"I always go back to Brecht."

--Tony Kushner

Bertolt Brecht:
Proposals for an epic theatre

Extracts from:
Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willett (London: Methuen, 1964)

1. Certain changes of emphasis as between the dramatic and the epic theatre (37)

DRAMATIC THEATRE vs EPIC THEATRE

plot vs narrative

implicates the spectator vs spectator as observer

wears down his/her capacity for action vs arouses his capacity for action

provides him with sensations vs forces him to take decisions

picture of the world vs experience

spectator is involved in something vs spectator made to face something
suggestion vs argument

instinctive feelings are preserved vs brought to the poin of recognition

the spectator is in the thick of it,shares the experience vs stands outside,studies

the human being is taken for granted vs the human being is the object of the enquiry

he/she is unalterable vs he/she is alterable and able to alter

eyes on the finish vs eyes on the course

one scene makes another vs each scene for itself

growth vs montage

linear development vs in curves

evolutionary determinism vs jumps

people as a fixed point vs people as a process

thought determines being vs social being determines thought

feeling vs reason

2. Points from A Short Organum for the Theatre (first published in 1949)

Entertaining the children of the scientific age: A theatre which makes productivity its main source of entertainment has also to take it for its theme, and with greater keenness than ever now that man is everywhere hampered by men from self-production: i.e. from maintaining himself, entertaining and being entertained. The theatre has to become geared into reality if it is to be in a position to turn out effective representations of reality, and to be allowed to do so. But this makes it simpler for theatre to edge as close as possible to the apparatus of education and mass communication. For although we cannot bother it with the raw material of knowledge in all its variety, which would stop it from being enjoyable, it is still free to find enjoyment in teaching and enquiring. It constructs its workable representations of society, which are then in a position to influence society, wholly and entirely as a game (186).
Changing society: We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself (190).
The alienation effect (A-effect): A representation that alienates is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar. [...] For it seems impossible to alter what has long not been altered. We are always coming on things that are too obvious for us to bother to understand them. What men experience among themselves they think of as the human experience (192).
Playing the character: In order to produce A-effects the actor has to discard whatever means he has learnt of getting the audience to identify itself with the characters which he plays. Aiming not to put his audience into a trance, he must not go into a trance himself. [...] At no moment must he go so far as to be wholly transformed into the character played. The verdict: he didnt act Lear, he was Lear would be an annihilating blow to him. He has just to show the character, or rather he has to do more than just get into it (193).
The structure of the story: As we cannot invite the audience to fling itself into the story as if it were a river and let itself be carried vaguely hither and thither, the individual episodes have to be knotted together in such a way that the knots are easily noticed. The episodes must not succeed one another indistinguishably but must give us a chance to interpose our judgement. (If it were above all the obscurity of the original interrelations that interested us, then just this circumstance would have to be sufficiently alienated.) (201).
Multiple media: Not everything depends on the actor, even though nothing may be done without taking him into account. The story is set out, brought forward and shown by the theatre as a whole, by actors, stage designers, mask-makers, costumiers, composers and choreographers. They unite their various arts for the joint operation, without of course sacrificing their independence in the process. [...] Just as the composer wins back his freedom by no longer having to create atmosphere so that the audience may be helped to lose itself unreservedly in the events on stage, so also the stage designer gets considerable freedom as he no longer has to give the illusion of a room or locality when he is building his sets. It is enough for him to give hints, though these must make statements of greater historical or social interest than does the real setting (202-3).
Stylization: It is a relatively recent error to suppose that [choreography] has nothing to do with the representation of people as they really are. If art reflects life it does so with special mirrors. Art does not become unrealistic by changing the proportions but by changing them in such a way that if the audience took its representations as a practical guide to insights and impulses it would go astray in real life. It is of course essential that stylization should not remove the natural element but heighten it (203-4).


There are also useful accounts of Brechts dramatic theories and practice in:
Peter Thomson & Glendyr Sacks (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: CUP, 1994).
George J. Watson. Drama: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1983), Chapter 8.
Raymond Williams. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), Chapter 4.7.