A Very Brechty X-Mas

Two short plays, one by Brecht, and one not, examine the relation between the master and the servant, between the oppressor and the oppressed, the occupier and the occupied.

Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule takes us on a perilous, adventurous and musical journey through the desert with a merchant and his two servants. The merchant kills one of them, and is put on trial. Was it self-defense? Was it murder? The unexpected answer reveals the dark secrets of the war between the classes.

Daniel Gerould’s Candaules, Commissioner is a darkly comic absurd take on the Gyges myth, in which a kingdom is usurped by the use of a golden, magical ring. In this modernization, Candaules is an official in a land where the war has been going on for so long that the war orphans have started to have children. Gyges is his “native” driver, and Nyssia is his bored, shoe-collecting wife. One day, Candaules gets a telegram saying he should “show your wife’s private parts to the natives,” and the scheme to do just that leads to chaos and revolution.