Bertolt Brecht

(1898-1956)

“If the critics could only look at

my theatre as the audience does,
without starting out by stressing
my theories,
then they might well see theatr
e. ”
­Bertolt Brecht
Playwright!

Director!

Theatre
Thinker!
“ Theatre’s noblest
function
is to give pleasur
e.”

“Nothing needs
less justification
than pleasure.”
 Early Career
 Drums in the Night
(1922)

 EXPRESSIONIST !!

 Not typical of his later

style.
1926: Brecht began
to study Marxism.

"The history of all hitherto

existing society is the history
of class struggles.”
The Threepenny Opera
(1928)
 Berlin

 Beggar’s
Opera

 Kurt Weill
Helene Weigel
 1933: Brecht
flees Nazi
Germany.

 Nomadic
existence in
Europe, USA

 1941-1947; lived
and work
Hollywood
Brecht and HUAC
 Brecht’s Exile Plays
 Mother Courage and Her
Children (1938)
 Life of Galileo (1938-
1939)
 The Good Woman of
Setzuan (1938-1939)
 The Caucasian Chalk
Circle (1944-1945)
Mother Courage
 1948: returns to
Germany
 EAST GERMANY
 1949: creates the
Berliner Ensemble
THE BERLINER
ENSEMBLE

 Lengthy rehearsal
periods!

 Produced his exile plays

 Most famous European

theatre since MAT.

 Popularized Epic
theatrre
What is Bad Theatre
 Bad Theatre
 Is HYPNOTIC!
 Bad Theatre
 Suggests to the audience that
events are fixed and unchangeable.
 Bad Theatre
 Reduces the audience’ s role to
complete passivity !

EPIC vs.
DRAMATIC
 In Epic Theatre the
Audience…
 Is ACTIVE

 Is ENTERTAINED

 Is CRITICAL

 Is somewhat
OBJECTIVE
How do you achieve
this?
Distancing

 Verfremdung = “alienation”

 Verfremdungseffect
 “V-effect”
 WAYS OF DISTANCING
 Historification
 giveplay a sense of “ pastness”
so that it can be viewed more
objectively
 WAYS OF DISTANCING
 use songs, speeches,
narration to separate
episodes of the play
 reminds us of the pretense
of theatre
 WAYS OF DISTANCING
 show the mechanics of the theatre to
the audience so that they stay
mindful of the pretense
 change scenery in full view
 show the lighting instruments

 show the actor AND the character

“How can the theatre be
both instructive and
entertaining?”
“How can it be divorced
from spiritual dope traffic
and turned from a home
of illusions to a home of
experience?”
“How can the unfree, ignorant man of
our century, with his thirst for
freedom and his hunger for
knowledge, how can the tortured and
heroic, abused and ingenious,
changeable and world-changing man
of this great and ghastly century
obtain his own theatre, which will
help him to master the world and
himself?”