Epic Theatre Research Articles

CONTROVERSIAL EFFECT OF BERTOLT BRECHT’S EPIC THEATRE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH POLITICAL DRAMA AND ITS ILLUSTRATION IN DAVID HARE’S FANSHEN

British political drama took its place on contemporary British stage without the boundaries of a certain manifesto but with the political consciousness of a group of leftist playwrights in the late 1960s. It reflected the disillusionment of these playwrights with the Labour Party politics at home and with some worldwide events like the Vietnam War, student riots in Paris, Soviet Russia’s interventions in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia. British political dramatists wrote explicitly politically and produced their plays, in the first place, by the help of fringe theatre companies, which were touring and which took theatre to the public. Bertolt Brecht was one of the most important literary influences on the development of British political drama, which was mostly denied by political dramatists. Brecht’s impact dated back not only to his theatre company Berliner Ensemble’s visit to London in 1958 but even before the World War II. British playwrights and directors in 1950s and 1960s got acquainted with Brecht’s works both in Britain and in Germany and they helped to introduce Brecht’s epic theatre on British stage. This generation of playwrights and directors paved the way for the development of political drama in Britain. Even though political dramatists did conceal, Brecht’s epic theatre was, in literary terms, one of the greatest influences on political drama. This study will briefly talk about the development of British political drama and then it will reveal to what extent Brecht’s epic theatre affected British political playwrights. Lastly, it will explore Brechtian influences in a play Fanshen (1975) by one of the representative political playwrights, David Hare.

Interrupting the cognitive empire: keynote drama as cultural justice

ABSTRACT The authors of this paper present a performative, practice-led interpretation of interrupting keynotes. They analyse keynotes in which a performance poet interrupts the white, female, professorial, northern scholar, with his own poetry as a poet of the global south. Using Benjamin’s essay on Brecht’s Epic theatre and interruption as a critical device, the authors will consider how oral scholarship might offer ways of disturbing the epistemological dominance of scholarly forms such as the keynote. By creating, through interruptions, a performative poetics as a practice-led decolonial scholarship, the authors explore the keynote as form, within an intercultural, artistic, hospicing and conflict transformational frame.

The Brown Commons in the Time of Pandemic

The Brown Commons in the Time of Pandemic

Osnove istorijskog razvoja glume u pozorištu od antičke Grčke i Rima do moderne i avangarde

The research subject of this paper is oriented on the development of acting through the focus of the actor as an artist and acting itself as an art. Answers are given in the paper, who were all the actors and what acting tools they used. Furthermore, in which period dramatic theater prevailed, theater based on elements of drama, and when was it created epic theater, and do we have elements of epic theater on the stage even before the appearance of dramatic theater. Drama theater is based on imitation, on a story that has its own introduction, plot, culmination and denouement. In the drama theater, there are characters on stage who are always in some kind of conflict. In epic theatre, the actor narrates, he shows the events that took place, he shows them by telling us about them. We can conclude that, in most cases, every performance is interwoven with both epic and dramatic elements, and that it is very difficult to talk about only one form of theater within one performance.

Эпический театр: культурные и культурологические параллели

The purpose of the article is to identify cultural and cultural parallels between the Yakut storytelling of the Olonkho and the theatrical cultures of the East and West. The work compares the cultural features of B. Brecht’s «epic theater», traditional Chinese theater and Yakut storytelling, which belong to different eras and cultures. Based on this analysis, the idea is put forward that Yakut storytelling can be considered as a model of epic theater, since it is inherent in the signs of the indicated theatrical system. This creates a new perspective in its study as a phenomenon of culture and allows to show the importance of Olonkho in the search for new communicative models in the form of theatrical art.

PECULIARITIES OF ARTISTIC COGNITION IN THE SPACE OF BERTOLT BRECHT'S CREATIVE WORLD

The article analyses the main principles of artistic cognition within the creative world of Bertolt Brecht, considering it the subject, first of all, of the author's reflection. From the point of view of the artist, expressed in his critical articles and theoretical works of different years, the knowledge and depiction of life's truth should be recognized as the main artistic guidance corresponding to the challenges of the time. This concerns the truth of public life,the discovery of which meets as obstacles to artistic research the criminality of society, the unwillingness of an individual to see the actual situation of their existence, analyse their own mistakes, and work to correct them.
 According to Brecht, the truth about other people and society can be revealed only if a person can realize and express the truth about themselves, no matter how unpleasant it may be. The analysis of Brecht's short story The Wounded Socrates not only allows us to outline the importance of life-saving utmost honesty in the process of self-understanding but also to reveal the connection of the writer's creative activity with the traditions of Europeanphilosophical literature rooted in the era of antiquity and genetically connected with Socratic dialogue.
 The epic theatre was created by Brecht in order to direct the spiritual and intellectual work of the creators and recipients of the theatrical action intounderstanding the most painful and dangerous problems of the present, tomake this collective work a prerequisite for fundamental social changes. Such a qualitative change in the social coexistence of people in the historical space of the twentieth century should not have been a victory in war, but avictory over war, i.e. exposing its true essence, hidden motives, and its suicidal for the human and humanity nature. The artistic synthesis that becomes a prerequisite for Brecht's dramaturgical innovation contributed to it, based on a combination of realistic and modernist artistic principles, the possibilities of epic, lyrics, and drama.

Contemporary experimental currents and its impact on the structure of the contemporary Iraqi theatrical text "The epic theater as a model"

حاولت في هذه الدراسة البحثية تتبع الأثر الملحمي للتعرف على الكيفية التي فهم بها ذلك الأثر وكيفية توظيفه. متبعاً المنهج الوصفي التحليلي في البحث، فقد كان الفصل الأول يتناول عرضاً للإطار المنهجي من مشكلة وهدف وحدود البحث وأهمية والحاجة إلية وتعريف المصطلحات، فضلاً عن الإطار النظري والذي تألف من مبحثين، تضمنا أثر المسرح الملحمي في المسرح العالمي والثاني أثر المسرح الملحمي على المسرح العربي، جاء ذلك من خلال تتبع الأثر الملحمي في المسرح العالمي من الإغريق والعصور الوسطى وعصر النهضة والمسرح العربي في القرن العشرين. اما المبحث الثاني الذي تناول أثر المسرح الملحمي على بنية النص المسرحي العربي بشكل عام والعراقي بشكل خاص من خلال أستعراض بعض الكتاب الذين تأثروا في هذا المنهج. أما الفصل الثالث فقد جاء بالأجراءت وتحليل العينة القصدية التي وجدت فيها معظم العناصر الملحمي، مما سهل المهمة المراد تحقيقا وأهداف البحث المرجوة. أما الفصل الرابع فقد تناول النتائج والاستنتاجات فضلاً عن قائمة المصادر والمراجع

Dancing in War. Perception of Theater in Wartime Sarajevo: Pippo Delbono, Giorgio Strehler and Peter Schumann

„When I went to Sarajevo, I met a boy“, Pippo Delbono tells us. They talked, and suddenly the boy told him, „I saw an entire city in anger. I’ve seen people become monsters“. And Delbono replied, „And I’ve seen people look at me like I’m a monster. And all the things that turn into monstrosity“. Traveling, for Delbono, is a life experience that turns into a theatrical one at the same time. In 1998, Delbono created a play called War. The story of the boy he meets during his trip to Sarajevo is an introduction to Delbono’s magical world of theater through which he expresses the need to present a life that is born from suffering, illness, war, but in which we still „dancing“. Danzare nella guerra, „dancing in the war“, for Delbono means to oppose the war to the beauty, joy, and poetics of the movement. In 1995, Strehler directed a play called Mother Courage of Sarajevo based on the text written by Bertolt Brecht. For Strehler, Mother Courage of Sarajevo is not just a play, it is a symbol, a political act that portrays war as a human failure. Strehler based his vision of theater on Brecht’s epic theater. One year before, in 1993, with his puppet troupe, The Bread and Puppet, Peter Schumann came to Sarajevo to provide his support. In the first place, we want to show how Delbono’s conception of theater and experience during his trip to Sarajevo intertwine with the primary goal of Sarajevo theater in those years, as „spiritual resistance“, „spiritual needs“, „call to heal wounded souls“, a „super theater“, as Izudin Bajrović calls him, in which theater and life were the same. Through Strehler’s theater, his relationship with Sarajevo, and the breaking of the „fourth wall“, we will talk about theater as research of those eternal human values, but also returning to humane theater. In the third place, through Schumann’s work, we will show how the external theatrical reality intertwines with the internal one as a feature of strong political engagement.

ART SPACE OF CONTEMPORARY DRAMA

Sokolovska S. F.The study of the modern literary situation, in particular, new trends in drama, is a relevant task for literary criticism. The work of playwrights of the 90s of the twentieth century deserves special attention since the literary practice of this generation of artists caused a number of significant shifts in various formally substantive areas of drama. Indicative in this respect are the works of the modern German author R. Schimmelpfennig. In the process of literary study of the play «The Golden Dragon», an analytical model of a literary text has been built, which is correlated with the interpretation model of a literary work. The chronotope and structure of the narrative reflect the artistic picture of the world and the concept of personality. Creating these aspects of artistic reality, the playwright turns to the aesthetics of B. Brecht’s epic theater. First of all, this is the alienation effect, which occurs through seventeen roles that are distributed among five actors. However, the characters are not puppet heroes, human beings without identity, they play the role of storytellers, report events, addressing directly to the audience. The author’s presence is being augmented, which is realized in the epization of a dramatic text, in the author’s direct description of the characters, in the spatio-temporal organization of the work. The reality that the world of a multi-storey building reproduces in the play does not allow a person to realize themselves. Such a manifestation becomes possible in an imaginary world, in human consciousness. The acquisition of personal uniqueness, the establishment of deep, essential connections with other people occurs in an open, unlimited mental space.

Life as Script: Benjamin’s study of Brecht in Svendborg

The principle of the ‘gesture’, which according to Walter Benjamin is crucial for Bertolt Brecht’s early conception of the ‘epic theatre’, can as well be understood as the structural principal of Benjamin’s descriptions of the later Brecht in his exile in Svendborg in the 1930s. According to Benjamin the actor in epic theatre should be able to treat gestures in the same way as a typesetter treats the writing of words with spaced letters. Gestures thus are produced where the flow of action is interrupted. In Benjamin’s writings about Brecht this principle of the latter’s theatre becomes crucial for the philosopher’s style. Gestures as interruptions turn Benjamin’s biographical descriptions of Brecht into an epic theatre. Its stages are in the first place the pages of Benjamin’s writing, but not only. Rather Brecht himself becomes an ‘empty stage on which the contradictions of our society are acted out’, that is to say not an individual but rather a ‘dividuum harbouring and hiding many possibilities’, comparable to the characters of Brecht’s most radical plays, written in the years between 1926 and 1933, as, for example, A Man is a Man, Fatzer or The Decision. Benjamin thus holds on to what can be called a ‘theatre of potentiality’ in a moment when Brecht, deprived of his theatre, his friends, his way of living and producing, temporarily gives up his earlier conceptions in order to return to a more conventional theatre. According to Ludwig Jäger a script is produced retrospectively by the act of a transcription as that which must have preceded this transcription, but has not become visible up to the very moment of this transcription. In this respect Brecht’s life in exile is turned into a script in Benjamin’s notes.

Spinoza’s Concept of ‘Wonder’ as Aesthetic Interruption

This article is an attempt to connect Spinoza’s concept of ‘wonder’ (admiratio) to ‘aesthetic interruption’—the response of being ‘frozen’ by a performative event. According to Spinoza we experience wonder when we perceive an object we have never perceived before, and being unable to relate the object to anything else, our mind pauses on it as an unfamiliar singular image. And because for Spinoza body and mind are parallel and equal forms of each of us, our body too ceases its ongoing movement. This wonder, moreover, as Christopher Davidson (2019) notes in his interpretation of Spinoza’s ‘wonder’, may intensify the affects induced in us by external bodies and arouse powerful emotions in the perceiver, as, for example, in ecstatic events such as festivals. However, the aspect of ‘wonder’ Davidson does not touch upon is the question of aesthetic interruption. Since Spinoza does not elaborate on ‘wonder’ in relation to the theatre or the arts in general, I draw an analogy between his concept of wonder and Benjamin’s concept of ‘interruption’ (Unterbrechung) in Brecht’s epic theatre. For much like Spinoza’s description, Benjamin describes ‘interruption’ as a break in an ongoing situation that we see as an unfamiliar standing image that induces our ‘astonishment’ (Staunen). In both cases the wonder or astonishment arises from the element of ‘pause’—an image that interrupts the movement of our body and mind. I conclude my brief exploration of Spinoza’s concept of wonder as aesthetic interruption by applying it to two concrete responses to a performative event: Normand Berlin’s response to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and my own response to Thom Luz’s When I Die.

The ‘Freicha’ as an Interruption in/of Westernized Israeli Theatre

The term Mizrahi Jews, or Mizrahim, refers to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent who make up nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population. Over the years, Mizrahi Jews were excluded from Israel’s social and cultural centres of power in all spheres of life, including the Israeli theatre. The history of the Western base of Israeli theatre has grown from three different directions: the dominant Eastern European-Russian tradition, the German theatre tradition and the influence of American Broadway. The article focuses on ‘Freicha’ as Mizrahi female stereotype that interrupts in/of Westernized Israeli theatre. The poetry performance by Hannah Vazana Greenwald, who creates a Mizrahi-feminist alternative on the Israeli stage, called ‘Freicha is a Beautiful Name’, is a protest against stereotypical representation. Instead of moving away from the stereotype, as do the traditional approaches of Mizrahi theatre, this poetry performance actually reinforces the stereotype, in an ironic, parodic, audacious and antagonistic style to the point where the stereotype becomes completely subverted and emptied of its negative content. It becomes a source of protest for Mizrahi women. Instead of seeking distance from the negative imaging that is threatening them, the performers on the stage adopt it as their own and transform it into a source of empowerment. The re-appropriation of the freicha stereotype turns her into a critical figure who gives the audience a new perspective on the Mizrahi identity that undermines the hegemonic discourse; she has become the stranger entering the stage as described by Benjamin with regard to Brecht’s epic theatre creating a possibility for recalibration. This re-appropriation creates a utopian performative moment that temporarily anticipates, in the theatrical event, the transformation of the freicha to a positive and empowering image in the social reality.

Interrupted Authority

Interpreting the model of the epic theatre in 1939, Walter Benjamin introduced the practice of ‘the quotable gesture’ that involves the interruption of its context. This article explores the phenomenon of turning the foundation scene of a nation state into a quotable gesture given to interruptions while attributing it to the Israeli context. The main practice of re-performing the declarative foundation scene is substitution of original components. Its main effect is the failure to validate both the authority of foundation and the power of ruling. The interruptive power of foundational re-performance lies, first, in the original scene’s rationale, caught in a circular quotation in order to gain the authority to sign the Declaration, and theatrically simulates the reclaim of power. Second, the foundational re-performances range from the official national framework—in Israel, the Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948—bound to ratifying authority, to a critical orientation. Interruption, however, is implicit in a validating context and can be found throughout all the gestures of quoting, exposing the vulnerability of authority. The range of interruptions is discussed through several cases: the Israeli Ur-scene; its first formal quotation in 1958, including the ambivalent role—both ratifying and undermining—of Hanna Rovina, iconic Habima actress, known from The Dybbuk and ‘penetrating’ to the scene of foundation; the socio-political complexity of the formal re-performance in 1978; and three different critical acts: a substitution of simulative signing of the Declaration with an ‘inappropriate’ name; a poignant replacement of David Ben-Gurion’s authoritative reading of the Declaration by a Mizrahi-Moroccan woman; and foundational subversions that have become an important component of the struggle for the rehabilitation of democracy during the 2020–1 civic protests in Israel, serving to the article as an actual frame of reference.

The tamṣīr of Epic Theatre: A Case-Study of Alfred Faraǧ

Abstract Bertolt Brecht is generally regarded as the most influential and politically engaged left-wing playwright of the Twentieth century. Traces of his theory and practice are to be found around the world, including in the works of important Egyptian playwrights of the sixties such as Yūsuf Idrīs, Naǧīb Surūr and Alfred Faraǧ. Brecht’s work and ideas did permeate the theory and practice of the three Egyptian playwrights, though even if they all shared a commitment to social issues, critics agree that the Egyptians ignored the philosophical essence of Brecht’s devices or did not have a clear ideological grounding – thus concluding that their understanding of Brecht was partial. Through a study of epic aspects of Alfred Faraǧ’s theatre, this article aims instead to highlight the transformations operated by the playwright to mould epic theatre to fit his own ideology, his aesthetic and the local context in the logic of tamṣīr (Egyptianisation).

Feminism as Epic Theory

AbstractSheldon Wolin identifies a particular tradition within political theory that he calls ‘epic theory’. Epic theory, he explains, is political theory's equivalent of the Kuhnian scientific revolution. This article takes up the analogy between epic theory and scientific revolution to show that feminism is an epic theory in the truest sense of the term, a sense not fully grasped by Wolin. It is so for two reasons. First, it is a theory of the whole. Second, it is less a discovery than an invention of the world. The author seeks to account for the existence of feminism in the face of its impossibility, and to demonstrate the magnitude of the achievement that feminism represents.

Poetics of B. Brecht’s epic theatre in terms of the cubist principle

This article is devoted to an attempt to consider the concept of B. Brechts epic theatre in terms of the cubist principle as a characteristic technique of the avant-garde and postmodernism, based on overcoming traditional mimetic forms when creating an artistic whole and suggesting such a way of organizing an artistic image in which affective involvement based on ready-made forms of perception and recognition, is replaced by the need for the so-called work of understanding. The main objectives of the article include the discovery and description of the mechanisms for the implementation of the cubist principle in the concept of Brechts epic theatre. The goal of the study is to prove the productivity of considering Brechts poetics in terms of the cubist principle. The research is carried out on the basis of an integrated approach that combines systemic-holistic and hermeneutic methods. The block of empirical materials includes Brechts works on the theory of epic theatre, as well as the works of Russian and foreign literary scholars and art theorists, devoted to both highly specialized aspects of Brechts theory of dramaturgy and issues related to the problem of authenticity of artistic expression and features of the structure of a work of art in the context of the collapse of traditional ideas about an artistic object as a result of imitation or expression of the artists inner world. The results obtained make it possible to present the concept of Brechts epic theatre as an experience of problematization of the creative act in a situation of crisis of artistic forms and reveal the expediency of considering Brechts poetics in terms of the cubist principle due to a much broader view of the technical and ideological-content aspects of his concept, in contrast to previously adopted concepts montage and separation of elements.

Looking at Interactive Documentaries through Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater

In the 21st century, which is called the digital age, documentary cinema has undergone many changes in terms of both content and form. Apart from being a display medium, interfaces and screens have become spheres where the narrative is constructed. Thus, the production and viewing dimensions of documentary films have changed and traditional narrative documentaries have started to be replaced by interactive documentaries. In these documentaries, the director becomes the designer and the viewer becomes the participant/user. In this context, Walter Benjamin’s approach to epic theater, which he believes is compatible with new technical forms and is the culmination of technology, is the starting point of this study. Because especially since the early 1960s, Bertolt Brecht’s understanding of epic theater has influenced directors and shaped their understanding of filmmaking. The directors who wanted to make the audience feel that the images they see in a film were made with designed decorations, used Brecht's aesthetic understanding to destroy mimesis and break identification. In this context, Seven Digital Deadly Sins (2014), which is an example of an interactive documentary developed with new communication technologies and opens the door to different possibilities for the director and the audience, is evaluated through Bertolt Brecht's understanding of epic theater.

Karjala kulttuurisena traumana Suomen teatterissa


 
 
 Karelia as a cultural trauma in Finnish theatre
 This article asks how Finnish-language theatre and plays have depicted ceded Karelia and reflected the feelings of the Karelian diaspora. The theatrical art- form is understood as a dialogue between narratives intended for the commu- nity and the reception they receive from them. The article examines the ways in which theatre participated in dealing with the cultural trauma of the diaspora. The changing political climate in Finland and Russia, as well as the ambivalent relationships of the post-war Karelian generations with the traumatic narrative of the older generation, allows three periods to be distinguished: 1. The stage of harmony, longing and nostalgic drama (1940–1965), when the focus was mainly on lost era; 2. The phase of conflicting Karelian orientations (1965–1990), when the influence of the Soviet Union on public debate and interpretations of history was at its strongest; and 3. The stage of consolidation of the Karelian narrative (1990–2020), when epic theatre covering all the war years was performed in Fin- land dealing with forced departure and adaptation, now from the perspective of the evacuees’ own experience and Finnish interpretation of history.
 
 

Shakespearean and Brechtian Drama and Theatre: An Audience Response Perspective

Shakespearean Dramatic theatre and Brechtian Epic theatre represent two divergent paradigms in the field of genre-drama. The plays falling under these two varying paradigms invite their readers or audience to learn to approach them by adopting a different theoretical perspective or critical stance. As per Martin Esslin “human capacities can change through time: human beings may learn to adjust themselves to new ways of perception …, and gain practice in accepting new ways of seeing both reality and art” (15). In the proposed study, the two plays chosen for comparative analyses are Hamlet by Shakespeare and Mother Courage and Her Children by Brecht: the former one centring on empathy, and the other one on alienation. Of the two paradigms discussed in the present study, in one type, admittedly, an emotional catharsis occurs and the second theoretically disclaims emotional catharsis.

Alienation Effect in Kee Thuan Chye’s Wayang Kulit Adaptations in 1984 Here and Now and The Big Purge

Existing studies have acknowledged the respective influence of Brechtian epic theatre and the adaptation of wayang kulit in Kee Thuan Chye’s plays, though largely keeping them as two separate entities. This paper focuses on Kee’s adaptation of wayang kulit in his first two published plays, namely 1984 Here and Now and The Big Purge to examine its functions in generating the Brechtian alienation effect in the selected plays. The rationales behind the increased scale of wayang kulit adaptation in The Big Purge compared to 1984 Here and Now is also explored in tandem with Kee’s alleged increase in theatrical subtlety. In the findings, the adaptation of wayang kulit in the selected plays correlates to the Brechtian alienation effect through the means of the incongruity of the wayang kulit, the role of the dalang or puppeteer and the fragmented plot structure of the wayang kulit metadrama. In The Big Purge, Kee’s increased scale of wayang kulit adaptation reflects his swerve to a more subtle style of writing as a reaction to the public perception of 1984 Here and Now and his first wayang adaptation in the play.