The Brecht Forum

Three stars based on the venue alone, not the content of the programming/​event I saw, which was a documentary titled Broken On All Sides.
The open room was hot as hell when I first walked in, and the guy in front of me was sweating through the back of his shirt. You sit on teeny folding chairs, and the documentary is screened, from a laptop, and projected onto a white wall. I vaguely remember the windows being covered by something. not curtains, but like boxes? Maybe some sort of cloth?
I give them three stars as opposed to two because I think the overall mission of what they are trying to do, and the fact that it was a suggested donation/​free event, are more important than the lack of high quality space or multimedia support. But a nicer space or some upgrades would help.

SO both reviews below are not incorrect (Stella’s and Thomas C’s).
I have been to mind blowing and powerful events at the Brecht as well as events that were as awkward as they were regrettable wastes of time.
But the venue and its services are at question, not events in particular, unless some shortcoming was particularly due to the space and its staff.
One thing is certain and that is that the Brecht Forum has repeatedly shown support for community organizations and causes, sometimes at a financial loss.
When you needed them, they’ve been there from my experience.
Yes, it’s a little bit far by Manhattan standards, and yes, there are indeed «those» kinds of events, but overall a good space run by people who believe that access shouldn’t always be determined by monetary value.

This is the most complicated (and probably longest) review I’ve ever written, but if you’re reading it, I’ll assume you’re a fairly critically-​minded person. Several caveats follow.
I hesitated to write this for nearly a month for various reasons that basically boil down to three: first, lefists are notorious for factionalizing and butting heads over variations of the same general idea; secondly, that process inevitably leads to elitism on one or all sides. This review will be hard to write without succumbing to either of those problems; sorry. Thirdly, I have attended only one seminar at the Brecht Forum. However, it was a three-​day lecture series, and a showcase of the organization (something called the Red Power Mixtape), so I think it’s fair to say what follows — which is more a warning than anything.
On a more macro level, Brecht Forum seems to be run by a circle of second-​wave feminists (and their undergraduate disciples) who take pleasure in being rude to people they don’t know personally. The woman registering people for the seminar, for example, was generally hostile to everyone as she took their money and wrote their names down.
The crowd for the seminar comprised two camps: older people who were markedly unfriendly to any type of discourse that failed to regurgitate their own extremely cliched ideas back to them, and younger people who peppered the discussion with questions like «what is the bourgeoisie?». Both camps reminded me of an interview I once read with Washed Out, the artist whose record Life of Leisure played at rooftop parties all summer a few years ago. He basically said his record was dance music made by a person who had never heard dance music. The crowd at this forum (which was largely made up of regulars and employees, as far as I could tell) seemed to be a group of Marxists who had only heard a little bit of third-​hand information about Marxism, whether orthodox, Western, Soviet or otherwise. Everyone considered themselves to be a leftist simply by virtue of having bones to pick with, for example, the police, the patriarchy or the meat industry. Though all legitimate bones, feelings are not the foundation for critical political discourse. One person in the crowd (from the ‘older’ faction) lamented at length over what she saw as the failings of European-​style socialism. Her qualification for making such remarks: «My mother is from Europe.»
The speakers brought in for the seminar were worldy and of high academic repute, but due to the crowd, needless to say, intelligent discussion was strictly obstructed.
I’ll close this review by noting one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in my entire life: an elderly black woman with a cane interrupting every speaker to spout Stalinist rhetoric. When she reprimanded one lecturer for discussing the working class’s homophobia, xenophobia, nationalism, chauvinism etc. because it was «unfair,» I had no choice but to walk out.
In any case, maybe Brecht Forum is simply performance art writ large — a living caricature of the fate of intellectual institutions in a recklessly kleptogarchic society. I won’t be returning unless the program is a movie screening or something like that. This place is, in my experience, hostile to critical thinking.

In its airy, laid-​back, Westbeth site, this venue offers a wide variety of live performances, film screenings, art exhibits, book parties, and classes. Admission is free or very low-​cost, in keeping with the Center’s leftist bent. (I recently saw a live reading of a play illuminating HUAC’s targeting of Lucille Ball. It was chilling.)
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