bertolt brecht

Introduction/Biography.

Bertolt Brecht, a dramatist, stage director and poet, was born on February 10th 1898 in the city of Augsberg, Germany. Brecht was baptised as Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht after his farther Bertolt Friedrich Brecht, who was a catholic and worked as a chief clerk in a paper factory. His mother Wilhelmine Friederike Sophie Brezing, who was a protestant, was ill with breast cancer most of his young life.

Brecht was very ill as a child and suffered from congenital heart condition and facial tics he also suffered a heart attack at the age of 12 but he recovered and went on with the rest of his education. Brecht died of a heart attack on August 14, 1956 while working on a response to Samual Beckett's . He is buried in the Dorotheenfriedhof in Berlin.

Brechts theatre.

Brecht believed the theatre should give pleasure to the audience and they should learn something from the performances. He came up with the idea of Epic theatre where he did not want his audience getting emotionally attached to the performance, he wanted them to stand back, think and leave the theatre with unanswered questions. This would make them think ‘outside the box’ and think about what message he was trying to get across.

Brecht used a technique he called verfremdungseffekt, also known as estrangement effect or alienation effect to distance his audience. This technique includes many different aspects such as; the use of placards with emotions, actors speaking their stage directions aloud, telling the audience what is going to happen in the next scene and talking to the audience as if they are in your performance. This worked well as he was able to break up the performance and it made people realise it was not reality itself.

Brecht vs. Stanislavski.

Brecht’s theatre is completely different to others like Konstantin Stanislavski ...

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Brecht vs. Stanislavski.

Brecht’s theatre is completely different to others like Konstantin Stanislavski who is known as the founder of realism. Unlike Brecht Stanislavski drew his audience into the atmosphere created on stage, he made the actors put their own experiences, imagination and feelings into a role.

Stanislavski came up with ‘The System’ which is split up into sections which were all shown in 3 novels he wrote:

‘An Actor Prepares’ (1937) – This book tells you how an actor must psychologically and emotionally prepare for a role.
‘Building A Character’ (1949) – This book shows the actors physical and vocal approach to the role.
‘Creating A Role’ (1961) – This book explains how the actor must make the role fit the script.

‘The System’ is the opposite of ‘Epic Theatre’ but they both worked very effectively and they both achieved there targets and beliefs.

Some of Brechts plays.

Here are just some of Brechts plays;

Drums In The Night (1918)
Jungle Of Cities (1921-23)
Man Is Man (1924-25)
The Three Penny Opera. (1928)
The Rise And Fall Of The Town Of Mahagonny (1928-29)
Mother Courage and Her Children. (1941)
Life Of Galileo (1943)
The Good Person Of Suzuan (1943)
The Caucasian Chalk-Circle (performed in English in 1947 and in German in 1954)

‘Mother Courage And Her Children’

‘Mother courage and her children’ is about a woman who sold food, drink ect. to the soldiers at war to make a living for herself and her three children, Elife, Swiss Cheese and Katrin. During the play all three children are killed which makes you think whether Mother Courage really cared about them as she didn’t stop after the first death. Other questions Brecht left the audience thinking about were; Has she learnt anything from this? Does she just care about making money? Who was she making money for?

Brecht was a communist (believes every one is equal and everything should be shared equally i.e. everyone gets paid the same) during the time this play was written, therefore he shows capitalism (an economic system where people own there own money and property) in a bad way by making Mother Courage a capitalist.

Theory or plays??

Brecht theory is more important now than the actual plays are, this is because the theory can still be used in theatre today whereas the plays are now dated and would not fit in with today’s society. However the plays can still be used as a guide but would need to be modified.

Conclusion

I like Epic theatre because it gives you the opportunity to try something completely different from all other genres and leaves you thinking about it afterwards. However if it is not explained to someone correctly or they don’t know what it is then it can be very hard to understand and may leave many people confused and asking the wrong questions such as, why the techniques were used and what the whole point of them was, instead of questions about the performance.

By Zoe Barnes.

Word count: 799