Brechtian/Epic Theatre Plays

There are many brilliant examples of Brechtian plays and other forms of Epic Theatre, each with their own specific social or political points. Brecht himself was a playwright too and naturally practiced his own style as a practitioner. He wrote many plays, including 'Caucasian Chalk Circle,' 'Mother Courage and Her Children,' and 'Fear and Misery of the Third Reich,' an ostensibly anti-fascist title. Many companies often devise in the style of Brecht, or use Brechtian techniques - some examples of famous epic theatre (not written by Brecht) are 'The Good Soldier Schweik' by Piscator and in some regards, 'The Accidental Death of an Anarchist,' by Dario Fo, who drew influence from Commedia dell'Arte, a rural Italian comedy, the political climate of Italy post-WW2, and Brechtian or farcical techniques.

The 'Caucasian Chalk Circle,' is an extremely powerful and effective play at portraying characters, themes, and ideas, and is written by Brecht himself, although authorship is believed to be shared with his long time and often uncredited collaborator, Ruth Berlau. The play begins in a war-torn village, post WW2, at the bottom of a valley in the Caucasus mountains, in the Soviet Republic of Georgia. Different groups of people propose different uses of the valley - one group wants to use it as grazing land and the other as an orchid. The fruit growers then put on a play to convince the State Reconstruction Committee representative that the land should go to them. The play then completely shifts to this play within a play, taking on a classic five-act epic theatre structure. The internal play begins with the leadership of a town in revolution being chased out of power - the Governor is executed and his wife is forced to flee from the revolt, and leaves her infant son behind. Her maid, Grusha, is forced to chose between taking or leaving the son, and in the end takes him into her care and through various episodes we are shown how they survive. These episodes show Grusha's character and human nature, how people act for and against their own self interest - she nearly leaves the boy with a peasant couples, stays with her brother then kicked out by his wife, and is forced to marry a richer man to survive despite promising to wait for her true love back home. Meanwhile at home, a judge has reinstated the Governor's wife in leadership of the town, and she is demanding her son back. The judge choses to put the baby in a chalk circle, and whichever mother, biological or adopted, he choses by walking towards, will keep custody of him along with his birth-right rule of the town.

This play exemplifies Brecht's style and the context of his life in many ways, whilst portraying a complex and powerful message. Brecht's main point is that an object should belong to whoever will do the most good for said object, and this is how we should chose who owns something. This can be seen as a socialist view, as the object will belong to the state in this ideology, who in theory should be able to do the most good for the object, unlike selfish people with other motivations and self-interest - Brecht is rooting for his own political opinions in this piece. The play was written towards the end of the Second World War, and the play itself is based at the end of a war, after a period of destruction, conflict and fighting for possession of everything - power, money, land, resources, support. This makes it particularly relevant, as the problem it answers is immediate and extremely pressing for the audience of the time, but it is still relevant to today. People needed to decide what to do with the world post-war. The prologue section is deliberately close to home and relatable to an audience - the play within the play is then a clever metaphor to show Brecht's argument. Brecht believed that everyone had a responsibility by acting towards the collective good of a group of people by viewing possession differently. The mothers don't each have a claim to the son, vying for who should own and care for him - the son has a claim to the better mother, to the mother that will be better for him.

The use of metatheatre, acknowledging that most of the action within the play is actually a play, distances the audience from each of the characters, such as Grusha. This story is actually taken from a Chinese parable, one of the influences on Brecht's work being Chinese theatre. Brecht also deliberately puts characters into situations where they have to make decisions and choices. These choices show their character and how they act. Furthermore, the characters each have their own specific gestus. Brecht wants the Governor's wife to be played as a pompous, self-interested, stupid character that is clearly criticised as being too entitled (since she wants custody of the child despite abandoning him) - the audience should not miss this political point. She may even be intended to represent the arrogant aristocracy in this post-war world that have been overturned by revolution, and lay faulty claims to the goods of the world because of old ties of nepotism and heritage, and not through a meritocratic approach that will work towards the greater good. Through this character, the audience undeniably sees Brecht's point. He also rarely uses actual character names for his characters - in fact there are no named characters in the prologue, and only the judge, Azdak, the son, Michael, and Grusha and her love, Simon, are named in the rest of the play. This leaves us distanced from the characters, and we only really sympathise with the characters that Brecht wants us to like as they are named (apart from possibly Azdak, who is more neutral).

HOW TO PLAY BRECHT

Brecht, as mentioned previously, works by preparing the audience whilst distancing them from the given circumstances and characters, and then making a strong point. Characters must be exaggerated, stereotypical, and obvious to anyone to make this point.

1. Tickle (preparing and distancing the audience) - Brecht uses many techniques for the first part. His work relies on distancing the audience from the characters and given circumstances firstly - this is known as the V-effekt. There are many ways to do this. Actors playing exaggerated characters prevents them from being too believable and stops the audience being drawn into them. Furthermore, elements of meta-theatre, i.e. reminding the audience that what they are watching is in fact a play, such as direct address and demonstration or other forms of narration, help in this distancing. Brecht also used lighting, song, sound, music and other art forms to distance the audience, again emphasising the performance factor of the style. Historicisation was also commonly used - by setting a scene in a different time period to a modern day one, the audience feels more distance to the characters as they have less of an understanding or relatability to that time, yet the point that is being made is still clear and easily understandable - commenting on our society by demonstrating it in a different society. Another good way to practice acting using the V-effekt is to say a line whilst playing a neutral character, such as a newsreporter delivering a line. This will prove the point that the message of the line can be portrayed without even creating a character that the audience can attach to emotionally. This lack of attachment makes the message of the play clearer and unbiased.

A large part of Brecht's work is the comedy associated with the performance. This is essential as it lightens the mood between serious points and sections where a message needs to be sent, a comedic relief, so the audience will take on the message better. The humour often comes from jokes, audience interaction, farcical sequences, and over-exaggerated or stereotypical characters that can be funny but also scarily accurate to an audience. Brecht used the word Spass, the German word for fun, to define this element of his style.

2. Slap (shocking and informing the audience) - there are many tools in epic theatre used to make the point clearly. Firstly, narration - actors playing narrators, or coming out of character to narrate in demonstration, or one of the many roles that are often taken on by actors during a Brechtian piece, are all different types of narration. Narration is essential to Brecht as quite simply it gives an unbiased and unattached view of the scene and shows a message clearly - it is impossible for a narrated point to be lost in subtext. Similarly, the use of placards or projections to show facts or messages is also an unmissable point to make.

Montages can also be used (tied into the idea of separated episodes that are still linked through themes) which often have juxtaposing scenes, ideas and images. Dialectics rely on the montages often to be portrayed too, as it is a form of rhetoric similar to Socratic questioning or a thesis-antithesis argument - they help us arrive at conclusions and truths of opinions through juxtaposition and contrast.

Brechtian acting is naturally very important to this style. Brecht disagrees with Stanislavski's view of portraying an accurate character. Whereas Stanislavski believes that to show a character, the actor must completely understand and embody the character within a set of given circumstances, Brecht believes this is a narrow and incomplete view of a character, as it only shows them in one very specific set of given circumstances, and doesn't clearly show their emotions as lots of the characters thoughts and feelings are hidden internally or only shown through miniscule gestures and actions. To combat this, Brecht works initially from the Stanislavski system (to think about the character's objectives and actions clearly), but then expands - he places the character in many different situations and given circumstances and forces them to make choices that show clearly who they are as a character in different conditions. With naturalism, we often only see characters in short time spans of days at most, so never can fully understand a character - epic theatre counteracts this - it is 'acting in quotation marks,' aware you are an actor.

Brechtian actors then use gestus. This is the most difficult part of this style and is what defines it. The actor and director must condense the essence of a character into an exaggerated and larger than life physicality and gesture so that an audience instantly understands the stereotype of the character and has a clear like or dislike for them. This clear attitude shown through the character is known as gestus. This also relies on externalisation, so that all their actions are displayed clearly and externally. Everything is unmissable to the audience.

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