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The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI (de la Tour)

Full-Length Play, Satire/Political Satire  /  2w, 28m

Bertolt Brecht, Andy de la Tour

The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui
By Bertolt Brecht
Translated by Andy de la Tour

Chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II.

The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI (de la Tour)

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    2w, 28m
  • Duration
    Duration
    90 minutes

Details

Summary

A liquidity crisis in the American financial sector. Stock-markets plunge. A bankrupt business consortium extorts a big dirty bailout from City Hall as ordinary people lose their jobs. Into this panicked democracy steps the gangster and demagogue Arturo Ui. Offering strong protection for a frightened city - with a reign of armed terror.
Bertolt Brecht's most detailed dramatic analysis of the economic and psychological roots of fascism and society's easy, although never inevitable, acquiescence to it. 

Announcer
Flake, Caruther, Butcher, Mulberry and Clark (businessmen, heads of the Cauliflower Trust)
Sheet (dockyard owner)
Old Dogsborough 
Young Dogsborough
Arturo Ui (gang boss)
Ernest Roma (his lieutenant)
Emanuele Giri and Giuseppe
Givola (gangsters - florists)
Tedd ragg (reporter for The Star)
Dockdaisy
Bowl
Goodwill and Gaffles (City Councillors)
O'Casey
Actor
Hook (wholsesale vegetable dealer)
Bodyguards
Gunmen
Vegetable dealers from Chicago and Cicero
Newspaper reports 
Fish, a defendant 
Defence Counsel
Judge
Doctor
Prosecutor
Woman
Young Inna (Roma's confidant)
Short man
Ignatius Dullfeet
Betty Dullfeet (his wife)
Dogsborough's servant 

  • Time Period 1930s
  • Setting 1930s Chicago 
  • Features Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes
  • Duration 90 minutes
  • Cautions
    • Mild Adult Themes

Licensing & Materials

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Authors

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), playwright, poet and director, was born in Augsburg, Germany in February 1898. He established himself as a playwright during the 1920s and early 1930s with plays such as Baal, Man is Man, The Threepenny Opera and The Mother. In 1933, as Hitler came ...
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Author

Andy de la Tour

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