Bertolt Brecht Analysis

HEGEL AND BRECHT: THE CHARACTER AS A SUBJECT OR THE CHARACTER AS OBJECT.

The Epic Concept

The word Epic is deeply discussed under this chapter. Bertolt Brecht make use of the word epic theatre but Aristotle make use of the word differently as seen in his epic poetry, epic tragedy, and epic comedy. For Aristotle, the difference that he establishes from epic poetry and tragedy refers to the verse. He further asserts that epic poetry is a formal narrative unlike epic tragedy where actions happen in the past. However, Erwin Piscator, a friend of Brecht has in turn a complete concept on the meaning of Epic. He develops a different type of theatre that uses the same name as epic poetry but the actual theatre he created branches away from Aristotle theatre. Piscator used motion pictures, slides, graphics, in short, all the mechanisms or resources that can help to explain the reality present in the text of a work. The freedom of form was named by Piscator as epic form. This broke the emphatic tie and gave birth to an effect of Distance- an effect that was later adopted and used by Brecht. For instance when he first staged Sartre’s The Files in New York, wanting to make sure that every spectator understand that Sartre was speaking about his own country, occupied by the Nazi German armed

A perfect example of this is the experiment with the people’s theatre in Peru carried out by Integral Literacy Operation (Operation Alfabetization Integral [ ALFIN] ), directed by Alfanso Liaraburu and with the participation, in various sectors of Estela Linares, Luis Garrido Lecca, Ramon Vilcha, and Jesus Ruiz Durand. The method used for this program was derived from Paulo Freire. In 1973, the Government of Peru began a national literacy campaign with the objective of eradicating illiteracy from the country. The ALFIN project formulated two principle