Set design by Jocelyn Herbert for the 'Truck Drivers' Cafe' scene in Bertolt Brecht's play, Baal, Phoenix Theatre, 1963

Design for a cafe in Baal, showing a wooden stage platform with, to the centre, a free standing structure representing the inside back wall of a large room with, to right, a doorway leading to another room beyond. The right hand side of the structure rises to form an upper level exterior wall with a window and a tiled gable above. Within the cafe, to the left, a rectangular table and, to the right, a small circular table with sketchy figures sitting around both. Behind the cafe, telegraph posts and wires and signs advertising 'Cafe', 'Bier Stube' and 'Bier'.

This is one of a collection of 21 designs by Jocelyn Herbert for Bertolt Brecht's Baal, Phoenix Theatre, 7 February 1963, which was part of Lot 366 in Sotheby's Sale of Illustrated Books, 22 May 1997. The production was directed by William Gaskill. Herbert's designs had previously been sold by Ifan Kyrle Fletcher in 1963: they appear as Item 128 in the Ifan Kyrle Fletcher Catalogue, number 207, July 1963.

Historical significance: A design for the world premiere of Brecht's Baal, dating from a period when Jocelyn Herbert's work was exerting considerable influence on British theatre design. The production is significant in the career of its director, William Gaskill, being Gaskill's first essay in Brecht, a dramatist with whom he became closely associated.

S.334-1999