"Living for Brecht" by Ruth Berlau (Page 192)

Page 192: "In his theoretical works Brecht has written about alienation (Verfremdung) and alienation effects. Many believe this to be a very complicated affair, but in fact it is very simple. A statement is "alienated" by being made to appear strange, and therefore striking. Things that are so general, so everyday, so usual that they are no longer noticed-since one knows them too well-are presented as remarkable and worthy of attention. In this way facts, procedures, and conventional forms of behavior are made more transparent. Curiosity is aroused about what lies behind them: What is it exactly, and why is it so? Brecht induces the attitude of an explorer who has come on something remarkable."

"Living for Brecht" by Ruth Berlau (Page 191)

Page 91: "Brecht comes fresh to rehearsals-and usually ahead of his fellow workers. from the very moment he enters the theater he is in his element,a fish in water. He starts with a reading rehearsal, asking the actors to read out their roles, with neither expression nor accentuation but concentrating instead on the implication of the words. After that comes the positioning. Brecht sits there with a cap and a cigar in his mouth, knowing nothing. (...) Brecht is wiser. With his method he gets more out of his actors as well as out of himself. When an actor asks, "Should I stand up here?" everybody is always astounded by Brecht's typical response: "I don't know". He does not make up his mind in advance but tries out several possible solutions. The actor can make suggestions of his own. What Brecht likes most of all is to have suggestions demonstrated, not discussed. As soon as someone starts explaining his intentions at great length, Brecht breaks in and says, "Show us". For Brecht an actor's technique is not a matter fro discussion."

Generation by Matthew Cobb. Page 238

"In a strange way, therefore, a key aspect of preformation and pre-existence lives on the overstated claims of genetics determinism. This simplistic understanding of the role of genes is shared by those scientists who do not realise the complexity of living systems, or who underestimate the essential role of interactions with the environment, which affect every aspect of the activity and hrowth of organisms. Twenty first- century geneticista who suggest that there is astraight line running from a single DNA sequence to a complex humanbehavioural trait, or even something as simple as afinger, would be amazed to knowthat they are the modern equivalents of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers who advocated a rigid and literal form of preformation."

Generation by Matthew Cobb

Generation by Matthew Cobb

Page 226; "Understanding the process of generation as we know do would have impossible 350 years ago. The very concepts we use to explain inheritance and genetics - transmission, information, programme, code - are the product of the electronic age and were consistenly applied to understanding generation only after they widespread adoption in the early years of computing around the Second World War. Although a seventeenth-century scientist would have understood what code was, the idea that egg and sperme each contain information to make a new organism, and this genetic code was the essential thing transmmited from generation to generation, would have been so much technobabble.
There is an intriguing corollary to all this: computers are currently the most advanced form of our ability to manipulate matter, and concepts such as information, programming and feedback loops are an integral part of modern attemps to model and explain bilogical phenomena. Today it is impossible to imagine anything richer and unforeseeable technological developments, this approach will no doubt seem quaint and naive. The future will prove the we have a vision that is limited by the boundaries of our scientific imagination, which in turn is largely determined by our social conditions, by the way production is organised and in particular by our technology"



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Brecht quoted by Ruth Berlau

Brecht to Ruth Berlau : "I have no pupils, I have employees."

Generation by Matthew Cobb

Quoting an Arab proverb from Redi's words: "Experiment leads to knowledge, credulity leads to error." Page 83


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Hunger. George Vidal quoted by Raymond Tallis.

page 139: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

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