Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956 Life Born to a middle-class family against which he was an intellectually rebellious. Catholic mother, Protestant father. Brecht disavowed any religious affiliation. Working in 1918 at Augsburg military hospital gave him a lifelong commitment to pacifism (37, Trevor R. Griffiths. The Theatre Guide). 1921 his registration at Munich university (where he had enrolled as a medical student) was cancelled. An attempt at success in literary circles in Berlin ended with him in hospital suffering from malnutrition. From 1922, wrote and directed plays. 1926 studied Marx as the only adequate method of analyzing the workings of capitalism. 1927 worked with Erwin Piscator. By 1923, his works were on the Nazi “burn” list, and his own safety was questionable. 1933 Nazis came to power. He fled with family to Prague. In 1935, he was stripped of his German citizenship. Final destination was the US. Brecht had little success with American audiences and was at one point even brought before the House Committee on Un- American Activities in 1947. He proved himself a master of ambiguity about his communist sympathies. His encounter with HUAC left him deeply disturbed with America, and Brecht moved back to East Berlin in 1948, living there until his death. Life Brecht had three opportunities with which to establish his notoriety under the adverse condition of being on the side of the wrong political party: In Germany prior to the Nazi takeover, he supported the Socialist Democrats; in the United States, he actively supported communism during the height of the McCarthy era; upon his return to East Germany, he criticized the communists, once again embracing the ideals of a classless society as promoted by Socialist Democracy. His life falls into 3 distinct phases demarcated by his forced exile from Germany during the Hitler years:1898-1933 in Germany. 1933-47 in exile in various parts of the world (Scandinavia and the United States ). 1947 returned to Europe, first to Switzerland then to Berlin. 1956 died of a heart attack on 14 August, in the then communist country of East-Germany. Political Views It is only possible to understand Brecht's view of the world by seeing him in the context of his time [..]. Karl Marx had declared that it was not enough to interpret the world, the point was to change it, and this imperative is central to Brecht's restless engagement in politics (27, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). Brecht came to politics comparatively late. Like many of his generation his response to the First World War was a kind of anarchist despair, lacking in political analysis or prescriptions for a better future [..] An important turning point came in 1926 when he started to read Karl Marx [..]. For radicals of Brecht's generation, the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was the defining moment in the struggle of the poor of the world to improve their lot [..]. Critics have accused the European Communists of turning a blind eye to the brutality of Stalin's dictatorship and failing to criticise the Soviet Union for its manifest failings. However, Russia in the 1920s and 1930s was run on extraordinarily restrictive terms and its worst violence and oppression took place in secret (27-8, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). Brecht's own relationship with Communism was complicated. Although he argued that only Communism could improve the lot of the poor, his temperament and instincts resisted the single-minded commitment that the revolutionary movement required and it is telling that he never formally joined the party [..]. The fact is that by the late 1930s Brecht was deeply disillusioned by the Soviet Union and dismayed by its betrayal of socialist ideals; if he kept his reservations largely to himself, it was because he saw the Soviet Union as the best hope against Fascism (28, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). The accusations against him of anti-Semitism are open to question (29, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). Works 16 years old, wrote his first play; exposes the conflicting lessons of the Bible—early evidence of his life-long effort to erode the infrastructure of complacency in his society. Always fascinated by dualities and cultural opposites, Brecht sought to expose the ridiculousness of either extreme, while never offering any kind of transcendent alternative, thus earning many critics’ condemnation as a nihilist (one who believes that traditional values have no foundation in reality and that existence is pointless). By the time he was a young adult he had firmly embraced the communist doctrines of Karl Marx. His work reflects his commitment to his anti- capitalist political beliefs. Influence As well as writing some of the most remarkable plays of modern times, Brecht revolutionised the art of the theatre itself. Like all the best playwrights - Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen - he was a practical man of the theatre. He understood how the theatre worked and was committed to making it into a relevant, provocative and dynamic art form (22, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). One of the most incisive voices of modern drama. Brecht is considered a pioneer of socially conscious theater— especially in the subgenre of anti-reality theater, which sought to debunk the illusory techniques of realistic drama. Brecht’s theory of the epic theater. Brecht’s very peculiar form of drama elicited ever-widening circles of interest via its influence on other writers. His innovative ideas have a profound effect on many genres of modern narrative, like novels, short stories, and cinema. Epic Theatre Alienation Effect (A- Effect) Verfremdungs effekt Sometimes called open theater. Influential movement. Developed in Germany 1920s. Founder and director: Erwin Piscator. Its greatest dramatist: Bertolt Brecht. An avant-garde form that aimed at unhinging a dramatic establishment Brecht understood as complicit with the oppression of its audiences. Theatrical innovations designed to awaken audiences to social responsibility. Uses “alienating” devices to frustrate the viewer’s expectations for simple entertainment. This “theater of illusions” (as anti-realists such as Brecht termed it) allowed the audience to comfortably and passively view a production. The disruptive capacity of Brecht’s drama was designed to awaken the theater goers critical mind and galvanize them into political awareness and action. In particular the epic theater challenged spectatorship as grounded in identification: identification between the viewer and character in the conventional theater removes both from their political and historical contexts in the name of the "universal human condition." The epic theater strove to transform the spectator into its critical observer, and rouse him to thought and action. Turns the spectator into a judge. It is designed as a dialectical experience. Brecht: “the essential point in epic theatre is that it appeals less to the spectator’s feelings than to his reason.” Epic Theatre Technique/ Presentation Form denotes a form of narrative and didactic play, which presents a series of episodes, in a simple and direct way. Performance free from restrictions or realistic conventions, especially those of the tightly knit well-made-play, so it opens out its contents for inspection. Each scene would be preceded with a written title which would remain in position until replaced by another. It would offer a historical account of the action of the scene – as in Mother Courage and Her Children. Piscator had something of the Aristotlian conception of a tale but told without having to observe the unities of time and place. Use of a chorus. Actor should rediscover his ancient mission, that of entertaining and teaching simultaneously. (The term epic theatre derives from Aristotle’s usage). Use of a narrator who assumes the role of characters, though it is clear that he is not a character. Epic Theatre Technique/ Presentation Any mechanical device that might help: slide projection, Film, Placards and music, discordant lighting, to assist in creating the desired objectivity. Further alienating devices, such as asides to the audience, discordant music, and disconnected episodes. Music expresses theme independently to provide separate comment on action, often in conflict with activity of characters. Music and song in counter point with action on stage. Narrative form, illustrative scenes. No fourth wall, except for props stage would be bare, merely open space in which to tell a story, set changes in full view of audience. Speaking directly to the house would be encouraged. Visible apparatus so the spectator is conscious that he is in a theatre. Stage and audience would be joined, not separated. Stage would be lit with plain white light so actor would seem in same world as audience. Epic Theatre Technique/Presentation Brecht: both audience and actors should preserve a state of critical detachment from the play and its performance. He required the audience to be reminded from time to time they are only watching a play, a representation of life, and therefore, they should control their identification of the characters and their action. The audience should be the center of the actor’s attention. Actors should keep a kind of distance from the parts they are interpreting. They should have an attitude towards the character rather than try to efface themselves within it. The actor should never be truly natural on stage. But must be “matter-of –fact,” so the audience would not easily empathize with him. Actor does not improvise his emotions, but gives a commentary on them. Brecht’s actor would have a view point of his own, a social attitude which would affect his posture, voice and facial expression. Feelings may be part of the experience for the audience, but the actor is not asked to convey them himself. Epic Theatre Technique/Presentation Coleridge: suspension of disbelief. Epic theatre: suspension of belief. Epic theatre does not disguise the fact it is only piece of theatre. “Historicization”: distancing, encouraging awareness that event had happened as if in the past, making present look strange. [The A-effect results in] ‘Defamiliarization’ and ‘laying bare’ are notions which directly influenced Brecht’s famous ‘alienation effect’ [of Russian Formalism] (34, Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory). Critics of Brecht (in 1958): every play that was successful with audiences was so for the wrong reasons: only the passages that didn’t conform to his theories, remnants of conventional theatre, really moved his audience. Passages he had worked hardest on, and which demonstrated his theories of epic stage, pleased no one except his fellow-artists. Characterization Brecht can create eminently memorable characters using only sparingly the techniques of psychological portraiture. No “depth of character” in Brecht’s works in the usual sense of the word. Perhaps a phrase more appropriate to Brecht’s figures would be “breadth of character”; his characters are so closely observed and so precisely rooted in the concrete world of eating and working, making love, money, and poetry, that they convey to us a strong sense of everyday reality even when the specific locale or environments of the plays are bizarre or fantastic. From this realistic—not, how- ever, verisimilitudinous—base, Brecht’s characterizations legitimately spread to more “universal” considerations of human concerns. In his play the individual is not of exclusive importance but is rather a springboard for the audience to launch into a critical consideration of specific conditions in the world. Epic Theatre Themes Bring a pointedly social and moral purpose to the theatre. The stage as a political agency in the widest sense. Though not overtly propagandist. Brecht: Themes Brecht's plays describe the world from the point of view of those at the bottom. The results are often startling, above all for the lack of heroism or idealism: Baal, Galy Gay, Mother Courage, Schweyk, Shen Teh and Grusha are all intent on their own survival, oblivious to higher abstractions. Brecht's purpose was to show that his characters are scarred by the distortions imposed on them. He hoped that by doing so, his audience would draw its own conclusions about the new kind of morality which needed to be constructed (32-3, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). It must be emphasised that Brecht's view of the working class was very different from the banal hero-worship which was such a feature of Socialist Realism [as in the Soviet Union]. His work is free of such propagandist simplifications [..]. It was the divisions in the working class that interested Brecht, not their solidarity, even as he argued that only unity could help them improve their lot (43-4, Stephen Unwin. A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht). Epic Theatre in Britain More influence on designers and directors than playwrights. Ignorance of German language left audiences in confusion about Brecht’s intention. (Berliner Ensemble paid 2 visits to London 1956, 1965). What the eye could see was less mistakable. In 1960s a few new plays flirted with the fashion and adopted epic superficially. A Man for all Seasons (1960) by Robert Bolt. Luther (1961) by John Osborne. The Devils John Whiting (1917-63). Chips With Everything Arnold Wesker. Edward Bond. Only John Arden consistently demonstrated real understanding of Brecht’s intentions and persisted in testing epic techniques on the English stage.