The aim of this essay is to investigate Bertolt Brecht's version of epic dramatic form as well as that of Thornton Wilder taking into dialogue the plays Mother Courage and Her Children, THE NICE Person of Schezwan by Brecht and Wilder's Our Town and The Skin of Our Pearly whites.
Epic theatre appeals to the emotion, it is very poignant and offers the audience a feeling of who they are and exactly how they have achieved that identity. Epic performs identify and observe a community and place it in a historical agent. The primary goal is designed for the audience to keep yourself updated they are observing a play. "Epic theater does not overcome the emotions, but it generally does not stop at only producing them, it investigates them". ( a) DM Display) It is a effect against the normal "bourgeois" theatre of the 1930s as, when one thinks about epic, the word expansionist should come to mind. Epic theatre looks for to either change or galvanize, its key effect being reason over sense.
Epic form is commonly associated with what Bertolt Brecht pioneered, as he used epic to describe a new mode of crisis. He introduced a number of ways to alienate the audience. Brecht challenged escapist theater as he wished to deny audiences of complacency; "Epic is built to evoke man's struggle to orient himself with time" and where "the present may be thought to be the culmination of the course of occurrences set in place in the remote control recent. " ( b)Andrew Fitcher - DM Presentation)
Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children written in 1939 and arranged through the Thirty Years' Warfare of 1618 - 1648. It came as a reply to the German invasion of Poland. Anna Fierling is offered as a straightforward woman who will try to produce a living after the war. Even though some might consider her intolerant, her spirituality was minimized by the battle which condemns her to a absurd irony where she cares for her children, hence the trading, but because of the trading, she cannot attend her children's needs. The audience is exposed to yet another intense irony as with her prefer to protect her family, Mother Courage has participated in destroying it.
One tag of the epic genre that Brecht presents us with in his play is the occurrence of the sounds. Although it disrupts and fragments the action, Anna Fierling uses them so that they can relationship with her children, which she also considers she will by making all of them adhere to the cart, as well as hoping to instruct them about life. The cart is a repeating prop that symbolizes both a way of earning a living and a way of keeping the family collectively, which could very well be the reason why the play ends with Mom Courage by themselves next to the cart, as it is probably the closest and only thing that brings again thoughts of her children. By the end of the play she actually is left relentlessly seeking the conflict - the image of the wagon, "on she marches with her wagon in the end that has took place, a symbol of the humanity itself goes on" (Eric Bentley, web page 157)
Another epic feature we encounter in Brecht's Mom Courage and Her Children is the Verfremdungseffekt or "estrangement impact" that the playwright creates with the use of captions at the beginning of each arena to summarize the following events. Thus, he attracts the attention of the reader on the actual important occasions are in each arena and juxtaposes the shows into a montage, offering all of them a central action the reader or the audience should concentrate on. Instead of structuring the play so the particular one scene makes another, the spectators are offered scenes that stand for themselves, mounting to a total of 12 views over 12 years. This is an instance of episodic episode, instead of continuous action. But, as Eric Bentley says, "there is absolutely no concrete locality in Brecht's dilemma. Place, like time is abstract". (Eric Bentley, webpage 97)
Also in Eric Bentley's publication it's advocated that "Critics who confront Mom Courage may need to speak not only of the abstract and symbolic but of the tragic. " (Eric Bentley, p. 100) That is a play where death shows up from the beginning of landscape one, which starts with the track "Let your men drink before they perish!". As the play goes on, we find Mom Courage manages to lose all her children, taking care of that brings us around to the theory that fatality is the leitmotiv of Brecht's play. The reader is educated of such a taking place in the caption before world three where it is stated that "3 years later Mother Courage is taken prisoner along with components of a Finnish regiment. She handles to save her girl, likewise her covered cart, but her honest child is killed. " (Worthen, p. 718) "Somewhat Grimmelhausen [Simplicissimus] was the inspirer of Mom Courage. His work certainly taken to Brecht a sense of fatality, decay, and devastation, corresponding to his own" (Eric Bentley, p. 101)
There is no catharsis in this play as each field in Mother Courage and Her Children denies the audience than it through an incessant blast of repeated styles and situations where characters neglect to discover a fatal flaw. Brecht considers the cathartic result to be similar compared to that of drug-taking. However one that does not have consequences or make one wiser, even as find from the book called "Areas of Drama and Theater" written by Kathleen Robinson. The playwright presumed that there should be an emotional distance maintained between the audience and the action throughout the play. The spectator is distanced from the action as well as from the emotion as it analyses the play within an intellectual and objective way alternatively than mental. "For Brecht, the theater should provide more than an aesthetically induced experience of the pain and pleasure derivable from sacrificial subjection to a supra-human order: the theatre must change the world. " (Kathleen Robinson, p. 84)
Although it is mentioned in Eric Bentley's reserve that Brecht didn't buy into the expression abstract, and that he presumed that he reinstated the cement, starting with the play Man is Man and continuing with The Good Girl of Schezwan as well as with Mother Courage he created completely abstract takes on. This can be observed in the multi faceted character types in the plays and the way he organized them, as is the truth with Shen Te, the key identity of Brecht's play THE NICE Woman of Schezwan : "The Good Woman is a schematic and abstract study of the three elements of Shen Te's goodness: love of her neighbor, love of her man, and love of her offspring. Mother Courage is similarly schematic, and it is also tripartite. The action divides into three areas by the end of each of which a kid is killed. " (Eric Bentley, p. 97)
Through his has, Brecht difficulties and exploits the Aristotelian techniques. A very important factor we learn about Brecht from Kathleen Robinson's lectures is the fact that he makes a link between Aristotle's theory and the Greek perspective. He claims that matching to them, "human hurting is grounded in Fate, which in turn reflects the rule of the gods, whom one might almost respect as the guarantors of common order: for the gods "can't be criticized", they represent an absolute order that's not changeable by individual effort". (Kathleen Robinson, p. 83) A protagonist must come to popularity of the fate, which does not happen in Mother Courage as even after losing all three of her children in picture 12 she declares that she's "surely got to make contact with business again". (Worthen, 737)
In The Good Woman of Schezwan, however, the author reveals his main persona, Shen Te, to be an ardent follower of the gods, the closing landscape being written subsequently to them. However, as Dickson claims in his publication, "The fundamental thing about Epic Theater is perhaps it appeals more to the spectator's reason than to his feeling. The spectator is not supposed to share the knowledge, but to come to terms with it. It would, however, be drastically wrong to refuse the role played out by sense in this form of theater. " (Keith A. Dickson, p. 236)
There is clear implication of the author in THE NICE Girl of Schezwan as unlike in many of his other has Brecht will not aim at alienating the reader or the audience. The playwright creates parables with political implications as well as hinting at some spiritual aspects, where religious beliefs might be accused of refusing to deal with the complexity of each day life. Eric Bentley says that Shui Ta symbolizes the "necessary 'genuine' modification of the earlier idealism" in the picture that Brecht provided of the tendencies in the Soviet population through the Stalinist time, with Yang Sunshine being considered the aspirant to the role of a high Get together functionary. Brecht's 'divided aspect' creates a two sided Shen Te, expressing the division within all of us. (Eric Bentley, p. 96)
Michael Morely says that "Brecht got more problems with this play than with some other dramas. " (Michael Morely, p. 61) Also, it might be that because the scenes are packed with so many 'contrasting levels of style and feelings' this play appears to be fresher to the audience than Mom Courage, although it doesn't have either the depth or the impact of the second option. However, its 'poetic terms, its colourful modest characters and its own framework' counterbalance these deficiencies. (Michael Morely)
In The Good Girl of Schezwan Brecht tries to reveal an integral part of his work that will contradict what he has been pioneering so far, that is the lyric theatre. Bentley reveals the fact that the 'lyricism' in this play are 'emanations of the spirit where the complete play is made up' rather than, much like Mother Courage, in the tracks. (Eric Bentley, p. 91) So we find out from Michael Morely's booklet in which it is explained that, unlike in the earlier mentioned plat, where in fact the songs have a rather different representation and invite the performer to change his body position to the side, with THE NICE Girl of Schezwan the playwright 'uses a narrator' and plays with the levels of the language, altering colloquial, clear-cut prose with both songs and irregular rhythmic verse. Such is the case in Landscape 4 when Shen Te is furious at the bystanders and reproaches them, handling the audience at the same time, for what Wang has suffered: "Oh you unsatisfied wretches!/Your brother is treated brutally and also you screw your eye shut!/ The sufferer cries aloud and you are silent? [] (GW 4, p. 1536)". Brecht uses one of the traditional rhetoric devices in lines 2-4, particularly 'the tricolon abundans'. Thus he creates a balance between the "the explanation of the situation with a sign up of having less feelings and interest viewed by the onlookers. " (Marcel Morely, p. 65)
The end of the play is known as to be memorable both for the 'obviousness of the rhyme' and for the fact so it stands as a declaration of the author's wishes for a solution to the impasse that divides the culture. (Marcel Morely, p. 66)
Thornton Wilder, an American playwright who presented great involvement in Brecht's view of theatre, despite being very different in ideas and bottom part from the German playwright. His plays reflect the conservative American view, of which there are affects in both of the has under discussion. The particular audience might collect after reading Our Town is the fact that you need to value each and every point in time of his life, regardless of how mundane it might seem. Wilder intended to transmit a message along with his writings, although, just like Brecht, he does not let the audience or the reader empathize with the type. Instead, he is aimed at making them think about their lives.
As Thorton Wilder himself expresses, Our Town will not illustrate life in a village in New Hampshire nor would it contemplate life after death. (Wilder, 686) Although not as obvious much like Brecht's Mother Courage, death exists in Wilder's play as the playwright would like to emphasize the sense of change, directly contradicting the Brechtian view towards it.
Although the author prefers linear aspects that are the very basic of life such as motherhood and family, in YOUR SKIN of Our Tooth he combines what appears to be permanent with what does change above the long time frame the play was set in. The Antrobus family signifies this family who escapes from different eras "by your skin of these teeth". We have been presented with a totally different kind of epic theater, as it can be an immediate look-alike of the nuclear family who acts as a figure in this play. What is more, the country is mirrored as a community through very few characters. It also has biblical implication, which is one theme this play has in keeping with Brecht's THE NICE Girl of Schezwan, as the Antrobuses have survived through all the plagues which may have been sent on the planet by God. Also, the family's struggle through the functions may represent the have difficulty of the American citizens and human history which is one point where the audience or the audience might be enticed to empathize with the people, although ever since the third take action the connection with realism has been cracked. Also, through figure changing, specifically that of Sabina in to the actress, Wilder uses the same approach as the German playwright, of the forth wall membrane.
The presence of the stage manager on stage throughout the play Our Town is intended to alienate the reader, one method that Brecht used in his takes on as well. After producing the audience with the collection, a fairly simplistic collection design, the stage manager becomes an actor, his third role in the play. He is able to be regarded as a Greek tragedy chorus, immediately addressing the audience and getting together with it as by using degrees of response, the playwright ranges the audience.
Thornton Wilder's work acquires an everlasting quality through the themes it handles. One has to recognize how things are and this can only be performed by recognizing that there are fundamental states of being that will always be there.
After having completed the examination it can be stated that the epic genre is very poignant and psychological, not as identifiable as humor or tragedy, but where the audience is expected to act in response. One question performed come up while examining Brecht's two has and that is if it would be easy for epic to evoke, as one might think it might be the case of The Good Person of Schezwan. One needs to see a Brecht play performed in a Brechtian way, thus being alienated from the start. Both authors have come back to motherhood as women are represented as a community not only in Wilder's Our Town but also in Brecht's Good Person of Schezwan. One might collect out of this that the patriarchal world is coming round to motherhood even as read about stereotypical moms in Wilder's takes on.
