Study of Brechtian Theatre

Authors Avatar

Year 10 Brechtian Theatre Assessment

  Brechtian theatre is a unique type of theatre in which the audience is reminded that it is just a play and is designed to make the audience think about the storyline and why it happened, and not care for the characters. Brechtian theatre was created by Bertolt Brecht who was a German playwright. Brecht was born into a religious household as his mother was protestant and his father was catholic and he was taught the ways of the bible which could have affected his writing when it came to writing about religion and the way in which people discriminate against those with a different view. In his twenties, he took an interest in politics which started to influence his writing and he wanted to get a message across, however, he did not want to make people believe what he believed, he wanted people to develop their own ideas and have their own opinions and ideas, he achieved this through theatre. He believed that theatre should not just be used for pleasure but should be used to give new ideas and help people decide on what they believed, he achieved this by not letting the audience relate to the characters in his plays as if they related to the characters, they would care about what happened to the character. To prevent the audience from relating to the character, he would make the character come out of role and talk to the audience, or make the character narrate what was happening, which would make the audience remember that it was a play and not get ‘absorbed into the storyline.’ However, he also wanted to persuade people to realise the importance of the situations he was tackling and to respect other peoples decisions, for instance, at one point he said “For the attitude that these people adopt in the opera is unworthy of them. Is there any possibility that they may change it? Can we persuade them to get out their cigars?” Which I think that he meant that some people thought extremely highly of themselves, so highly that they think that other peoples choices are beneath them and that they shouldn’t have to respect people’s choices, and I think Brecht wanted to change that.

Join now!

  In my drama class I performed a scene using Brechtian theatre in which I was a man at a job interview who was struggling to get a job as he had a criminal record, however, I made it Brechtian (so the audience couldn’t relate to mine or my partner’s, who was playing the role of the interviewee, characters) by coming out of role and telling the audience of the things which would prevent me from getting the job and then replying with a different answer to my partner, which made it seem fairly Brechtian whilst adding some humour. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay