In 1933, German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht fled the country at the cusp of the Nazi takeover. A wise move on his part. Not long after, his explicitly anti-Nazi works were publicly burned by the regime under Adolf Hitler’s orders. Today, at an artiste’s retreat in Wai, nearly 200 kilometres away from Mumbai, and worlds away from the Brecht’s hometown of Augsburg, students of the Drama School Mumbai are revisiting his stories. Die Sect, a collection of these stories will be presented in the city to mark the end of their artiste residency this weekend.

“Choosing Brecht was a conscious decision. We wanted to promote critical thinking and develop political thought in the new generation of actors through theatre. Through 12 stories from Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, both — the actors and the audience — will be compelled to rethink their political beliefs and biases,” shares director and theatre educator Neel Sengupta. These stories, dubbed playlets by Brecht, revolve around ordinary citizens of Nazi-ruled Germany navigating fear, guilt, treachery, love and shame in extraordinary times.