Chapter 3 examines the core creative practice at the heart of the institution and tradition of the Theater an der Ruhr and most public theatres in Germany: the rehearsal. Rehearsals are not merely the most significant spaces for the training of the body and elaboration of a play. They are also practices for the cultivation of a particular form of comportment described by actors and directors as Haltung. The rehearsing of Haltung, which is discussed as an example of an ethnographic concept, that is, one stemming from the theorising of my interlocutors, constitutes the fundamental ethical practice and internal good facilitated by the institutional tradition of the Theater an der Ruhr. This chapter examines the broader significance of studying the learning of conduct during rehearsals and makes a case for their study as foundational to an understanding of creativity and self-formation in theatre. It also investigates issues of authority and discipline, thinking about rehearsals as a form of social practice rather than an artistic means to create a staging.

Bertolt Brecht never developed a “system” for actor training. Nevertheless, even though one cannot point to a “Brechtian” system of acting training, others have been inspired by his theory and practice to develop alternatives to the Stanislavsky-based systems of acting training that dominate the curricula at US universities and acting studios. This chapter traces some of the key ways in which a Brechtian approach to acting has made inroads into American actor training by focusing on the two systems of training that are most fully fleshed out as methodologies and also most consciously indebted to Brecht both aesthetically and politically – Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” (TO),and “Viewpoints” training.

Gestus remains an important but elusive concept in the scholarship on Brecht’s writings and continues to inform contemporary theater practices as well as new theories of performance and performativity. This article provides a brief overview of Brecht’s evolving definitions of Gestus, including in, and through, key plays and productions, followed by an assessment of the larger literary, political, and theoretical debates associated with Weimar theater, communist agitprop, and Marxist theory. Throughout, the productivity of Gestus as a concept and practice is reconstructed through its dialogic qualities, heuristic functions, and intertextual effects.