Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule
Open Music presents a Readers Theater adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s powerful one-act learning-play The Exception and the Rule. Brecht’s parable-esque tale of power, corruption, iniquity and the futility of the law is an ever-prescient meditation on human living. The learning-play model was developed by Brecht in the 1920s and 1930s as a way to bring professionals, amateurs and audiences alike together to experience the resonance of staged storytelling. Open Music’s version brings The Exception and the Rule to life in a semi-staged Readers Theater adaptation complete with original music.
About Open Music
Open Music is an ensemble presenting works by composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, improvised and original music, adaptions of theatrical pieces, and multimedia collaborations.
Founded in 2014 by percussionist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Sims, Open Music is a project that continues the 20th century’s many strands of everyday avant-garde art making. These strands include poet Federico García Lorca’s La Barraca theater company, painter and writer Asger Jorn’s collective art endeavors, the text scores of Pauline Oliveros, the graphic scores of Christian Wolff, the early years of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the mid-1960’s work of Sun Ra and his Solar/Astro-Infinity Arkestra, and Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra. All of these artists saw the importance in not only experimenting with the materials of art, but also with the ways we get together to make it.
