In Autumn 2006, Satiriko produced Grimm Brothers’ tale The Brave Little Tailor, a stage adaptation by Heinz-Uwe Haus. This stage production was directed by Marianna Kafkaridou and was loved by its young spectators. The show had a good rhythm, a good balance among scenes, with action and interludes with singing and dancing. The actors – most of them very young graduates from the Satiriko Drama Academy – moved on stage with ease and grace. There was a lot of imagination and variety in the choreography (due to the director). Because of that, in the wrestling scenes, for instance, the harsh theme gained charm and humour. The show was embroidered with funny details, (i.e. the king is doing his gym exercises but the weights are held by his courtiers etc), and narrated with Brecht’s guidance of epic theatre: “What is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling”.* The part of the Little Tailor was performed by the young actress Xenia Michael who was lively and possessed fine movement on stage; at times charming and at times “manly” but yet sensitive when the hero was either thoughtful, scared or trying to figure out a solution. All these, took place in a stage design (by Loizos Loizou) that was rich and fascinating, offering a variety of different spaces for the action and fairy tale images.

The traditional fairy tales, strictly constructed as they are and having clear succession of action are suitable to be adapted for the stage. The play by Haus developed the classic methods met both in drama for children and brechtian drama. This type of theatre aims in the direct communication among the stage event and the spectator. It is constructed so that the public will have a direct access in the notional core of the play and a didactic form is intended. The scenes alternate between musical interludes and the simple story. The structure is linear, like a series of episodes, in this case: the hero’s great deeds. The Grimm brothers’ hero is a poor and suffering young tailor (we understand this when in his dream he reveals the violence that was forced on him by his rich clients). He enters however in an adventure after the confidence he gained when, by chance, he killed seven flies in one stroke. He then survives due to his brightness, his alertness and his flexibility whereas his enemies have strength and power but not his gifts. A political reading is drawn from this – mostly unwilling – struggle of the hero.

At the finale of Haus’ text, after the last and decisive fight with the king’s soldiers, in the presence of the monarch whose crown falls off. The bright-eyed hero, in a literal fight this time, in which his only weapons are the power of justice and the determination of his character, overwhelms his – coward – contestants and gets the office by taking the crown from the ground and crowning himself.

The final scene of the production in question is a little different: the Princess, who rejected the Tailor because of his humble origin, has to marry him, despite her will. The Princess is on the side of the powerful, who are made a foul of in the play, but she still is a classical fairy-tale character. It’s obvious that no alienation can work with young audiences. Children may possibly identify with the spoiled but unhappy princess. There is a happy end for the main character but a forced marriage is an unpleasant ending. Here too Haus’ narration of the Grimm’s story is at the same time a “dialecticizing” of the events. Such contradictions on stage are not unfamiliar to the young audience in life and it seems that they have found with this production a playground for their experiences and imagination.

* John Willet: Brecht on Theatre, chapter Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction , Hill and Wang, New York, 1992, p.71

© Electronic Communications from the International Brecht Society: ECIBS 36.1 (Winter 2008)