We only knew Stefan in recent years when he was suffering from a form of Parkinson and we wish we could have known him earlier in his life. Though sometimes he came across as a misanthrope Stefan had a heart of gold. Stefan was never a Chelsea Hotel resident but he had a studio here for over two decades and made many friends here over the years. Traveling daily between the Chelsea and his apartment in Greenwich Village he photographed the sidewalk and recorded the vibe of the neighborhood in his poems, which humanize the underside of the Chelsea neighborhood without romanticizing it in the least. I reviewed two of Stefan’s books for Chelsea Now and that was how I got to know Stefan and his charming wife Rena Gill. In April 2007 Stefan’s many friends gathered at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery to celebrate the release of his two books and to remember Stefan’s long life and illustrious career in the theater. We are all saddened by his passing.
Stefan Brecht was born in 1924 in Berlin, Germany, and came to America with his family in 1942. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard, and moved to New York in the early ’60s, becoming a critic and historian of avant garde theatre. Brecht marched beside the Bread and Puppet Theatre troupe, and documented Robert Wilson’s group when they met daily in a loft on Spring Street.
Brecht has written poetry all his life. He self-published his first book of poetry, “Poems,” in 1975, which led to his big break when the book was spotted by editor Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who subsequently picked it up for his City Lights Pocket Series.
The recognition facilitated the publication of Brecht’s opus, a multi-volume history of the alternative theater, “The Original Theatre of the City of New York : From the Mid-Sixties to the Mid-Seventies.” Completed volumes include “The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson” (Suhrkamp, 1978); “Queer Theatre” (Suhrkamp, 1978); and the two-volume study: “Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre” (
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