2.2 Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theater

Bertolt Brecht revolutionized theater with his epic style, challenging traditional storytelling. He used techniques like alienation and historicization to make audiences think critically about social issues, not just get swept up in emotions.

Brecht's approach aimed to empower spectators as agents of change. By breaking theatrical conventions and presenting dialectical conflicts, he encouraged viewers to question society and imagine alternatives to the status quo.

Brecht's Epic Theater Concepts

Distancing the Audience

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• Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt) deliberately prevents the audience from emotionally identifying with characters or becoming immersed in the narrative
  • Achieved through techniques like direct address to the audience, placards, and discordant music
  • Goal is to make the audience intellectually engage with the play's themes and ideas rather than getting swept up in the story
• Non-Aristotelian drama rejects the principles of Aristotelian theater, which aims for the audience's emotional catharsis and identification with the protagonist
  • Brecht believed Aristotelian theater encouraged passive acceptance of the status quo
  • Epic theater seeks to activate the audience's critical thinking and desire for social change
• Historicization presents events and characters as products of specific historical and social circumstances rather than as universal or timeless
  • Encourages the audience to see contemporary parallels and examine their own society critically
  • Costumes and settings often incorporate anachronistic elements to highlight the constructed nature of the theatrical representation (1920s gangsters in The Threepenny Opera)

Embodied Social Critique

• Dialectical theater presents opposing viewpoints or social forces in conflict and encourages the audience to consider the contradictions
  • Reflects Brecht's Marxist view of history as driven by material and economic factors
  • Aims to expose the underlying power structures and inequities of society
• Gestus refers to the combination of physical gestures, vocal delivery, and social attitude an actor uses to convey a character's status, relationships, and motivations
  • Distinct from realistic psychological acting that aims for emotional authenticity and identification
  • Gestus reveals the character as socially constructed and changeable rather than a fixed individual (Mother Courage's business-like attitude toward her children's deaths)

Epic Theater Techniques

Disrupting Theatrical Conventions

• Breaking the fourth wall occurs when actors directly address the audience, disrupting the illusion of a self-contained fictional world
  • Reminds the audience they are watching a play and should think critically about what is presented
  • Can be used for humorous effect, ironic commentary, or political exhortation
• Other epic theater techniques that interrupt the flow of the narrative and draw attention to the theatrical apparatus include:
  • Placards or projections announcing the themes or events of each scene
  • Exposed stage machinery and lighting
  • Actors visibly changing costumes or moving set pieces on stage
  • Discordant or ironic music and songs that comment on the action

Modeling Critical Spectatorship

• Lehrstücke (learning-plays) are short, overtly didactic pieces intended not for professional production but for participation by students or workers
  • Involve the audience in debate, role-playing, and collective decision-making
  • Process of performing the play is intended to educate and empower the participants
  • Shift focus from individual characters to broader social dynamics and the possibility of change (The Measures Taken, The Exception and the Rule)

Brecht's Didactic Approach

Theater as a Tool for Social Change

• Brecht's openly didactic approach uses theater to educate the audience about social and political issues
  • Rejects the idea of art for art's sake or purely aesthetic enjoyment
  • Believes theater should be a forum for critical reflection and debate about society
  • Aims to inspire the audience to question the status quo and agitate for change
• Social commentary in Brecht's plays often targets capitalism, militarism, and bourgeois values
  • The Threepenny Opera critiques the hypocrisy and exploitation underlying respectable society
  • Mother Courage and Her Children exposes the devastation of war and the capitalist profiteering that perpetuates it
  • The Good Person of Szechwan questions whether it is possible to be ethical within a corrupt system

Empowering the Audience

• Brecht's epic theater ultimately seeks to empower the audience as agents of social and political change
  • Alienation effect and other techniques invite critical spectatorship rather than passive consumption
  • Dialectical approach and historicization provoke analysis of contemporary society and its contradictions
  • Lehrstücke provide hands-on experience in imagining and rehearsing alternative modes of social interaction
• Rather than providing pat answers or emotional resolution, Brecht aims to send the audience out of the theater with heightened awareness, sharpened critical faculties, and a sense of their own capacity to transform the world (final scene of The Caucasian Chalk Circle)