This show was a project initiated by Jerome Robbins. Orignally, Robbins had hoped to adapt Brecht's one-act play The Measures Taken. He proposed the idea to Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim has never been a fan of Brecht. He read the play and told Robbins he hated it even more than most Brecht. Robbins asked Sondheim to look at another Brecht one-act, The Exception and the Rule. Sondheim liked it a bit more than The Measures Taken. With some reluctance he agreed to write the music and the lyrics, mostly out of admiration for Robbins.
After sketching out but probably not completing two songs — "Don't Give It a Thought" and "The Year of the . . . " — Sondheim was unhappy and left the project. He suggested to Robbins that Leonard Bernstein write both the music and the lyrics.
Bernstein joined the project but refused to write the lyrics. Jerry Leiber was brought in to write the lyrics, but he quit after a couple of months. Sondheim was asked to rejoin the project, writing just the lyrics. Sondheim agreed to do so, mostly because by this point John Guare was the show's book writer, and Sondheim thought Guare's work on the book was brilliant. Guare had added an extra distancing device to the original play by setting the action in a television studio where a television production of the play was being done.
In Craig Zadan's book Sondheim & Co., Guare explained his concept thus: "It was supposed to deal with the idea that in 1968 having 'good intentions' was not enough, and that it was presumptuous and hilarious to expect that showing man's inhumanity to man would change anything in the world."
Stuart Ostrow was to produce the show on Broadway, with Zero Mostel starring. In August 1968 it was announced that the show, at that time referred to in press reports as The Exception and the Rule, would open at the Broadhurst in February 1969. Starting around mid-September, the title A Pray By Blecht started to appear in press reports. Sondheim later wrote in his book Look, I Made a Hat (page 318): "The title A Pray By Blecht was Lenny's. None of us could talk him out of it, but I assure you we had no intention of keeping it."
In early October 1968, it was announced that the production would be postponed. About 10 days later, it was announced that the production was canceled.
In 1987, Jerome Robbins returned to this project. A workshop production with the title The Race to Urga was performed for invited audiences at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, under the auspices of Lincoln Center Theatre. Leonard Bernstein and John Guare were actively involved in this attempt to resurrect the show, and Guare wrote some new lyrics.
This version was more of straightforward adaptation of Brecht's play, without the television frame that was to have been used in 1968. Zero Mostel's son, Josh Mostel, played the leading role. An archival video of this production was filmed for the Theatre on Film and Tape collection of the Library for the Performing Arts in New York.
