Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht; born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht; 10 February 1898 14 August 1956 was a
German poet, playwright, theatre director, and Marxist.
Brecht was both playwright and producer/director of his own, and others', plays. He also wrote
extensively on dramatic theory. Brecht's work can be considered in three stages.
The Early Period
The important works are:
Drums in the Night
Man is Man
The Threepenny Opera
The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahagonny
These early plays are humorous, in a rather bleak and cynical way, and present social and political
questions, attacking middle-class values. Technically, the plays are innovative: the stories are
improbable, settings exotic and the songs serve as commentary on action rather than aiding it. The
Threepenny Opera, one of his most famous works, was intended to parody the conventional
sentimental musical. Brecht had achieved commercial success for these works, but for reasons which
could not please him.
The Propaganda Plays
The Lehrstcke (a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt
Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s) are short, parabolic pieces (Like fables,
you learn from them), 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. The Ocean Flight, 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.
The Plays of Brecht's Maturity
Mother Courage and her Children
The Good Person of Szechwan
In these two plays we see Bertolts main theatrical form, episodic narrative theatre where each
scene begins with a caption, displayed or read aloud, that tells the audience what is about to happen.



Brecht's Dramatic Theories
Brecht's theory was never complete. His ideas changed and developed.
Brecht 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. 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.
Brecht disliked naturalism and melodrama because had been influenced by expressionism and had
collaborated with Erwin Piscator, father of political theatre and was ready to experiment with new
techniques.

Epic Theatre
Many of the concepts and practices involved in Brechtian epic theatre had been around for years,
even centuries, Brecht unified them, developed the style, and popularized it. Epic theatre
incorporates a mode of acting that utilises what he calls gestus( a combination of gestures and
putting attitudes on these gestures. By using gestures it immediately tell part of the story or
character to the audience in a quick and simple way; however these gestures could become very
generic. By adding an attitude onto this gesture it gives more depth to it and consequently gives
more depth to the characters and the story line). Brecht later preferred the term "dialectical
theatre". One of the goals of epic theatre is for the audience to always be aware that they are
watching a play. Common production techniques in epic theatre include a simplified, non-realistic
scenic design offset against a selective realism in costuming and props, as well as announcements or
visual captions that interrupt and summarize the action.

Acting in epic theatre requires actors to play characters believably without convincing either the
audience or themselves that they have "become" the characters. Actors frequently address the
audience directly out of character ("breaking the fourth wall") and play multiple roles. Brecht's view
is that actor should not impersonate, but narrate actions of another person, as if quoting facial
gesture and movement. The Brechtian style of acting is acting in quotation marks.

Verfremdungseffekt (Alienation Effect)
One of the most important techniques Brecht developed to perform epic theatre is the
Verfremdungseffekt, or the "alienation" effect. The purpose of this technique was to make the
audience feel detached from the action of the play, so they do not become immersed in the fictional
reality of the stage or become overly empathetic of the character. Flooding the theatre with bright
lights (not just the stage), having actors play multiple characters, having actors also rearrange the set
in full view of the audience and "breaking the fourth wall" by speaking to the audience are all ways
he used to achieve the Verfremdungseffekt.

Rehearsing Brechtian theatre
Brecht made actors turn their lines into third person narrative. Actions given in stage directions are
narrated:

Dialogue, spoken (in performance) in the present tense, becomes reported speech.
E.g - Has your excellency seen the new dancing master? becomes He asked whether Madame had
seen the new dancing-master.