THREEPENNY OPERA

Having explored the work of Bertolt Brecht in depth for my Masters final dissertation many years earlier, I was particularly excited to direct ‘The Threepenny Opera’. It was invigorating working on this with students and within a tight budget because it gave us something real to lean into in order to understand this enigmatic piece. It is Brecht’s re-telling of John Gay’s ‘The Beggars Opera’ and this was an oxymoron which served us well, partly as students and freelancers producing work in an art form that is nothing without a healthy budget, but also as an opportunity to express the quandary of being creators of an art form in a country where essentially begging for private money is the only way to produce it. I think the visceral performances are evident in the production photos.

The design was a deliberate rough-around-the-edges patchwork of three different styles. The institutions that represent the status-quo (the Police and Peachum’s company for example) were in the Victorian attire to represent stoic values and a rigid class system while the Steampunk of Macheath’s gang represented their rebellious drive and crusade for modernity. Macheath and Polly existed in their own 1920s ‘silent film’ world which served to comment on their superficial attempts at a love story while also paying homage to the era in which Brecht and Weill were writing.