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We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses
possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action
takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help
transform the field itself."
Bertolt Brecht (18981956), German dramatist, poet. A Short Organum for the
Theatre, para.35 (1949; repr. in Brecht on Theatre, ed. and tr. by John Willett,
1964). The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations 1993
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direct address to the audience, is permitted. Sets, lighting, make-up, and acting
are all designed to intensify this illusion.
Accustomed as we have become to the theater of illusion, we sometimes
make the mistake of concluding that it is the only way of true theater. Yet the
theater of illusion has played only a small part in the history of the theater as a
whole. The theater of Shakespeare, for example, with its blank verse, its
soliloquies, and its simplified staging has little to do with the
theater of illusion.
Anti-Illusionist Theater:
Many modern playwrights have recognized the limitations of the theater of
illusion and have presented alternatives to it. In the American theater, Eugene
O'Neill's Strange Interlude, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Tennessee Williams'
The Glass Menagerie, and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman are but a few of
the many important plays that in some degree reject illusionist
conventions. European rebels against illusionism include such significant
figures as Luigi Pirandello in Italy, Erwin Piscator (with whom Brecht worked)
in Germany, and, more recently, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean
Genet in France.
Brecht was not alone, then, in rejecting the conventions of the theater of
illusion. We shall now examine some of the specific terms of Brecht's rebellion.
Structure:
According to Brecht, the traditional dramatic form is based on artificial and
unnecessary restrictions. The play deals with a single action, is limited in the
range of time and space it covers, and each scene is important only for what it
contributes to the whole. As an alternative (and the ability to see alternatives is
of central importance in Brecht's thought) Brecht suggests an "epic" structure that is, a structure based on the epic, a looser, narrative form, which is of its
nature episodic and in which each episode is significant, not only for what it
contributes to the whole, but in itself.
The epic differs further from the dramatic form in that, as narrative, it deals
with past events (expressed in the past tense), rather than with the imaginary
"present" of the drama, which unfolds before us as if it were happening for the
first time. In his "epic" theater, Brecht wants the audience to see the action as
something that has happened in the past, in a particular time and place, and that
is now being re-enacted. Again, the audience is not permitted the illusion that
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www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/ContempDrama/DR-Glossary.htm
and strange is not inevitable, and therefore that it could be otherwise. For
Brecht, this applies as well to social, political, and economic systems as to
anything else. The artist who "alienates" capitalism, for instance, invites the
audience to see that there are alternatives to capitalism, that it need not be taken
for granted; it could be otherwise. As Brecht sees it, the demonstration by
"alienation" that society can be changed must lead the audience to change it
along Communist lines. This conclusion does not, however, follow logically
from anything else in Brecht's theory and will not seem convincing to the nonCommunist reader.
Relation Between Alienation And Other Concepts:
It should be clear by now that Brecht's notions of structure, staging, and
acting are all related to the concept of alienation. It is essentially by means of
structure, staging, and acting that alienation is effected; it is for the purpose of
alienation that Brechtian structure, staging, and acting are what they are.
End:
In his early theoretical writings, Brecht insisted on a didactic end for theater;
theater should teach the audience that a better world is both necessary and
possible. Later, he modified his position and argued that the proper end of
theater, as of all art, is delight. Yet the delight proper to our scientific age is not
the sort of delight one takes in eating candy, but the more profound delight that
comes from discovering new truths about oneself and the world one lives in. In
pleading the cause of delight, then, Brecht did not discard his earlier
didacticism. Rather, he succeeded in reconciling the demands of teaching and
of pleasing.
Audience:
The theater of illusion demands of the audience a nonintellectual, emotional
response based primarily on empathy, the tendency to put onself in the place of
characters on the stage, to feel what they feel. Brecht's theater, while not ruling
out emotion, demands a more critical and intellectual response. The audience
should not indulge in empathy, but exercise critical judgment toward what it
sees on the stage.
Additional Terms:
A few of Brecht's other terms may require some clarification:
Gestus:
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