The Works of Bertolt Brecht

One important theorist of Brechtian drama is Brecht himself. His explanation of what he termed epic theatre can be taken as a starting point for understanding the context in which the pattern of ideas in his work and the means by which these ideas may be realized on the stage.

The actor used a somewhat complex technique to detach himself from the character portrayed; he forced the spectator to look at the play's situations from such an angle that they necessarily became subject to his criticism. Supporters of this epic theatre argued that the new subjectmatter, the highly involved incidents of the class war in its acutest and most terrible stage, would be mastered more easily by such a method, since it would thereby become possible to portray social processes as seen in their causal relationships (Brecht, Scene 85).

Preeminent concern with issues and ideas in virtually all of Brecht's plays is in kee

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gical positions of the characters in them or in the politicized design of the plays. This is so despite Brecht's specific attachment to political issues. In this regard, Abel's description of drama as metatheatre is predicated of dramatic forms that "are related to and take their life from values which are important outside of drama" (Abel viii). Brecht's work falls well within this description. As Abel continues, Let us look first at the proposition "the world is a stage." If one does not believe that individuals are real or their sufferings of any great moment, then do not all human actions, reactions, and expressions of feeling immediately seem theatrical? Now what was Brecht's most characteristic theatrical device? It was his deliberate insistence that feelings be played by his actors as if they were acted and not directly felt . . . . Whether, then, Brecht believed the world to be a stage or not, his plays, his concepts of acting and stage design, were all calculated to produce that effect. The reality in his plays is that of theatre and not that of life, except as the latter happens to become theatrical (Abel 105). The postmodern critic rereads Brecht not so much to take at face value what he does or says or
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Approximate Word count = 4364
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)