GALILEO by Bertolt Brecht

This October, Brooklyn Stage Company returns to the Waterfront Museum Barge with Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, in a new adaptation by Robert Francis Cole, based on the English version by Brecht and Charles Laughton.

Brecht began writing Galileo in exile after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933. Years later, living in California, he worked with Laughton on an English-language version of the play. Laughton played Galileo when it premiered in Los Angeles in 1947, before the production moved to New York.

That history matters. Brecht had escaped one authoritarian regime only to find himself under political scrutiny in America. In October 1947, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and left the country the following day.

At its center, Galileo asks a fairly simple question: what happens when you see something for yourself, know it to be true, and the people in power tell you to deny it?

Nearly eighty years later, Brooklyn Stage Company is putting that play on a century-old wooden barge floating in New York Harbor.

Robert Francis Cole’s adaptation had its first two performances there in July, both to packed houses. This October, the company returns for the full production.

A play born in exile, reshaped in America, about truth, power and the cost of saying what you see.