Breaking the fourth wall. Harsh lighting. Captions. While these elements might not sound out of the ordinary to a modern theatregoer, the German dramatist and director Bertolt Brecht was groundbreaking in using such conventions in what he termed “epic theatre.” A Marxist and antibourgeois, Brecht used theatre to create a political forum with the audience.

Epic Theatre

Brecht dismissed the widely accepted notion that the purpose of theatre was to allow the audience to have an emotional response, equating catharsis (the release of emotions caused by pity and fear) to complacency. Rather, he believed theatre should create a platform for rational self-reflection that would ignite in audience members the desire for social and political change. In his effort to prevent an emotional response from his audience, Brecht sought to remind audience members that they were in a play by highlighting the theatricality of the experience – an aesthetic quite different from the realism popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Verfremdungseffekt

Brecht sought to achieve this rational self-reflection through verfremdungseffekt, which translates into the defamiliarization effect or distancing effect. Brecht borrowed inspiration from traditional Chinese performance, in which he observed the most dramatic of stories was portrayed without performers getting emotionally “heated.” To create emotional distance for his audience members, Brecht had actors directly address the audience, used bright unnatural lighting, used explanatory placards, changed characters on stage, changed costumes on stage, and incorporated songs in non-musical plays. And while traditional Aristotelian plays upheld unity of time, place, and action, Brecht frequently broke this mold through the use of montage. These theatrical conventions, considered bold in Brecht’s time, are now familiar on the modern stage and screen. However, what remains unique is Brecht’s use of these elements to remind the audience that what they were witnessing was not real life, but instead a theatrical experience, which Brecht believed paved the way for an analytical response and social justice.

Mother Courage and Her Children

Considered by many to be Brecht’s masterpiece of epic theatre, Mother Courage and Her Children is presented in twelve scenes over the course of twelve years. The play follows Mother Courage through the Thirty Years’ War and illustrates the gruesomeness of war. True to epic theatre form the episodic structure of the play never allows for a moment of catharsis, although reports say Brecht was disappointed at the emotional connection the audience exhibited as the play premiered during the rise of World War II.