Epic Theatre vs. Dramatic Theatre

Pre WWII

GERMANY
Bertolt Brecht: playwright, director, actor and practitioner (putting theories into practice)

Playwrights shifting dramatic writing into realistic writing:

• Frank Wendekind --> wrote Spring Awakening
• Ibsen
• Strindberg
• Pirandello (later)

Moscow Art Theatre

• Stanislavski --> Father of the method (new way of acting); living truthfully under imaginary circumstances
• Stanford Meisner --> Esper --> Uta Hagen (LIVING THEATRE U.S.A.)
• Constantin 

All looking for TRUTH, REALISM, BELIEVABILITY 

BACK TO BRECHT!

NEVER MIND!

Cabaret (short, political pieces) - Yiddish Theatre (Jewish humor)

Black humor: cutting, powerful, satyrical 

BACK TO BRECHT NOW!

DRAMATIC THEATRE: Brecht's vision of what it is

plot

spectator watch in stage situation

no capacity for action

"experience"

human being taken for granted (this is the way it is)

unalterable  

one scene makes another

growth linear

thought determines being

Feeling (appealing to our emotions)

EPIC THEATRE: What Brecht emphasizes

narrative

spectator is an observer (does not aim to pull you in/ you always remember that you are in a theatre)

arouses capacity for action (wants audience to stand up and react) 

"picture of the world"- looking at life, but really looking at the picture

human being is an object of inquiry 

alterable (life can change)

each scene for itself (in terms of the writing of it)

montage - jumps (time)

social being determines thought --> socially awareness of reality will change thinking

Reason (the mind, not the feelings)