Epic
Theatre
Epic
theatre is a form of drama developed in
The term epic theatre used by Brecht for
the first time in 1926, did not originate with him. Picastor was the pioneer of the epic
theatre, while Bertolt Brecht perfected it. Other playwrights and composers have
been labelled like as epic playwrights were Stravinsky, Pirandello, Claudel, and
others.
To encourage the audience to adopt a more
critical attitude to what was happening in the stage,
Bretch developed the “alienation effect”. The
alienation effect consists in the use of anti-illusive techniques to remind the
spectators that they are in the theatre watching an illusion of reality. Such
techniques includes flooding the stage with harsh white light, regardless of
where the action was taking place, and leaving the stage lamps in full view of
the audience; making use of minimal props and indicative scenery, intentionally
interrupting the action at key junctures with songs in order to drive home an
important point or message; and projecting explanatory captions onto a screen or
employing placards. From his actors Brecth demanded
not realism and identification with the role but an objective style of playing,
to become in a sense detached observers.
The technical advances were enough to
permit the stage to incorporate an element of narrative in its dramatic
productions. The possibility of projections, the greater adaptability of the
stage due to mechanization; all complete the theatre.
“Mother Courage and her children”, the
play’s primary small businesswoman, living off of
the war with her canteen wagon.
Courage’s commitment to the business of war will cost her children, the war
taking back for what it has provided her in flesh. This play also remarks that
war makes the human virtues fatal even of his possessors. Telling each of her
children’s fortunes, Courage will conjure their deaths at the hand of their
respective virtues: bravery, honesty and kindness. As the name of its eponymous
heroine suggests, Mother Courage poses the tradition of the morality play is
conventionally organized
around Everyman as its protagonist and various characters personifying Vices and
Virtues. Action consists of their struggle, whether for the Everyman's soul or
otherwise. Similarly Mother
Courage offers Courage and her children as sense personifications
the virtues that do them in during the war: wisdom, bravery, honesty, and
kindness. Obviously, it is also profoundly pedagogical in its
intentions.
Despite
these similarities, it is clear that Brecht fundamentally departs from the
morality play tradition as well. Certainly Courage is no Everyman. Moreover, the
epic form militates precisely against a structure of ready identification
between spectator and character that the universal Everyman clearly establishes.
In the morality play, we are all "Everyman."
For conclusion, we talk about the
influence of the epic theatre, especially the Brecht’s theatre. Brecht’s attack
on the illusive theatre influenced, directly or indirectly, the theatre of every
Western country. In