Man Equals Man

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Man Equals Man (German: Mann ist Mann: Die Verwandlung des Packers Galy Gay in den Militärbaracken von Kilkoa im Jahre neunzehnhundertfünfundzwanzig), or A Man's a Man, is a 1926 play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. One of Brecht's earlier works, it explores themes of war, human fungibility, and identity. It is one of the agitprop works inspired by the developments in USSR praising Bolshevik collectivism and the replaceability of each member of the collective (along with the play The Decision (1930) and the poem "Verwisch die Spuren" (1926)). Not only was the play the first to emerge after Brecht's move from Munich to Berlin, but it was also the first to be produced by what came to be known as 'the Brecht collective', As with his earlier In the Jungle (1923), which was set in Chicago, Brecht locates the drama in what was — for his German audience — an exotic setting: British colonial India. Man Equals Man presents the forcible transformation of an Irish civilian, Galy Gay, into the perfect soldier. Using Kiplingesque imagery (as with In the Jungle, though, thanks to Elisabeth Hauptmann's command of English, in a more authentic tone now), Brecht explores personality as something that can be dismantled and reassembled like a machine, in a parable that critic Walter Kerr credited with a "curious foreshadowing of the art of brainwashing." The same characters appear in the short interlude The Elephant Calf. The play was first staged by two provincial theatres in Düsseldorf and Darmstadt, opening first in the latter on 25 September 1926. This production was directed by Jacob Geis, with set-design by Caspar Neher. Ernst Legal (who was the director of the Landestheater where the play was produced) played Galy Gay.