In keeping with Brecht's aesthetic policy of adapting world dramatic classics for his Epic Theatre, the Berliner Ensemble used its collaborative adaptation of Moliere's Dom Juan to inaugurate its permanent home, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, in March, 1954. Like the other post-1850 adaptations meant for the permanent repertory of this new theatre company, the reworked Moliere comedy exhibits Brecht's theoretical and practical theatre aims, particularly in its performance potential as a recognizably Molieresque comedy rooted in commedia dell'arte style and also as a Brechtian comedy defined by the gestical thrust of "the socially comic" (das gesellschaftlich komische). In addition to rescuing Moliere's socially satirical Don Juan from subsequent theatrical tradition's romantic heroizing of him, the Brechtian version redefines the charming social parasite as both a ridiculous egoist and an example of a dangerously attractive, theatrically mythic personality type. In this, the Brechtian version recovers an essential thrust of Moliere's comic intention.
