DRA1119 Week1 Section 2

1. Bertolt Brecht
Section Two – Epic Theatre

2. This lecture will…
• Examine the key features of Brecht’s Epic
Theatre.
• His Marxist beliefs
• The artistic choices he made
• The social action he sought
• The Verfremdunseffekt
• Some of his quotes about Epic Theatre
• His distinction of Dramatic and Epic Theatre
• His creation of a Modernist Realism

3. Marxism
• From his late twenties Brecht remained a committed Marxist.
• It used theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation
of the critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.
• This was an evolution of economics and social order towards the
ideal of a socialist utopia.
• Capitalism was seen as a necessary evil to endure to evolve
towards this higher state of being.

4. Epic Theatre – Artistic Choices
• Epic theatre synthesized and extended the experiments of
Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold.
• A play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally
with the characters or action before him or her.
• It should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical
view of the action on the stage.
• Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of
emotion left an audience complacent.

5. Epic Theatre –Social Action
• He wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order
to recognise social injustice and to be moved to change the
world outside.
• Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the
spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not
reality itself.
• By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event,
Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was
equally constructed and, as such, was changeable.
• 'Life is not a mirror to reflect the world, rather it is a hammer with
which to shape it.'

6. Verfremdungseffekt
• One of Brecht's most important principles was what he called
the Verfremdungseffekt.
• "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement
effect".
• Brecht wrote that this involved, "stripping the event of its self-
evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of
astonishment and curiosity about them".
• Examples included:
• The actor's direct address to the audience,
• harsh and bright stage lighting,
• The use of songs to interrupt the action,
• Explanatory placards,
• The transposition of text to the third person or past tense, and
• Speaking the stage directions out loud.

7. Epic Theatre in his Own Words
• ‘Its understood that the radical
transformation of the theatre can't be the
result of some artistic whim. It has simply to
correspond to the whole radical
transformation of the mentality of our time.’
• ‘The essential point of epic theatre is perhaps
that it appeals less to the feelings than to the
spectators reason.’
• ‘Epic . It must report. It must not believe that
one can identify oneself with our world by
empathy, nor must it want this. The subject
matter is immense; our choice of dramatic
means must take account of the fact’.

8. Differences between dramatic
theatre and epic theatre
Dramatic Theatre Epic Theatre
Plot narrative
Implicates the spectator in a stage
situation, wears down his capacity for
action
Turns the spectator into an
observer, but arouses his capacity
for action
Provides him with sensation Forces him to take decisions
Suggestion Argument
Spectator is involved in something Is made to face something
Spectator is in the thick of it, shares
experience
Spectator stands outside, studies
Is unalterable Is alterable and able to alter

9. Differences between dramatic
theatre and epic theatre
Dramatic Theatre Epic Theatre
Eyes on the finish Eyes on the course
One scene makes another Each scene is itself
Growth Montage
Linear development/ Evolutionary
determinism
In curves/ Jumps
Man as a fixed point Man as a process
Thought determines being Social being determines thought
Feeling Reason

10. Modernist Realism
• Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he
hoped to "re-function" the theatre to a new social use.
• Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with
avant-garde formal experimentation.
• This created a modernist realism that was distinct from
psychological and socialist varieties.