, he dissects the mechanics of fascism and shows us what led to the horror of the camps. Peasants, soldiers, researchers, magistrates, doctors... all strata of society are scrutinized for their petty compromises, survival strategies, cowardice or acts of resistance, in a series of independent tableaux, like so many snapshots of Germany in the 1930s. For Julie Duclos, taking on this poetic, lively and highly topical play is a way of making sensitive the way in which "fascism gradually infiltrates everyday, ordinary life". How, at the turn of a word, a glance, a silence, lies and fear creep into people's flesh and modify their relationships, including, and above all, where we would least expect it. Not on the battlefield or in political meetings, but in the privacy of a kitchen, bedroom or office. Through a staging centered on acting, and a vast, uncluttered set design, Julie Duclos reveals, as in a film unfolding before our eyes, what is muffled in the wings of our existences - a History inexorably on the march, "on our doorstep".