Bertolt Brecht’ Epic Theatre

Brecht was both playwright and producer/director of his own, and others', plays. He also wrote extensively on dramatic theory. The theory, arising from a Marxist notion of drama as a vehicle for rational didacticism, describes theatre as Brecht, in a sense, wished it to become. This theory is only partly realised in his own work. Brecht would say that this is the result of the theatre's (and society's) not being ready yet for the final, perfected version of epic theatre. Modern theatre critics might say that Brecht's practical sense of what works in the theatre has (happily) overruled the more extreme applications of his theory.

Brecht's work can be considered in three stages.

a. THE EARLY PERIOD

· The important works are: Drums in the Night; 1918, Man is Man; 1924-5 The Threepenny Opera; 1928 and The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahagonny; 1928-9

· The plays are humorous, in a rather bleak and cynical way, and present social and political questions, attacking bourgeois values.

Technically, the plays are (for their time) innovative: the bourgeois convention of the fourth wall is rejected, stories are improbable, settings exotic, songs serve as commentary on action

· The Threepenny Opera was intended to lampoon (send up or ridicule) the conventional sentimental musical. The public lapped up the mock sentiment and missed the humour. Brecht had achieved commercial success, but for reasons which could not please him.

b. THE PROPAGANDA PLAYS

· The Lehrstücke are short, parabolic pieces, written between 1928 and 1930:

The Flight of Lindbergh [the Ocean Flight, The Bavarian Parable Play of Understanding, The Yes-Sayer, The No-Sayer, The Measures Taken, The Exception and the Rule. These plays, written to instruct children, are not attractive to audiences. Their simplicity and didacticism makes them austere to the point of severity. They are interesting as theatrical treatments of ideological questions but are rarely performed now.

· Der Ozeanflug, broadcast as a radio play, was produced without the reading of the main part, which was to be spoken by the audience, who were supplied with scripts.

There are also three longer propaganda plays:

· Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses This parodies, variously, Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe. It contains many devices of what Brecht called “Epic theatre”, such as a loudspeaker announcing political events of the time, or projection of captions commenting on the drama.

· The Mother This deals explicitly and didactically with political revolution - written in a restrained puritanical style.

· The Roundheads and the Peakheads This is a strange play which takes its plot from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure but presents also Hitler's theory of inferior and superior races via the Peakheads and the Roundheads (the latter being the “master race”).

c. THE PLAYS OF BRECHT'S MATURITY. Brecht's output was huge but four of the later plays stand out:

1) Mother Courage and her Children; first performed 1941;

2) Life of Galileo; 1943, In the first two we see episodic narrative theatre - each scene prefaced by a caption indicating what happens (in performance, these could be displayed or read out).

3) The Good Person of Sezuan; 1943- In the third, scenes presenting the action are followed by interludes in which actors stand back from their roles and comment on the actions of the characters.

4) The Caucasian Chalk-Circle; performed in English, 1947; in German, not till 1954 . In The Caucasian Chalk-Circle, Brecht uses a play within the play: in order to resolve the conflict of two groups of peasants who wish to farm a valley, a play is presented by singer, musicians and actors. The singer and musicians stand outside the drama of Grusche, Azdak, Simon and Natella, and provide both narrative and commentary.

1. How will Brecht’s dramatic theories aide you in researching your theme, developing your characters, choosing your dramatic forms, structure and your performance style?

a) The background to the theory Brecht's special lexicon (theatrical jargon) may be confusing. He invented a complex language to describe essentially straightforward ideas - this lexicon includes such terms as epic-theatre, non-Aristotelian drama, alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt) and so on.

b) While his plays are mostly very clear and fluent, Brecht's own theorizing is not so simple. Brecht is less novel than he is supposed to be. His drama owes much to a wide range of theatrical conventions: Elizabethan, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Greek idea of Chorus, Austrian and Bavarian folk-plays, techniques of clowns and fairground entertainers.

c) In part, it was the things against which he reacted that determined Brecht's theories (and his overstatements). Among these were: bourgeois theatre , the fourth wall , anything which precludes thought, excites emotion or reinforces capitalist values

d) Brecht disliked the twin clichés of heavily bombastic classics (Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe) and of naturalism in melodrama or drawing-room. Naturalism was developed and perfected by such as Stanislavsky.

e) Against this, reaction had already begun by the 1920s. Naturalism could go no farther, so new types of theatre arose: poetic drama , satire , expressionism (types not people) , political theatre

f) Brecht had been influenced by expressionism and had collaborated with Erwin Piscator, father of political theatre and himself ready to experiment with new technique.

g) Convinced that theatre must be an agent of social and political change, he sought a suitable form of theatre. Having found it he described it as “Epic theatre”:

a. “Today when human character must be understood as the 'totality of all social conditions' the epic form is the only one that can comprehend all the processes, which could serve the drama as materials for a fully representative picture of the world.”

h) (Brecht's comment, 1931, in The Threepenny Opera)

i) The epic theatre “...the epic poet presents the event as totally past, while the dramatic poet presents it as totally present.”

j) The epic invites calm, detached contemplation and judgement; the dramatic overwhelms reason with passion and emotion, the spectator sharing the actor's experiences.

k) Dramatic theatre presents events: from the hero's viewpoint (distorting judgement,) and as happening now (preventing calm detachment.)

l) To counter this the illusion must be broken. Theatre must do this continually.

m) And, therefore, the audience must be made aware that events are not present events (happening now), but past events being represented as narrative, with commentary provided to encourage our own reflection. This is not unlike the experience of reading a book with critical notes in the margin, or as if a novelist supplied his own comment on a page facing that bearing the narrative. Some modern anti-novelists have done this.

The audience is intended to sit back, relax (hence Brecht's wish for smoking!) and reflect, as did hearers of bards in classical Greece or Anglo-Saxon England. The theatre of illusion creates a spurious present, pretending things are happening now. But the epic theatre is historical: the audience is continually reminded that epic theatre gives a report of events.

The Brechtian Actor

a) Brecht's view is that actor should not impersonate, but narrate actions of another person, as if quoting facial gesture and movement.

Ø “The Brechtian style of acting is acting in quotation marks.”

b) As the audience is not to be allowed to identify with character, so, too, the actor is not to identify with him or her. Brecht agrees with Stanislavsky that, if the actor believes he is Lear, the audience will also believe it, and share his emotions. But, unlike Stanislavsky, he does not wish this to happen.

c) As he does not wish to put the audience into a trance, just so the actor must keep himself free from this state: he must be relaxed, not letting muscles be tense. Even if playing someone who is possessed, the actor must not appear possessed. Brecht is opposed to frenetic and convulsive intensity on the stage. The Brechtian actor must always be in control of his emotions. Brecht sees the actor's task as greater than Stanislavsky's merging of character and actor.

d) This is one important element but it must be complemented by implied comment on the character's actions. The actor must show how these are wise or foolish and express, say, pity or disdain. The actor must show that he foresees where a character's actions will lead, and that his course of action is only one among many possibilities.

e) Since the actor should show the audience that he has chosen one action, as opposed to another, he must be aware of the presence of the audience, not, as in Stanislavsky's ideal, wrapped up in himself and oblivious of audience.

f) Finally, there is to be nothing improvised in his delivery: the actor's performance should be the “delivery of a finished product”.

g) This theory is not as complicated as it appears: in the Victorian melodrama, the actor plays the villain in just such a critical way - the audience sees that the actor disapproves of the character; there is no identification of one with the other; there is awareness and enjoyment of the skill in showing villainy; the actor shows that the villain could choose an alternative course of action, and that he will come to a bad end.

In the theatre of illusion the actor explores the character, trying to merge with him. Only then does he react to other characters. In the Brechtian theatre the character's inner life is of no importance, save in its effect on outward action. Brecht does not portray human nature in the individual, but human relations. The story is the point of interest, not the characters. The story is the sequence of events that is the social experiment, allowing the interplay of social forces, from which the play's lesson emerges.

a) This is Brecht's term for that which expresses basic human attitudes - not merely “gesture” but all signs of social relations: department, intonation, facial expression. The Stanislavskian actor is to work at identifying with the character he or she portrays. The Brechtian actor is to work at expressing social attitudes in clear and stylized ways. So, when Shen-Te becomes Shui-Ta, she moves in a different manner. Brecht wished to embody the “Gestus” in the dialogue - as if to compel the right stance, movement and intonation. By subtle use of rhythm pause, parallelism and counterpointing, Brecht creates a “gestic” language.

b) The songs are yet more clearly “gestic”. As street singers make clear their attitudes with overt, grand but simple gestures, so, in delivering songs, the Brechtian actor aims to produce clarity in expressing a basic attitude, such as despair, defiance or submission.

c) Instead of the seamless continuity of the naturalistic theatre, the illusion of natural disorder, Brecht wishes to break up the story into distinct episodes, each of which presents, in a clear and ordered manner, a central basic action. All that appears in the scene is designed to show the significance of the basic “Gestus”. We see how this works in Mother Courage. Each scene is prefaced by a caption telling the audience what is to be the important event, in such a way as to suggest the proper attitude for the audience to adopt to it - for instance (Scene 3):

a. “She manages to save her daughter, likewise her covered cart, but her honest son is killed.”

The words in red express the playwright's view of how we should interpret the scene; Courage's saving her business at the expense of her son is meant to prove how contemptible our actions are made by war.

In September 'Exhibit B' opened in London.

Synopsis:

Described by Peter Brook as ‘an extraordinary achievement’, this haunting installation sets out to subvert a disturbing phenomenon, turning the notion of exotic spectacle on its head.

Exhibit B critiques the ‘human zoos’ and ethnographic displays that showed Africans as objects of scientific curiosity through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Translated here into twelve tableaux, each features motionless performers placed in settings drawn from real life. Collectively they confront colonial atrocities committed in Africa, European notions of racial supremacy and the plight of immigrants today.

As spectators walk past the exhibits one-by-one, to the sound of lamentations sung live by a Namibian choir, a human gaze is unexpectedly returned.

Both unbearable and essential' ★★★★★ Guardian

Read a review here

'Still, reflective, non-histrionic. Modern parallels are drawn and contemporary questions raised. An important and provocative work' Evening Standard ★★★★★

Read full review here

This piece of work was cancelled after heated protest and upset amongst the public.

A spokesperson for the Barbican said:

“Last night as Exhibit B was opening at the Vaults it became impossible for us to continue with the show because of the extreme nature of the protest and the serious threat to the safety of performers, audiences and staff. Given that protests are scheduled for future performances of Exhibit B we have had no choice but to cancel all performances of the piece.

“We find it profoundly troubling that such methods have been used to silence artists and performers and that audiences have been denied the opportunity to see this important work. Exhibit B raises, in a serious and responsible manner, issues about racism; it has previously been shown in 12 cities, involved 150 performers and been seen by around 25,000 people with the responses from participants, audiences and critics alike being overwhelmingly positive.

“The Barbican has done everything we can to ensure London performances can go ahead – including continued dialogue with protestors and senior Barbican staff meeting with the leaders of the campaign and attending a public meeting to discuss the issues raised by the work. We respect people's right to protest but are disappointed that this was not done in a peaceful way as had been previously promised by campaigners .

“We believe this piece should be shown in London and are disturbed at the potential implications this silencing of artists and performers has for freedom of expression.”

Theatre used to be censored, however it's not anymore and we live in a society where we promote freedom of speech and expression. We watch plays about racism, violence and sex. We have plays by Edward Bond and Sarah Kane; surely we have become an un-shockable nation?

Do you think that 'Exhibit B' should have been cancelled or not? What are you justifications for your thoughts?

If you agree - do you think that plays with particularly 'offensive' topics should also not be shown?

DISCUSS - listen and respond to each other.

"‘To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.’" - Frederick Douglass

Some further articles for reading:

Barbican criticises protesters who forced Exhibit B cancellation

Withdrawal of anti-slavery exhibition hailed as victory by campaigners, but Barbican says cancellation has implications for artistic freedom

Is art installation Exhibit B racist?

Following accusations of exploitation and racism, the Barbican decided to close down the live art installation Exhibit B. Were the protests justified?

PoliticaltheatreBMA

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Political theater protests.

Monday, 9 November 2015

Friday, 6 November 2015

current news stories.

Monday, 2 November 2015

Further reading on brecht.