Motherhood and Revolutionary Ideas About Theatre in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a social and political commentary, focusing on justice and motherhood. Using revolutionary theatrical techniques and devices to reinforce his theme, Brecht attempts to free his audience from the constraints of traditional theatre, enabling them to make impartial judgments of their own. Despite combining these radical ideas about theatre with the theme of motherhood, Brecht does not wholly succeed in alienating the audience, as it is impossible for them to totally distance themselves from such an emotive subject as motherhood.
A German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer, Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany in 1898. He showed an interest in literature at an early age, writing articles for a school magazine and for the local newspaper. Upon leaving school in 1917, he studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Munich. During the First World War, he worked as a medical orderly in a German military hospital. This experience reinforced his hatred of war and undoubtedly influenced his support for the failed Socialist revolution in 1919. When he returned to University Brecht abandoned medicine in order to pursue a literary career, and in 1922 his first play, Bael was written. Brecht’s plays reflect and advocate a Marxist interpretation of society and when Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, he was forced to flee from Germany. He lived in Denmark, Sweden and the Soviet Union, before arriving in the United States of America in 1941. During his exile, Brecht wrote a number of anti-nazi plays, including The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1943). In 1947, he returned to East Germany, where he died in 1956. During his life Brecht lived under various and different political regimes and these influenced him in his work.
As a playwright, Brecht is famous for his revolutionary ideas about theatre. Throughout his earlier plays, he experimented with dada and expressionism. However, as his work progressed he developed his own theatrical style and techniques. He schooled actors to alienate themselves from their roles. He created epic theatre in which narrative, montage, self-contained scenes and rational argument were used to create a shock of realisation in the spectator. In order to give the audience a more objective perspective on the action, Brecht promoted a style of acting and staging that created a distancing effect.
More so, the purpose of this play was to illustrate the common bond between women, even in the face of the law. It proves that in hard times people of a common bond usually stick together, and written in the face of the up and coming women’s suffrage movement provides the reader with a real understanding of the motivation and the dedication these women put into their work.
The playwright explores the ideas of feminism and the role of men through the explorati...
Over the course of his career, Brecht developed the criteria for and conditions needed to create Epic Theatre. The role of the audience can be likened to that of a group of college aged students or intellectuals. Brecht believed in the intelligence of his audience, and their capacity for critical analysis. He detested the trance-like state that an Aristotelian performance can lure the audience into. Plays that idealize life and humanity are appealing to an audience, and this makes it easy for them to identify with the hero, they reach a state of self oblivion. The spectator becomes one with the actor, and experiences the same fantastical climax that is unattainable in real life.
Butler, Judith. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Showalter, Elaine. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism." William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: St. Martin's, 1994. 220-240.
My work proposes a broader view of the theatre-film interface, one that relies on intertextuality as its interpretive method. I believe it is valuable-both pedagogically and theoretically-to ask broad questions about the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological exchanges between the history of theatre and contemporary film and television. For example, this paper will study how the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of the sitcom, Seinfeld, intertextually reworks Samuel Beckett's modernist play, Waiting for Godot. In each text, characters encounter an existential plight as they are forced to wait interminably, and thus confront their powerlessness at the hands of larger social forces. As a pedagogical matter, this connection encourages the students to see academic culture in the guise of having to read Beckett's play for my course, not as foreign and alienating, but instead as continuous with their understanding of leisure activities like watching sitcoms. As a theoretical matter, this intertextual connection allows important ideological matters to come into bold relie...
Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, theatre critic, and director. He created and developed epic theatre with the belief that theatre is not solely for entertainment but also tools for politics and social activism. Previous theatre performances offered a form of escapism. The audience would become emotionally invested in the performance. In contrast to the suspension of disbelief, Brecht never wanted the audience to fall into the performance. He wanted the audience to make judgments on the argument dealt in the play. The aim of epic theatre is to detach the audience from any emotional connection in order for them to critically review the story. The ultimate goal of this theatre is creating awareness of social surroundings and encouraging the audience to take initiative on changing the society.
The triviality of melodrama is so often the theatrical scapegoat that boils the blood of the modern-day critic: the sentimental monologues, the martyred young lovers, the triumphant hero, and the self-indulgent imagery. Melodrama would seem the ultimate taboo; another failed Shakespearean staging or even worse, an opera minus the pretty music. Ironically, Bertolt Brecht, dramatic revolutionary and cynic of all things contrived found promise in the melodramatic presentation. Brecht examined and manipulated the various superficial and spectacular aspects of theatre, establishing a synthesis of entertainment and social criticism as his fundamental goal. Bertolt Brecht employs various facets of melodramatic technique in The Jewish Wife, ultimately reconfiguring the genre and conveying his central theme; a society rendered immobile at the will of a totalitarian regime.
...amining the masterpiece that is Hamlet, it becomes clear that Shakespeare was a successful playwright because he understood his audience and knew how to connect with them through his work. Even four hundred years after Shakespeare, this is still undeniably a crucial quality in anyone who is required to interact with an audience. Hence, much can be learned from Hamlet and from Shakespeare’s other works of art; the context of his plays may no longer resonate in today’s world, but the methods he used to engage and target the audience are timeless guidelines.
In the 1950’s through the 1960’s women were not respected in there everyday lives, in the job field or in general. They did not have the rights they deserved, so during this time the “women’s movement” began. Women fought for their rights and fought for the self-respect that they thought they deserved. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the character Mama, expresses her feelings of pushing or extracting a new side for a woman. Her role explains that woman can be independent and can live for themselves. Through her behavior in this play she demonstrates that women can support and guide a family. Mama is in charge of the family, which is unusual, since men are traditionally the “head of a family”. Through Mama’s wisdom and dialect she expresses and portrays an image of pro-feminism. Mama’s experience in the play A Raisin in the Sun illustrates the expressions, the emotions, and the feeling with which Mama and women had to cope. She was able to characterize this through her passionate dreams, her control and her strong willed attitude.
Michael Almereyda’s movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet brings about a new perspective through its performance. The movie adaptation, Hamlet (2000), retells the original play in a modernized setting, bringing out various different elements of characters, which highlights a new reading of these characters as individuals, and a newfangled reading of the play as well. Throughout the movie, Ophelia and Gertrude, the woman-leads, are advanced in a progressive manner compared to the original play. In particular, Gertrude from Hamlet (2000) is noticeably altered from Hamlet, the play. This new interpretation of Gertrude and the play created by the movie adaptation advances the position of Gertrude as a woman, as well as motifs of incest, misogyny,
Keeping Brecht’s intent in mind, finding examples of Brechtian Alienation in community performance is not difficult when considering the breadth of activities that can be classified as “community performance.” For example, the recent 2005 United States election debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Those events can be defined as a staged performance for the benefit of the community. The audience gazes in on a conversation b...
Brechtian theatre, also known as epic theatre, strives to keep the audience members objective and prevents
Willett, John, trans. and ed. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986.
He paved way for a new era of drama and made sure his plays were a great legacy to leave behind to influence other play writers to follow into his footsteps. His works were well known, and have major influence on the playwrights in today’s society dealing with plays, Tv shows, and movies. His ideas were a way of changing the culture aspect of playwrights and the sociopolitical reasoning.