Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

234 Chapter 8 The Modern Theatre
Many of Bertolt Brecht’s “alienating” theatrical techniques—an onstage band, bright colors, actors looking and singing
directly to the audience—are exemplified by this Foundry Theatre production of The Good Person of Szechwan 2013.
Shen Te (in red) is a woman who, during the play, fools her enemies by pretending to be Shen Te’s brother, Shui Ta,
and punishing them—but drag performer Taylor Mac, the actor playing Shen Te, takes the play’s sexual fluidity to
another level. © Carol Rosegg Photography
theories in a body of productions developed out of his
earlier plays and the pieces he had written while in exile.
Brecht’s theatre draws on a potpourri of theatrical
conventions, some derived from the ancients, some from
Eastern drama, and some from the German expressionist
movement in which Brecht himself played a part in
his early years. Masks, songs, verse, exotic settings,
satire, and direct rhetorical address are all fundamental
conventions Brecht adopted from other theatre forms.
In addition, he developed many conventions of his own:
lantern-slide projections with printed captions, speeches
in which actors deliberately stepped out of character to
comment on the action, and procedures aimed at demystifying
theatrical techniques (for example, lowering the
lights so the pipes and wires would be displayed). All of
these innovations created what Brecht called a “distancing
effect” (Verfremdunseffekt)—the separation of the
audience from involvement in the dramatic action.
The idea of the distancing-effect grew out of Brecht’s
distaste for sentimentality. Instead of encouraging audience
empathy, he sought to create a performance style
that was openly didactic: the actors were asked to distance
themselves from the characters they played—to
“demonstrate” characters rather than to embody them
in a realistic manner. In Brecht’s view the ideal actor
was one who could establish toward his or her character
a critical objectivity that would make clear the
character’s social function and political commitment.
In attempting to repudiate the “magic” of the theatre,
Brecht demanded it be made to seem nothing more than
a place for workers to present a meaningful parable of
life, and he in no way wished to disguise the labor of
the stage personnel—the actors and stagehands. In every
way possible, Brecht attempted to achieve audience distance,
preventing his spectators from becoming swept
up in an emotional bath of feelings: his goal was to keep