Jean la Chance

Five dramatic sketches by Brecht, previously unpublished in French. All were written during the five years following World War I—an extraordinarily prolific period. Some claim that this was his greatest period: Baal, Drums in the Night, A Man Is a Man, and there’s more to come. For it was after the fall of the Wall that texts written in the early 1920s were discovered in the archives in East Berlin—texts that did not quite fit with the perspective from which Brecht himself viewed his plays toward the end of his life: the idea of didactic theater intended to enlighten the audience.

The play Jean la Chance is a nearly complete work and, dare we say it, an unforgettable one: it recounts the adventures of a good-natured young man, kind but surprisingly naive. Jean la Chance exemplifies the defiance of Brecht’s early plays toward the dramatic conventions of his time. It is deeply sensual, with nature playing an important role, and the apparent simplicity of the dialogue is more than deceptive. The full extent of Brecht’s artistry is revealed in the portrayal of this surprising Jean, about whom we cannot tell whether he is merely naive or whether he belongs instead to another philosophical universe—perhaps a Buddhist one.