UNIT 11

 UNIT 11:

'Art is not a mirror to reflect society but the hammer with which                                       to shape it ' - Bertolt Brecht

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born 10 February 1898 in Augsburg Germany , he was known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, a German theatre practitioner, playwriter and poet. 

When Brecht was 16, the first world war broke out. As a young man, he studied medicine and serving as a medical orderly in an army hospital during World War I and appalled by the effects of the war. After seen the terror, the violence and the wrongful act of war, Brecht started questioning the society and politics. Brecht grew a strong political voice, He was heavily influenced by Marxist ideas, which is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict. He travelled to Munich and then Berlin for a career in theatre. During this period of his life came to an end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Brecht fled and during this period the Nazis formally removed his citizenship, so he was a stateless citizen. He also wrote poems, created the Brecht collective, regrouping friends of his, and made “Man equals Man”, first project part of his collective, and met lot of people and actors that influenced him, like Charlie Chaplin. 

In 1941 Brecht became resident in the USA but returned to Europe in 1947. Which Brecht lived gave him a strong political voice. The opposition he faced is testament to the fact that he had the courage to express his personal voice in the world of the theatre. He also had an original and inspired talent to bring out a dynamic theatrical style to express his views.

Why is Brecht so important ?

Brecht made and shaped theatre in a way that had a huge impact upon its development. Many of his ideas were so revolutionary that they changed the theatrical landscape forever. Modern theatre owes a lot to his methods. When naturalistic theatre (It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies.) was at its height and acted as a mirror to what was happening in society at the time, he decided to use it as a force for change. He wanted to make his audience think and famously said that theatre audiences at that time “hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom”. In naturalistic or dramatic theatre the audience care about the lives of the characters onstage. They forget their own lives for a while and escape into the lives of others. When an audience cries for a character or feels emotion through the events happening to them it’s called catharsis (the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.) 

Brecht was against cathartic theatre. He believed that while the audience believed in the action onstage and became emotionally involved they lost the ability to think and to judge. He wanted his audiences to remain objective and distant from emotional involvement so that they could make considered and rational judgements about any social comment or issues in his work. To do this he used a range of theatrical devices or techniques so that the audience were reminded throughout that they were watching theatre; a presentation of life, not real life itself. His kind of theatre was called Epic theatre. He called the act of distancing the audience from emotional involvement the verfremdungseffekt also known as the distancing effect. 

Brecht definitely wanted his audience to remain interested and engaged by the drama otherwise his message would be lost. It was emotional investment in the characters he aimed to avoid.