Bertolt Brecht is one of the towering figures of twentieth-century theater, both as a playwright whose works continue to fascinate and challenge audiences the world over, and as a theorist whose approach to dramatic form and function has been a major influence. These two plays represent Brecht at his most brilliant. Set in faraway realms of the imagination - a remote Chinese city and a long-ago Caucasian province - they are designed to point out with telling accuracy the very imperfections of our social order.