Chapter Nine: Brecht and Epic Theatre

Berthold Brecht (1898-1956) was one of the most distinguished representatives of socialist realist art. As a creator, he was multi-sided: poet, dramatist, director, critic and publicist. There can be little doubt that he was one of the most significant writers of the twentieth-century. His work was the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg, but in many ways it is difficult to understand in itself, and to relate it to a tradition which it at once develops and criticizes. Brecht had been writing continuously since 1918, however it was the period between 1937 and 1945 that saw not only some of his finest plays – Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle – but also the evolution of his most significant theories on the theatre.
Brecht’s early dramas were anarchic, nihilistic, and antibourgeois. In them, he glorifies antisocial outsiders such as fortune hunters, pirates, and prostitutes; in keeping with their view on general society, the tone of these works is often cynical. In the years following his conversion to Marxism, Brecht wrote didactic plays whose style is austere and functional. These plays were intended to be performed in schools and factories by nonprofessional actors. In his later plays, Brecht combined the vitality of his early period with his Marxist beliefs to create plays that were dramatically effective, socially committed, and peopled with realistic characters.
When Brecht began to formulate his ideas in the late nineteen-twenties, he had already experimented in a variety of techniques: he had written plays which showed the influence of the Expressionist trend in their loose construction, their treatment of the characters as types rather than individuals and their highly concentrated, poetic language; and he had worked in close collaboration with Erwin Piscator (1893-1966, a German theatre director and producer), the exponent of the ‘political theatre’ whose stage made use of every new technique in order to turn the theatre into a forum for the discussion of current affairs.
Brecht’s theories show the impact of all of these experiments. He was convinced that the theatre must become a tool of social engineering, a laboratory of real social change:
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.

Brecht wanted his theatre to intervene in the process of shaping society, a unique and monumental aspiration. He clearly did not believe that the existing theatre was capable of achieving this intention. He objected to the ‘theatre of illusion,’ as it was put forward in an essay entitled ‘On Epic and Dramatic Poetry,’ authored by Goethe and Schiller in 1797. The salient section of the essay that Brecht objected to reads as follows:

Thus the epic poet, the rhapsodic singer, relates what has happened in calm contemplation . . .he will freely range forward and backward in time . . . .The actor, on the other hand, is in exactly the opposite position: he represents himself as a definite individual; he wants the spectators to participate . . .in his action, to feel the sufferings of his soul and of his body with him, share his embarrassments and forget their own personalities for the sake of his . . .. The spectator must not be allowed to rise to thoughtful contemplation; he must not be allowed to rise to thoughtful contemplation; he must passionately follow the action; his imagination is completely silenced . . ..”

The thoughts put forward in this essay became the central issues of Brecht’s theatrical perception. He believed that:

• Theatre is a dialectic, not the result of a dialectic – a dialect is a debate between two parties who hold differing views, yet hope to come to the truth of the matter through the reasonable exchange of their perspectives.

• Theatre is a method of thinking, not a medium for presenting the results of thought.

• Theatre is a means used by societies to structure their experience.

• Theatre is exploratory and concerned with the activity of learning.

In order to achieve these goals, Brecht presented his theory of verfremdungseffekt. This is a theory that was derived from Russian Formalism as developed by Viktor Shklovsky and other Russian and Soviet writers, and dealt with establishing the preciseness and independence of poetry and literature. In Brecht’s hypothesis, frequently translated as alienation effect, he is actually encouraging his audience to take a metaphorical step back from the performance they are watching and re-evaluate the form and content. He called his new form of theatre, Epic Theatre, and there were very specific ways and means that verfremdungseffekt could be achieved.
The Marxist critic, Walter Benjamin, a close friend of Brecht and one of his earliest champions, wrote about Brecht’s Epic Theatre, and explained further that art is a form of social production. He delineated very specific tenets about Epic Theatre that went quite some way towards clarifying the objective that Brecht was attempting to realize:

• Relaxed Audience – A relaxed audience was more likely to be interested in and receptive to playwright's message if they knew what was going to happen and were not looking ahead to the climax and conclusion.

• Use of Fable – Use of stories that are well known and familiar.

• Untragic Hero – Does not tend to come to blinding revelation about self; there is no tragic flaw or fall.

• Interruptions – Requires a constant re-focusing of the audience's attention.

• Quotable Gesture – The actor has set of gestures, which convey social relations of character, and historical conditions, which make him, behave as he does.

• Didactic Play – The play should be an austere apparatus; in theory, the actors and audience should be interchangeable, although in practice, this is not likely to happen. Also, as written, Brecht tried to refuse to cultivate empathy - to which his audiences were accustomed.

• The actor – The action happens in fits and starts, very comparable to cinematic images. Style is controlled by the dialectics of the scripts, e.g. songs and captions were used to differentiate scenes; -He would include interludes, which tended to destroy illusions; -The actor had to show event and also show her/himself as an actor; - There was to be no organic unity; - There was the use of readable signs (see Quotable Gesture).
• Theatre on Public Platform – Brecht wanted theatre to be viewed as if it was on a public platform; he believe in filling in the orchestra pit", in order to reduce the separation between the spectator and the play.

Brecht was not a fan of organic unity in a production; he wanted the seams to show. In other words, he never wanted his audience to forget they were in a theatre, watching a performance. He did not want them to sink into the stupor of complacency, but rather be active, participating members of the event. To this end, he wanted all of the trappings of the stage to be on display: lighting instruments, backstage areas, and so forth. He believed that the play was never truly finished; it would resolve in an evening with a particular audience, but that the content was always in a state of flux. Brecht also observed how dramatic space is defined by four interrelated systems of signs:

• Placement and movement of characters in relation to each other and the audience.

• Objects seen on the stage or referred to in dialogue, including imagery.

• Abstract, fantastic or off stage constituted through dialogue.

• Architectural space of the real stage and theatre building in relation to its environment.

Brecht was also a dedicated following of Marxism, beginning with his play, The Mother, written in 1932. Marxism is a scientific theory of human societies and the practice of transforming to them. It is the process of people trying to free themselves from certain forms of exploitation and oppression. The reason why Brecht was so taken with Marxism, and why it is a viable form of literary criticism for us is because it is an analysis of literature in regard to the historical conditions, which have produced it. We are also able to examine the awareness that is present within literature itself of its own historical conditions.
Marxist criticism needs to be viewed as an active function when examining the significance of cultural and societal contexts. Its aim is to explain the work more fully, as is the intent of all literary criticism, but with Marxism, it pays particular attention to the works’ forms, styles and meanings, and views them as products of their own history. It works to facilitate the understanding of social relations between people and the way they produce their material life.
The forces and relations of production form the economic structure of society. The French Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser (1918-1990) wrote specifically about the ideology of society and what he referred to State Apparatuses. He identified the ‘economic base,’ which he called the ‘repressive state apparatus.’ The economic base contains the different factions of government and has the responsibility of controlling where the finances of a country go and how they are to be used.
Althusser also distinguished the ‘superstructure’ or the ‘ideological state apparatus.’ The superstructure legitimates the power of the social class that controls the economic base, and is made up of forms of social consciousness (religious, ethical, educational) that are designated as ideology.

A Definition of Ideology

Ideology is the way people live out their roles in class society. It includes the values, ideas and images, which tie them to their social functions and so prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole.

In order to understand a particular ideology, it is essential to understand the precise relations of different classes in a society, and where those classes stand in relation to the mode of production.

The superstructure of a society is an abstract; for that reason, it cannot form symmetry with the economic base; however each element of the superstructure develops at its own rate, arising directly from the economic base. According to Althusser, “It is not the consciousness of a people that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.”

Social relations between people are bound up with the way they produce their material life. In a true communist society, everyone contributes equally through labor. Despite this, is there a ruling class that has the greatest share of the wealth? And a much larger lower class whose labor supports the economic base collectively, but individually don’t have any strength? This is an issue that Brecht addresses in his plays. Look for it in The Good Person of Szechwan.

Brecht’s relationship with women was and is one that remains controversial. There are numerous rumors even now, more than fifty years following his death that the various women in his life had far more input into his writings than they were given credit for. Whoever wrote the bulk of his plays, there is no doubt that some of his female characters are among the strongest and most clearly articulated of his time period.
Frequently, his characters are single mothers whose motherhood has been variously established. Grusha from The Caucasian Chalk Circle has motherhood fall into her lap, when she rescues baby Michael from the revolutionary soldiers, but by the end of the play, he is decidedly her child, in this simulation of the King Solomon parable. Mother Courage’s children all have different fathers, and the woman who is described within the play as ‘the hyena of the battlefield,’ could hardly be less motherly. For instance, when she is given the choice of selling her wagon or saving her son’s life, she wavers so long, that her son is killed. Hardly the mothering type.
Vlasova from The Mother shows a re-interpretation of the traditional role. Her journey through the play takes her from being an illiterate tea lady in a factory to becoming a well-educated leader in the Communist movement; a mother to the party.
What is interesting about these characters is that all are drawn from patriarchal thought, where nurturing is still restricted to a woman’s sphere. The characters are defined by their mothering roles, or many of their actions result from the fact that they are mothers. All of them have lost their lovers or partners, either before the play begins, or in the case of Grusha, because of her actions in the play. The plays exclude desire and sexuality in favor of political content and function. Women tend to serve the central purpose of Epic Theatre because they are in a position, more so than their male counterparts, to reveal the societies they encounter. Because they are women, they tend to move outside of the circles of power, even within their own class, and therefore, are able to comment upon them.

Play for Study: Berthold Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan
Brecht sets up the problem of the play at the very beginning, which is the relationship between morality and the economic system, i.e. the impossibility of goodness under capitalism. How can Shen Te be good in a society that has forced her to become a prostitute in order to survive?
After the gods give her money to buy a tobacco shop, why does she create the persona of Shui Ta? The power that Shen Te derives from her disguise is obviously due in part to her construction as a man, however…on stage she is never simply a man. She is a female actor playing a woman playing a man (who occasionally forgets that she is a man). Brecht is addressing the fact that gender-related differences are associated more to the social expectations accompanying gender than to any natural differentiation by sex in psychological characteristics.
The representation of gender becomes even more complicated when Shen Te is pregnant; especially since pregnancy is one of the features traditionally associated with matriarchal power. With the exception of Mrs Shin, the other characters assume Shui Ta is becoming fat as a result of his new wealth. As a result, we have an actor/character who is simultaneously reproducing and critiquing a construction that embodies both patriarchal and matriarchal power. The actor moves between and rejects two interwoven constructions of character, and by doing that, rejects fixing her character as one or the other.
Additionally, the play contains a subverted romantic plot, between Shen Te and Sun. Shen Te is shown as a woman who is trying to retrain her lover so that he might learn to be worthy of her desire. As a potential single mother, she maintains the major controlling factor in her own life, as well as that of her unborn child. Brecht conflates the private image of the expectant mother with the public figure of the woman/man as business magnate. This clarifies the differences between her role as a commodified woman and her cross-dressed self-authorship. We also learn that motherhood does not have to be the antithesis of sexuality, nor does it have to relegate the female character to selflessness.
By the end of the play, we are made to realize that the First God’s project fails because Shen Te/Shui Ta must be viewed as an unstable, ever-changing subject. As Shui-Ta moves between an oppressive capitalism and a pragmatic, necessary self-love leading to the creation of self, each incarnation constantly looks at the other, and both confront the audience as it views them.