Brecht and The Epic Theatre: The Political Undercurrents

The German playwright, poet, and theatre director Bertolt Brecht(1898-1956) is perhaps best known as a pioneer and main exponent of “epic theatre” which, in opposition to naturalist or realist drama or the drama of bourgeois tendency that used to serve an ambiguous cause by not explicitly bringing the main concerns of the social builds, Brecht often employ choruses and narration to highlight the artifice of the theatre and to clearly and methodically describe for the audience both the characters’ innermost thoughts through the use of “alienation effect” by making it strange, and the major themes and lessons of the work itself, which in many sense created the overall effect of alienation and contemplation through anti-sentimentality. 

Brecht began writing drama in 1918 just at a young age of 20. As he was the part of historical turmoil, he became heavily influenced by the violence and injustice of the First World War and the chaos created by the devastation and catharsis of Second World War that finds place in his plays. His early work has strong anarchist overtones, and rejected both societal norms and artistic ones as most of the prevailing Art form to him was not suffice to fulfill the real cause, upon which he was forced to flee from Germany and therefore was forced to remain in exile. Brecht was an ardent advocate of the school which promoted the Artistic creation for the sake of life therefore he tries to use the inputs of daily life in his plays and gives it a new color. In 1933, as the Nazis rose to control of Germany as a dictating power, Brecht being in stark opposition of the ideology and operations of Hitler found it difficult to survive, therefore without a choice, fled Germany and looked for refuge in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland while he started to continue writing after settling in United States. As an exponent of theatre, in a state of banishment which then was not a normal thing for him, he made some out of his most celebrated work: “Life of Galileo”, “Mother Courage and Her Children and “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” were altogether composed abroad. Brecht's persona was not only scary to the government of a defined land, but he exceeded territory by constantly raising question against oppression and atrocities that were implicitly recorded, therefore he was again taken into suspicion, and named as a suspicious individual during the 'Red Scare' in the early long stretches of the Cold War, because of his Marxist inclinations and his bluntness regarding political perspectives and ideology, he often has been lined with the first generation of Communist and anarchist outlaws, who were fighting to restore the rights of working class. He was writing for the cause of a certain group and class but with certain scope of universality, this subtlety in expression without being highly critique of the events, makes Brecht an important figure. Proletariats were the main class that Brecht targeted as audience, as his plays are proved to be the eye opener for many. He has used many elements to figure out and question the implicit and hidden phenomena that functions without the consent of the working class. Thus, by the use of epic theatre, Brecht tries to bring the wider concern in the dialogues of his characters, and incorporates his idea to make it happen.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle was written while Brecht was in exile during the Second World War. Having witnessed the violence, injustice, and destruction of two world wars in a span of under twenty years, Brecht set The Caucasian Chalk Circle against a background of war, corruption, and political tumult. The idea of Epic Theatre had its inception in the beginning of 20th century in Germany; it was a specific showy development that during the first quarter of the twentieth century flourished through the persona of Brecht. Many of the concepts and ideas Brecht incorporated into epic theater were already part of other cultures’ theater practices, but Brecht, combining them, managed to form, and popularize, a new kind of drama. Walter Benjamin in his essay ‘What Is Epic Theatre’ explains the mentioned in details. His ideas and theories regarding theatre, that was highly political as in its effect though the idea of ‘Epic’ rejects the naturalistic ‘system’ put forward many years before by Konstantin Stanislavski. He attempted to persuade an audience to want to make a difference in society by arousing emotions of the people whom he targeted. In his early twenties, Brecht began to have an aversion to the capitalist society; he was brought up in and sought after a more “equal” approach to the world and people around him. This was when he began his exploration into Marxism: a political philosophy, often referred to as a form of socialism, which emphasizes the importance of the class struggle in society and maintains the belief that everyone is equal. This is a viewpoint that Brecht remained loyal to throughout the rest of his life and career with a certain level of Marxist influence being noticeably present in each of his plays and productions. Marxists believe in a socialist society that does not distinguish between classes of people. Marxists tend to be working class people or the proletariat and these fellow Marxists, i.e. the proletariat, were the people Brecht intended his plays for. The Caucasian Chalk Circle too, in some sense tries to bring home this idea of class struggle home by changing the end of the play by empowering Grusha to have justice. In the Chinese play which serves as the source text for Brecht’s play, it is the child’s birth mother who is unable to harm him during the test of the chalk circle, and who is awarded custody in the end. Brecht’s play, which features themes of class warfare and the corruption of the wealthy, ends with Azdak granting custody to Grusha, the servant girl whose goodness and selflessness outshine the vanity and narcissism of the child’s birth mother. This selective approach of Brecht to empower Grusha, who in this play appears as a representative of ‘Working Class’ is also an extension of the beliefs that he holds with the idea of “Justice”. However, by giving this play an alternative ending, he manages to balance the character of Azdak through prevalence of justice and harmony at the end. He needed to utilize his ability inside the performance center to interface with the Common worker individuals, so as to change the entrepreneur abuse under which they lived. His plays dismissed the naturalistic stage style and depicted the world at the time such that would empower every observer to receive a ‘basic attention’ to the activity they saw in front of an audience. Brecht set out an arrangement of execution and generation methods so as to make an air inside the performance center that would keep the group of spectators from “hanging their minds up with their caps in the cloakroom”.

In Walter Benjamin’s text “What Is Epic Theater?” we can get a panoramic overview of the epic theater’s key characteristics. The author breaks down all the different parts of this new kind of drama and discusses every aspect of it that needs to be in a certain way. First of all, the audience needs to be “relaxed”, and there are a few ways to achieve that. The most important is to make the audience aware that they are in a theater watching a play. Brecht did not want to “seduce” the audience into believing they were watching 'real life”. He accomplished that by keeping the stage sets minimalistic, showing exposed lighting instruments and, in general, not “covering” the fact that it was a theater play.

Brecht expected his performance center to be both didactical (however not dull or exhausting) and rationalistic, and accepted that so as to make a crowd of people focus on what they are seeing and bringing notification from the stage they should be separated from the activity (for example the group of spectators consider the to be as a phase and the on-screen characters as entertainers.) Epic venue plans to make this generation of thought in the onlookers, making a separation among them and the activity using a strategy known as “verfremdungs effekt” or V-effekt. Generally deciphered as the 'making unusual' impact, the V-effect is a procedure which exclusively expects to make the group of spectators mindful they are in a venue consistently, empowering them to embrace a frame of mind of request and analysis in their way to deal with the activity. The group of spectators must at no time during an epic play be believed to be 'in a daze' or underestimate what they see in front of an audience for allowed. Richard Schechner (2006) claims that the most ideal approach to think about the V-effect is 'as an approach to drive a wedge between the on-screen character, the character, the organizing (counting blocking, plan, music and some other generation component) so each can ricochet off, and remark upon, the others'. In this an entertainer may pay a total negligence for the fourth divider (a naturalistic arranging and acting system) legitimately tending to the group of spectators in discourses, there may likewise be the utilization of a storyteller, (for example, the Street Singer in The Threepenny Opera), tunes and illustrative bulletins to intrude on the activity and in this manner separation the crowd from what they are viewing

Brecht contends for opposing and abandoning the bourgeois forms of art and theatre. As indicated by Brecht, they are unable to portray truth (because of its absence of proper science as most of the bourgeois arts are unscientific because of their disbelief in dialectical understanding of class and materialisms) and in this manner depict untruths. These unreasonable delineations exhibited in bourgeois have negative effects on the working class. For instance, Brecht refers to bourgeois theatre as producing 'hypnosis [and] corrupt intoxication”. He also states that the theatre culture that the bourgeois or what he additionally characterizes as ‘dramatic theater' has turned people 'into a cowed, credulous, hypnotized mass”. In spite of the fact that not articulated in these words, Brecht is saying that bourgeois venue makes and fortifies an uncritical Weltanschauung, a perspective which isn’t self-basic and unfits to give Meta-scrutinize of it. Since the Weltanschauung can't evaluate itself, empirical illusions have no chance to get of being uncovered accordingly. They are uncritically accepted as reality and therefore the plausibility of their change is dispensed. This hidden practice of high politics that keeps the audience away from the real issues makes Brecht exceptionally incredulous of Bourgeois class craftsmanship. He trusts his instinct that it disheartens and pales the material conditions fundamental for class conflict to be accommodated and in this manner hinders the advancement towards his social emancipation of human condition through the use of social ideal.