A practical, hands-on guide - for actors, directors, teachers and students - to Brecht's history and practice of theatre. The Complete Brecht Toolkit examines, one by one, Brecht's many, sometimes contradictory ideas about theatre - and how he put them into practice. Here are explanations of all the famous key terms, such as Alienation Effect, Epic Theatre and Gestus, as well as many others which go to make up what we think of as 'Brechtian theatre'. There follows a section which looks at the practical application of these theories in Acting, Language, Music, Design and Direction. And finally, the book offers fifty exercises for student actors to investigate Brecht's ideas for themselves, becoming thoroughly familiar with the tools in the Brecht toolkit.