Since the late nineteenth century playwrights, directors, and theorists of all kinds have very frequently considered theater as a primary means of working toward the betterment of the human race. Whether they proposed to convey important ideas or actually effect change in the audience these writers tended to hold that the theater was the proper vehicle for such efforts because it spoke, as it were, directly to the individual sitting in the audience. Feelings could be roused, arguments could be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms, and the makers of drama could work on the individual in a setting where every effect--verbal, visual, and aural--was under the theater's control. Despite sharing the notion that the theater was the optimum setting for such communication and general notions of improving humanity, the various theories of theatrical presentation were quite different. A brief discussion of the methods of achieving social improvement favored by George Bernard Shaw, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud will demonstrate the variety of these conceptions and comment on the effectiveness.
Despite the similarity of their ultimate goals there was little agreement on methods in these men's approaches. Bernard Shaw, for example, favored the presentation of philosophical ideas in a theater that, although he claimed his plays were utilitarian in nature, did not limit itself to realistic presentation (in terms of language or setting). His own most successful plays conformed to the conventions of the 'well-made' play, but Shaw favored a kind of superrealism that conveyed ideas while relying on traditional dramatics to involve the audience. Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, on the other hand, developed the notion of the 'epic theater' in which narrative replaced the 'embodiment' of events and the viewer was to be moved to action by the view of the world he was given. There were important differences in their a...