Performative language in Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo. Didactic reflections on dialogue and interpretation

Abstract

There are nowadays a whole series of publications on the staging or productive use of theatre, all of which show that the theatrical learning medium has long since been used not only in mother-tongue or foreign language teaching in schools, but also in the field of dialogue interpretation. What is striking, however, is that it is not the drama text but preferably theatrical techniques that are used to initiate a better way of dealing with complex language situations. Theatre has developed into a relational medium par excellence because of its play character and not because of its literary text substrate; in fact, the theatrical genus is form-giving and formable, sometimes so formable that one of its ostensible constituents, i.e. the text, is often perceived as a negligible one. The approach adopted here is different: With its dual focus – on a specific drama text and on the prosodic design –, it adopts a holistic perspective that considers both language and gestural awareness of dialogical interactions.