Brecht

Epic Theatre techniques in political theatre:

Brecht was a German playwright, practitioner/director and poet who made great advancements in the world of theatrical production and dramaturgy in the early 20th century.
Epic theatre is a theatrical movement, popularized in the early 20^th century. It came about as a reaction to realism, which was the accepted style of most artists at the time. Brecht and a few of his contemporaries found realism to be overplayed and did not promote individual criticism. Brecht founded a style that would counteract this in the form of epic theatre.
We are going to use Brechian techniques in creating political theatre. In this day and age most theatre is political and all good theatre has an uncensored political message. Brecht wanted not only to challenge his audience but create this political message in a very clear cut way. He looked at what theatre should be.


He saw it as weapon and a strong platform for both social and political change.
His epic theatre has a didactic style for the audience to think about and be challenged by. The Marxist notions are constant in his plays and anti-capitalist/bourgeois messages flow from is ideology. His technique is to brake the fourth wall in order to make clear political statements. He often disregarded naturalism in his epic theatre because he was constantly reminding the audience that they are watching a play rather than being immersed in the story. He wanted his audience to be thinking about the message after the performance is over. For this he decided to produce expressionist works of art that had power and meaning and move on from the naturalist style of theatre.

The V-effect 

Verfremdungseffekt, or the V-effect is used to describe the technique actors employ for creating a character in Brecht's Epic theatre. The gist of it is that theatrical illusion must be partial so that theatre is used used not as a mirror to reflect reality but a hammer with which to shape it. The technique lies in alienating the audience to make them look at theatre in a critical perspective rather than an emotional one which may arise from being drawn into a naturalistic performance. This is a way of distancing the audience from the emotional and letting them question and judge the message. He uses tools such a braking the fourth wall and placards to constantly remind the audience they're watching a play with a political message. This lets an audience experience an alien sense that distances them from the story and just lets them get the effect of the message. It's a similar sense to that of a child seeing their teacher being prosecuted and seeing them for the first time in a context being affiliated with crime or realising their mother is also a married woman seeing her as a wife for the first time. 

Brecht’s notion with epic theatre was that the spectators should see a particular scene or circumstances from more than one viewpoint and form their own judgements about what was going on. The audience will not get so drawn in that they forget they are watching a dramatic production once they experience the V-effect with all it's techniques. Another technique to make political messages clear is Brecht's Slap and Tickle. The use of dark humour goes a step further with teasing the audience and making them laugh at something serious and then "slapping them in the face" with the hard hitting reality of the message making them realise just what it was they were laughing at. 

Other techniques involve song, gestus, nonatualistic voice and movement, breaking the fourth wall, playing multiple roles, using placards etc.. 

“Epic Theatre turns the spectator into an observer, but arouses his capacity for action, forces him to take decisions...the spectator stands outside, studies.”

DRAMATIC THEATRE                                            EPIC THEATRE 

Plot	Narrative
Implicates the spectator in a stage situation	Turns the spectator into an observer but
Wears down	Arouses his capacity for action
Provides him with sensations	Forces him to take decisions
Experience	Picture of the world
The spectator is involved in something	He is made to face something
Suggestion	Argument
Instinctive feelings are preserved	Brought to the point of recognition
The spectator is in the thick of it, shares the experience	The spectator stands outside, studies
The human being is taken for granted	The human being is the object of inquiry
He is unalterable	He is alterable and able to alter
Eyes on the finish	Eyes on the course
One scene makes another	Each scene for itself
Linear development	In curves
Evolutionary determinism	Jumps
Man as a fixed point	Man as a process
Thought determines being	Social being determines thought
Feeling	Reason

Developing Brecht’s techniques

One of the key tools is communication, especially in political theatre. 

This is why we overdramatize to make a point and communicating clearly to the audience can be hard sometimes in naturalism. Naturally people are one animal but pretend to be another. 

You can only truly play a character if you know exactly what they are inside and out. But in epic theatre all of the cards are on the table; more specifically all of the placards. 

Brecht focuses much more on the political motive than on mystifying the characters for interesting naturalistic stories. 

The exercises we did to develop our ability to create political theatre helped me get my head around all this. The first exercise we did was with playing cards. We were given two sets of info; our status level in terms of cards (if you’re a King of hearts you’re much higher than someone who’s 2 of spades etc…) and a placard. 

We had to first walk around then socialize with the playing card in mind and then greet another citizen we didn’t know the identity of whist holding placards to the audience. This created irony and revealed much more than a simple gest of interaction. 

It gave the audience an opinion. We had placards like “Foolish heroic fireman” and “poor orphan” meant to challenge and reveal to the audience.

We did an exercise with nursery rhymes, using them as an example of a story used in political theatre to get across the message. The mission was to communicate it to our partners whilst they tried to do the same along with everyone else in the room which made the initial task quite difficult at first. Then we realized that rather than vague natural movements we needed to OVERdramatise and use gestus in our telling of the nursery rhyme

. As our actions grew bigger it made the communication much clearer. The use of gestus is very important in epic theatre because it means increasing the actions and adding an emotional intention to them. Like a group of soldiers marching would be a gesture but if you add a bunch of dead ones on the stage for them to march over then we have a clear message and context of the gest that for example the soldiers are being controlled by politicians as robots and the insensitivity for human life combined with brainwashing is what caused this war.

Overall we established that epic theatre is of reason and non-engagement of emotion and is quite different to dramatic theatre which is designed to entertain. Epic theatre doesn’t want you to just be entertained and escape but to go away thinking about the message and the reason. Brecht believed that true change would come about if the audience had their brain stimulated from theatre and could leave inspired by argument and by reason to cause a change in society. Dramatic theatre relies on your soul being affected when you connect to characters not just engage your thinking process for you to change the world.