Practitioner 2: Bertolt Brecht

and the Epic Theatre

EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT

(b. 10 February, 1898, Augsburg; d. 14 August 1956)

※ Rejected the idea of entertainment through emotional catharsis

※Brecht preferred an epic narrative with loosely knit and episodic scenes

※He rejected the notion of the well-made play e.g. act 1 is exposition and act 2 climax and dénouement

※ Disallowed the audience’s empathy with the actors on stage

※ Rejected the well-made play in favour of a drama which was episodic and loosely knit

※ Emphasised the theatricality of theatre

※ Facilitated the adoption of a critical attitude towards the actions being staged

※ Initiated a social critique to expose the prevailing ideologies and inequalities of the capitalist system

Brechtian Dramaturgy

National Theatre:An Introduction to Brechtian Theatre

An Introduction to Brechtian Theatre YouTube.mht

EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT

(b. 10 February, 1898, Augsburg; d. 14 August 1956)

I grew up as the son

Of well-to-do people. My parents

Put a collar round my neck and taught me

The habit of being waited on

And the art of giving orders. But

When I had grown up and looked around me

I did not like the people of my own class

……………………………………………….

And I left my own class and joined

The common people

Politics

EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT

(b. 10 February, 1898, Augsburg; d. 14 August 1956)

Elementary school bored me for four years. During my nine years at Augsburg [Grammar school] I did not succeed in imparting any worthwhile education to my teachers. My sense of leisure and independence was tirelessly fostered by them.

- Brecht

Politics

“Germany seemed to be on the path of democracy. There was freedom of speech and of artistic expression. In the second half of the 1920s, however, the old reactionary militaristic forces began to regain strength. I was then at the height of my career as a playwright, my plays being produced all over Europe. But in Germany voices could already be heard demanding that free artistic expression and free speech should be silenced. Humanist, socialist, even Christian ideas were called ‘undeutsch’ (unGerman), a word which I hardly think of without Hitler’s wolfish intonation. At the same time, the cultural and political institutions of the people were attacked”

Brecht, Poems 1913-1956, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London, 1976), p.427: Every word that leaves the lipDescribes an arc, and thenFalls on the listener’s ear; I wait and hearThe way it strikes; I knowWe are not feeling the same thing andWe are not feeling it at the same time.

1. Aristotle’s Poetics states that the audience watching a tragedy should experience catharsis, a relief from pity and fear.

2. The emotions of pity and fear call for a recognition of some kind of affinity between the audience and the characters who act or suffer.

3. The fall of the hero, due to the individual error (hamartia) is inevitable.

ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY

Source: www.abdn.ac.uk

The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too – Just like me – It’s only natural – It’ll never change – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are inescapable- That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world – I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.

- Brecht on Theatre

Bertholt Brecht’s epic theater

• The dramatic theater's spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too-- Just like me--It's only natural-- It'll never change--The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are inescapable--That's great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world--I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.

• The epic theater's spectator says: I'd never have thought it -- That's not the way -- That's extraordinary, hardly believable -- It's got to stop -- The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary --That's great art; nothing obvious in it -- I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh. (Brecht)

Warren Sack, University of California

Martin Esslin

Bronnen’s play was written in the explosive, declamatory style of the Expressionists. But Brecht wanted to produce it quietly and realistically. Already at this stage he hated noisy, emotional tantrums in the theatre.

Empathising with the characters prevents the audience from reflecting critically on the social causes of human suffering

Plots that represent the hero’s error as central to his misfortune do not allow the dramatist to write a play that is socially critical: the focus is on the representation of misfortune due to individual error rather than the “error” in the socio-political structure

Aristotelian catharsis is an “opium for the masses” (Brecht):

Drums in the Night (1922)

The audience were greeted by streamers with inscriptions like ‘DON’T STARE SO ROMANTICALLY’ and ‘EVERY MAN FEELS BEST INSIDE HIS OWN SKIN’. They saw the action taking place in a non-realistic setting with the picture of the city rising up behind the screens that suggested the walls of a room.

Dr. Charles F. Urbanowicz / Professor of AnthropologyCalifornia State University

"Eugen Berthold Brecht was born on 10 February 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria. His father was a clerk in the local paper-mill, who later rose to the position of manager of the firm. ... His school years saw the emergence of at least two traits which were to become characteristic both of his work and personality: the forming of a wide circle of intimate friends and collaborators...and the interest in the Bible, biblical phraseology, and poetic forms such as the psalm, hymn and choral." Michael Morley, 1977, Brecht: A Study (London: Heinemann), pages 1-3."Germany in the twenties, the Weimar Republic, never really emerged

from the slaughter of World War I which preceded it before entering the violence which portended its close and the horror of Nazism. Brecht reflects an age which sees life as brutish and basic, people as self-centred and violent, even nature as uncaring rather than maternal. ... From about 1929, when Brecht witnessed the bloody dispersal of a May Day march by the Berlin police, whose president was a Social Democrat, he determines to aid the Communist cause in practical ways, though he apparently never became a party member. ... Hitler's rise to power meant immediate exile (followed by withdrawal of German citizenship in 1935 and poverty through loss of royalties. ... On 21 July 1941 the Brecht family arrived in America, where friends awaited them and a house was ready in Santa Monica, Hollywood Alfred D. White, 1978, Bertolt Brecht's Great Plays (Barnes & Noble), pages 3-10.

Bertolt Brecht on actors: "...nobody who fails to get fun out of his activities can expect them to be fun for anybody else." Bertolt Brecht, 1926, Translated and reprinted in John Willet, 1957 Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic (THINK OF THE ENJOYMENT THE ACTORS SEEMED TO GET FROM THEIR PERFORMANCES IN ERNEST)

"A firm believer in the use of theatre as an instructional medium, Brecht...sought to prevent audiences from becoming too involved emotionally with the events portrayed on stage. He considered it a shameful waste of the theatre's resources to mesmerize an audience and purge its emotions through an identification with the characters and situations. All such empathic theatrical experiences he identified as 'Aristotelian.' He called theatre that existed solely to give sensual pleasure without provoking socially meaningful thought 'culinary.' Theatre should inform the spectator; it should make him ponder the drama's Marxist implications--the need for societal change Samuel L. Leiter, 1991, From Stanislavsky To Barrault: Representative Directors of the European Stage (NY: Greenwood Press), page 158.

"The epic theatre is chiefly interested in the attitudes which people adopt towards one another, wherever they are socio-historically significant (typical). It works out scenes where people adopt attitudes of such a sort that the social laws under which they are acting spring into sight. For that we need to find workable definitions: that is to say, such definitions of the relevant processes as can be used in order to intervene in the processes themselves. The concern of the epic theatre is thus eminently practical. Human behavior is shown as alterable; man himself as dependent on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable of altering them” Bertolt Brecht, ~ Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic 1935

"The 'epic theater' Brecht envisioned was to rest on three pillars: new dramaturgical constructs embracing different raw materials; a new style of production that would de-emphasize emotion; and a new spectator who would cooly and scientifically appreciate this new theater concept. John Fuegi, 1972, The Essential Brecht

Bertolt Brecht “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre”. Bertolt Brecht, 1930,John Willet, 1957

DRAMATIC THEATRE EPIC THEATRE

plot narrative

implicates the spectator in a stage situation turns the spectator into an observer, but

wears down his capacity for action arouses his capacity for action

provides him with sensations forces him to take decisions

experience picture of the world

the spectator is involved in something he is made to face something

suggestion argument

instinctive feelings are preserved brought to the point of recognition

the spectator is in the thick of it, shares the experience

the spectator stands outside, studies

the human being is taken for granted

the human being is the object of the inquiry

he is unalterable he is alterable and able to alter

eyes on the finish eyes on the course

one scene makes another each scene for itself

growth montage

linear development in curves

evolutionary determinism jumps

man as fixed point man as process

thought determines being social being determines thought

feeling reason

"The Berliner Ensemble came to represent what is today called "epic theater". Epic theater breaks with the Aristotelian concepts of a linear story line, a suspension of disbelief, and progressive character development. In their place, epic theater uses episodic plot structure, contains little cause and effect between scenes, and has cumulative character development. The goal is one of estrangement, or "Verfremdung", with an emphasis on reason and objectivity rather than emotion, or a type of critical detachment. This form of theater forces the audience to distance itself from the stage and contemplate on the action taking place. To accomplish this, Brecht focused on cruel action, harsh and realistic scenes, and a linear plot with no climax and denouement. By making each scene complete within itself Brecht sought to prevent illusion. A Brecht play is meant to provoke the audience into not only thinking about the play, but into reforming society by challenging common ideologies. Following in the footsteps of Pirandello, he blurs the distinction between life and theatre so that the audience is left with an ending that requires social action. (http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/about_bertolt_brecht.html)

Mr.Puntilla and His Man Matti. Ensemble 1949

"NOTE: The term Epic Theater, used by Brecht for the first time in 1926, did not originate with him, although it is generally applied to his work today. It was already in the air in 1924 when Brecht moved from Munich to Berlin and was first used in connection with revolutionary experiments by director Erwin Piscator. Many playwrights and composers produced plays and musical compositions in the 1920s which have been since been labeled epic (Stravinisky, Pirandello, Claudel), and others have followed in their footsteps (Wilder, Miller, Becket)." [http://www.orst.edu/instruct/ger341/brechtet.htm]

"Instinctive compassion is a major subject of Brecht's last major dramatic work, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which was written in 1944-45 while Brecht lived in exile in the United States. This beautiful play, which is a kind of dramatic dream, concerns a young servant girl who saves the deserted infant child of the Prince during a revolution." Charles R. Lyons, 1968, Bertolt Brecht: The Despair and the Polemic

Brecht's Epic TheatreAlthough Bertolt Brecht's first plays were written in Germany during the 1920s, he was not widely known until much later. Eventually his theories of stage presentation exerted more influence on the course of mid-century theatre in the West than did those of any other individual. This was largely because he proposed the major alternative to the Stanislavsky-oriented realism that dominated acting and the "well-made play" construction that dominated playwriting. Brecht's most important plays, which included The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children, and The Good Person of Szechwan, were written between 1937 and 1945 when he was in exile from the Nazi regime, first in Scandinavia and then in the United States. At the invitation of the newly formed East German government, he returned to found the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 with his wife, Helene Weigel, as leading actress. It was only at this point, through his own productions of his plays, that Brecht earned his reputation as one of the most important figures of 20th-century theatre. Certainly Brecht's attack on the illusive theatre influenced, directly or indirectly, the theatre of every Western country. In Britain the effect became evident in the work of such playwrights as John Arden and Edward Bond and in some of the bare-stage productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Western theatre in the 20th century, however, has proved to be a cross-fertilization of many styles (Brecht himself acknowledged a debt to traditional Oriental theatre), and by the 1950s other approaches were gaining influence.  

Brecht's earliest work was heavily influenced by German Expressionism, but it was his preoccupation with Marxism and the idea that man and society could be intellectually analyzed that led him to develop his theory of "epic theatre." Brecht believed that theatre should appeal not to the spectator's feelings but to his reason. While still providing entertainment, it should be strongly didactic and capable of provoking social change. In the Realistic theatre of illusion, he argued, the spectator tended to identify with the characters on stage and become emotionally involved with them rather than being stirred to think about his own life. To encourage the audience to adopt a more critical attitude to what was happening on stage, Brecht developed his Verfremdungs-effekt ("alienation effect")--i.e., the use of anti-illusive techniques to remind the spectators that they are in a theatre watching an enactment of reality instead of reality itself. Such techniques included flooding the stage with harsh white light, regardless of where the action was taking place, and leaving the stage lamps in full view of the audience; making use of minimal props and "indicative" scenery; intentionally interrupting the action at key junctures with songs in order to drive home an important point or message; and projecting explanatory captions onto a screen or employing placards. From his actors Brecht demanded not realism and identification with the role but an objective style of playing, to become in a sense detached observers.

Please watch on Youtube:

• Five Truths about Bertolt Brecht

Brecht's Marxist political convictions led him to propose an alternative direction for the theatre that would fuse the two functions of instruction and entertainment. In this way the theatre could project a picture of the world by artistic means and offer models of life that could help the spectators to understand their social environment and to master it both rationally and emotionally. The main concept of Brecht's program was that of Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation"). In order to induce a critical frame of mind in the spectator, Brecht considered it necessary to dispense with the empathetic involvement with the stage that the illusionary theatre sought to induce. Generally, this has been understood as a deadening coldness in the productions, but such an interpretation proceeds from a general ignorance of Brecht's own writings on the subject. Rather, he insisted, as Appia, Craig, and the Symbolists did before him, that the audience must be reminded that it is watching a play. Brecht's ideas can be approached through the image presented by the theatre he chose to work in on his return to East Germany in 1947. The auditorium of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm is lavish to the point of fantasy, decorated with ornate plaster figures. The stage, by complete contrast, is a vast mechanized scenic space in which everything is clearly exposed to view as theatrical and man-made. In the contrast between the comfort of the auditorium and the science of the stage lies the condition of Brecht's theatre. The audience was there to be entertained but also to think scientifically.

Many of the techniques of Brecht's staging were developments of earlier work. The use of three-dimensional set pieces in a large volume of space clearly derived from Jessner. His delight in the use of machinery and in particular the revolving stage came from Piscator. The insistence on the actors' demonstrating through the physical disposition of the body their gestus ("attitude") toward what is happening derived from Meyerhold, though with Brecht the gestus was always socially based. The clearest of his alienation devices, the projection of captions preceding the scene so that the audience knows in advance what will happen and therefore can concentrate on how it happens, derived from Piscator's jotter screens and film captions.

Brecht acknowledged in his work the need for the actor to undergo a process of identification with the part, and he paid tribute to Stanislavsky as the first person to produce a systematic account of the actor's technique. Brecht required his actors to go beyond Stanislavsky and to incorporate a social attitude or judgment into their portrayal. Characterization without a critical judgment was in Brecht's view seductive artifice; conversely, social judgment without the characterization of a rounded human being was arid dogmatism. The theatre of mixed styles and means that Meyerhold and others constructed to cope with the grotesque experience of modern living was transformed by Brecht into a political principle. He used mixed means and styles to expose the contradictions, inconsistencies, and dialectics of situations and characters. Brecht's strongest theatrical effects were created through the juxtaposition of inconsistent attitudes in a character. Although the settings in Brecht's productions were clearly theatrical, the costumes and properties were not. Great care was taken to make each property and its use authentic for the period or character. In Brecht's theatre, if a chicken were to be plucked the actor did not mime or roughly approximate the action--the chicken was plucked. Costumes had to make clear the social class of the persons wearing them. This places Brecht directly in the line with the Meiningen Players, though again the gestus is particularly social rather than historical.

Brecht's methods of rehearsal were especially innovative. The methods worked out in his own company, the Berliner Ensemble, established a directing collective well advanced beyond those of Reinhardt and Piscator. In Brecht's theatre, the director, dramaturge, designer, and composer had equal authority in the production. The designer had a special function; in addition to designing the sets and costumes, he also produced, for early rehearsal purposes, a series of sketches of key moments in the action. The rehearsals became a process of testing hypotheses about the play and its production. What held the collective together and made the method workable was the story, or fable. All the elements of production were synthesized for telling this story in public. At some points the music conveyed the meaning, at other times the setting, or the actors, or the words did. Brecht often invited observers to the rehearsals in order to test the clarity of the story. The process of testing could continue into the performance period. When the company was satisfied that the staging was correct, the production was photographed and a Modellbuch was prepared with photographs set against the text to show the disposition of the stage at all times and to mark significant changes of position on the part of the actors. The Modellbuch was then available (in a more advanced form than the designer's sketches) as the basis for any subsequent productions.

Scene from the Mother Courage and Her Children, with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage