A Critical Analysis Of Brecht's Epic Theatre

In the mid 20th century a German playwright named Brecht invented the idea of epic theatre which consist that a play shouldn’t cause the audience to connect emotionally with the characters or action done by them but should instead provoke a logical self-reflection and critical view of the action presented on stage. Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht was born the 10th February 1898 and died on the 14 August 1956. The famous playwright and theatre director introduced to the world epic theatre, he wanted his audience to have a critical perspective of his work for them to be able to recognize social injustice and exploitation so that it could eventually affect change in the world outside, by doing this he wanted the audience to ask questions on why

During those times, theatre was mostly seen as an entertainment that would make you escape from your own world and be relived of their issues for a little. Brecht that was someone that was “down to earth” did not like such type of theatre and believed it was all a waste of time, he wanted his audience to think about what was happening on the stage and reflect on it, make connections with their own lives and at the same time enjoy the show. It’s in the 1920s that Brecht came up with his new form of theatre that involved a new technique called “alienation effect” or “Verfremdungseffekt”. The alienation effect was used to make the audience experience something completely new in theatre when watching a play, this was done by letting an act or a scene go on and than have something unexpected happen. When we watch a play or a movie we sink into the setting, the characters and the story itself and we escape, that unexpected action would “wake up” the audience and make them think or wonder why would this happen and that would lead them to think critically the way Brecht would want his audience to think when watching one of his

Erwin developed all certain kind of techniques that Brecht used later on and developed using Epic Theatre as a base. The techniques that Erwin often used in his work were captions, statistics, musical numbers, narrators and etc. Brecht was inspired by Piscator’s signature work that was projecting still images and projected films on screen that would deliver a specific message to the audience during plays. The two Germans worked together on two Berlin Theatre Productions: Rasputin in 1926 and The Good Soldier Shweik in 1928. The resemblance between these two directors was that they both believed that drama should also be use to send a strong message to audience and make them think differently when watching a play of their creation to make them realize certain connection between the story showed to them and their own personal lives. Unfortunately, Brecht and Erwin had certain disagreements about the extent of the use of emotion in theatre and that made them stop working together.
Epic theatre like all kind of theatre has its own techniques and Brecht came up with/ used a few of them:
• Narration: The play is developed similarly to a story where a character in the play or a background voice tells the story as the acting is taking place on