What is epic theater? Brecht's legacy: German theater
1. Creation of a theater that would reveal the system of mechanisms of social causation
The term “epic theater” was first introduced by E. Piscator, but it gained wide aesthetic distribution thanks to the directorial and theoretical works of Bertolt Brecht. Brecht gave the term "epic theater" a new interpretation.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) – creator of the theory of epic theater, which expanded ideas about the possibilities and purpose of theater, as well as a poet, thinker, playwright, director, whose work predetermined the development of world theater of the 20th century.
His plays “The Good Man of Szechwan”, “What is This Soldier, What is That”, “The Threepenny Opera”, “Mother Courage and Her Children”, “Mr. Puntila and His Servant Matti”, “The Career of Arturo Ui, Which Might Not Have Been” , “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, “The Life of Galileo” and others - have long been translated into many languages and after the end of World War II they became firmly established in the repertoire of many theaters around the world. The huge array that makes up modern “Brecht studies” is devoted to understanding three problems:
1) Brecht’s ideological platform,
2) his theories of epic theater,
3) structural features, poetics and problematics of the plays of the great playwright.
Brecht brought to public attention and discussion the question of questions: why has the human community, since its inception, always existed, guided by the principle of exploitation of man by man? That is why the further, the more often and more justifiably Brecht’s plays are called not ideological dramas, but philosophical ones.
Brecht's biography was inseparable from the biography of the era, which was distinguished by fierce ideological battles and an extreme degree of politicization of public consciousness. For more than half a century, the life of the Germans took place in conditions of social instability and such severe historical cataclysms as the First and Second World Wars.
At the beginning of his creative career, Brecht was influenced by the expressionists. The essence of the innovative searches of the Expressionists stemmed from the desire not so much to explore the inner world of man, but to discover its dependence on the mechanisms of social oppression. From the expressionists, Brecht borrowed not only certain innovative techniques for constructing a play (refusal of linear construction of action, editing method, etc.). The experiences of the Expressionists prompted Brecht to delve deeper into the study of his own general idea - to create a type of theater (and therefore drama and acting) that would reveal with the utmost nakedness the system of mechanisms of social causality.
2. Analytical construction of the play (non-Aristotelian type of drama),
Brecht's parable plays.
Contrasting epic and dramatic forms of theater
To accomplish the task, he needs to create a structure for the play that would evoke in the audience not a traditional sympathetic perception of events, but an analytical attitude towards them. At the same time, Brecht constantly reminded that his version of theater does not at all reject either the inherent element of entertainment (entertainment) or emotional contagion inherent in the theater. It just shouldn’t be reduced to sympathy alone. This is where the first terminological opposition arose: “traditional Aristotelian theatre” (later Brecht increasingly replaced this term with a concept that more correctly expresses the meaning of his quest - “bourgeois”) - and “non-traditional”, “non-bourgeois”, “epic”. At one of the initial stages of developing the theory of epic theater, Brecht drew up the following scheme:
Brecht's system, initially outlined so schematically, was refined over the next few decades, and not only in theoretical works (the main ones are: notes to “The Threepenny Opera”, 1928; “Street Scene”, 1940; “Small Organon for the Theater”, 1949; “Dialectics on the Theater”, 1953), but also in plays that have a unique structure, as well as during the production of these plays, which required a special way of existence from the actor.
At the turn of the 20-30s. Brecht wrote a series of experimental plays, which he called “educational” (“Baden educational play on consent,” 1929; “Event,” 1930; “Exception and Rule,” 1930, etc.). It was in them that he first tested such an important technique of epicization as introducing a narrator onto the stage, narrating the background of the events taking place before the eyes of the audience. This character, not directly involved in the events, helped Brecht model at least two spaces on stage that reflected a variety of points of view on events, which, in turn, led to the emergence of a “supertext”. This intensified the audience’s critical attitude towards what they saw on stage.
In 1932, when staging the play “Mother” with a “Group of Young Actors”, separated from the theater “Junge Volks-Bühne” (Brecht wrote his play based on the novel of the same name by M. Gorky), Brecht uses this technique of epicization (introduction, if not the the figure of the narrator, then the elements of the story) at the level of no longer a literary, but a director’s device. One of the episodes was called “The Story of May Day, 1905.” The demonstrators on the stage stood huddled together, they were not going anywhere. The actors played an interrogation situation before the court, where their characters, as if during an interrogation, talked about what happened:
Andrey. Pelageya Vlasova walked next to me, closely following her son. When we went to pick him up in the morning, she suddenly came out of the kitchen, already dressed, and to our question: where was she going? - answered... Mother. With you.
Until this moment, Elena Weigel, who played Pelageya Vlasova, was visible in the background as a barely visible figure behind the others (small, wrapped in a scarf). During Andrei’s speech, the viewer began to see her face with surprised and incredulous eyes, and in response to her remark she stepped forward.
Andrey. Four or six of them rushed to capture the banner. The banner lay next to him. And then Pelageya Vlasova, our comrade, calm, unperturbed, leaned over and raised the banner. Mother. Give me the banner here, Smilgin, I said. Give! I'll carry him. All this will change yet.
Brecht significantly reconsiders the tasks facing the actor, diversifying the ways of his stage existence. The key concept of Brecht's theory of epic theater is alienation, or defamiliarization.
Brecht draws attention to the fact that in traditional “bourgeois” European theater, which seeks to immerse the viewer in psychological experiences, the viewer is invited to fully identify the actor and the role.
3. Developing different ways of acting (defamiliarization)
Brecht proposes to consider the “street scene” as the prototype of epic theater, when some event took place in life and eyewitnesses try to reproduce it. In his famous article, which is called “The Street Scene,” he emphasizes: “An essential element of the street scene is the naturalness with which the street storyteller behaves in an ambivalent position; he constantly gives us an account of two situations at once. He behaves naturally as a portrayer and shows the natural behavior of the person portrayed. But he never forgets and never allows the viewer to forget that he is not the one being portrayed, but the one representing. That is, what the public sees is not some independent, contradictory third being, in which the contours of the first (depicting) and second (depicting) have merged, as the theater that is familiar to us demonstrates in its productions. The opinions and feelings of the person depicting and the person depicted are not identical.”
This is exactly how Elena Weigel played her Antigone, staged by Brecht in 1948 in the Swiss city of Chur, based on her own adaptation of the ancient original. At the end of the performance, a choir of elders escorted Antigone to the cave in which she was to be walled up alive. Bringing her a jug of wine, the elders consoled the victim of violence: she would die, but with honor. Antigone calmly replies: “You shouldn’t be indignant about me, it would be better if you accumulated discontent against injustice in order to turn your anger to the common good!” And turning, she leaves with a light and firm step; it seems as if it is not the guardian who is leading her, but she is leading him. But Antigone went to her death. Weigel never played in this scene the direct manifestations of grief, confusion, despair, and anger that are usual for traditional psychological theater. The actress played, or rather, showed the audience this episode as a long-ago accomplished fact, remaining in her – Elena Weigel’s – memory as a bright memory of the heroic and uncompromising act of young Antigone.
What was also important about Antigone Weigel was that the young heroine was played by the forty-eight-year-old actress, who had gone through the difficult trials of fifteen years of emigration, without makeup. The initial condition of her play (and Brecht’s production) was: “I, Weigel, show Antigone.” The personality of the actress rose above Antigone. Behind the ancient Greek story stood the fate of Weigel herself. She filtered Antigone’s actions through her own life experience: her heroine was guided not by an emotional impulse, but by wisdom gained through harsh life experience, not by the foresight given by the gods, but by personal conviction. Here we were not talking about childhood ignorance of death, but about the fear of death and overcoming this fear.
It should be especially emphasized that the development of various methods of acting in itself was not an end in itself for Brecht. By changing the distance between the actor and the role, as well as the actor and the spectator, Brecht sought to present the problem of the play in a diversified way. For the same purpose, Brecht organizes the dramatic text in a special way. In almost all the plays that made up Brecht's classical legacy, the action takes place, to use modern vocabulary, in “virtual space and time.” Thus, in “The Good Man of Szechwan,” the author’s first remark warns that in the province of Szechwan all the places on the globe where man exploits man were generalized. In "Caucasian Chalk Circle" the action supposedly takes place in Georgia, but it is the same fictional Georgia as Sezuan. In “What is this soldier, what is that” - the same fictional China, etc. The subtitle of “Mother Courage” states that this is a chronicle of the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century, but we are talking about the situation of war in principle. The remoteness of the events depicted in time and space allowed the author to reach the level of large generalizations; it is not for nothing that Brecht’s plays are often characterized as parabolas and parables. It was the modeling of “defamiliarized” situations that allowed Brecht to assemble his plays from heterogeneous “pieces,” which, in turn, required the actors to use different ways of existing on stage in one performance.
4. The play “Mother Courage and Her Children” as an example of the embodiment of Brecht’s aesthetic and ethical ideas
An ideal example of the embodiment of Brecht’s ethical and aesthetic ideas was the play “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1949), where the main character was played by Elena Weigel.
The huge stage with a round horizon is mercilessly illuminated by the general light - everything here is in full view, or under a microscope. No decorations. Above the stage there is an inscription: “Sweden. Spring 1624." The silence is interrupted by the creaking of the stage turntable. Gradually the sounds of military horns join him - louder, louder. And when the harmonica began to sound, a van rolled onto the stage in a (second) circle rotating in the opposite direction; it was full of goods, with a drum dangling from the side. This is the camp house of the regimental sutler Anna Fierling. Her nickname - "Mother Courage" - is written in large letters on the side of the van. Harnessed to the shafts, the van is pulled by her two sons, and her mute daughter Catherine is on the trestle, playing the harmonica. Courage herself - in a long pleated skirt, a quilted jacket, a scarf tied at the ends at the back of her head - leaned back freely, sitting next to Catherine, grabbed her hand on the top of the van, the overly long sleeves of the jacket were conveniently rolled up, and on her chest, in a special buttonhole, was a tin spoon . Objects in Brecht's performances were present at the level of characters. Courage constantly interacted with the stirrup: van, spoon, bag, wallet. The spoon on Weigel’s chest is like an order in her buttonhole, like a banner above a column. The spoon is a symbol of overactive adaptability. Courage easily, without thinking, and most importantly, without a twinge of conscience, changes the banners over her van (depending on who wins on the battlefield), but never parted with the spoon - her own banner, which she worships as an icon, because Courage feeds on war . The van at the beginning of the performance appears full of goods, but at the end it is empty and in tatters. But the main thing is that Courage will carry it alone. She will lose all her children in the war that feeds her: “If you want bread from the war, give it meat.”
The task of the actress and director was not at all to create a naturalistic illusion. The objects in her hands, the hands themselves, her entire pose, the sequence of movements and actions - all these are details necessary in the development of the plot, in showing the process. These details stood out, enlarged, and came closer to the viewer, like a close-up in cinema. Slowly selecting and working out these details during rehearsals, she sometimes aroused the impatience of the actors, who were accustomed to working “by temperament.”
Brecht's main actors at first were Elena Weigel and Ernst Busch. But already in the Berliner Ensemble he managed to train a whole galaxy of actors. Among them are Gisela May, Hilmer Tate, Ekehard Schall and others. However, neither they nor Brecht himself (unlike Stanislavsky) developed a system for educating an actor in the epic theater. And yet, Brecht’s legacy attracted and continues to attract not only theater researchers, but also many outstanding actors and directors of the second half of the 20th century.
Bertolt Brecht was an outstanding reformer of Western theater, he created a new type of drama and a new theory, which he called “epic”.
What was the essence of Brecht's theory? According to the author's idea, it was supposed to be a drama in which the main role was given not to the action, which was the basis of the “classical” theater, but to the story (hence the name “epic”). In the process of such a story, the scene had to remain just a scene, and not a “plausible” imitation of life, the character - a role played by the actor (as opposed to the traditional practice of “reincarnation” of the actor into a hero), the depicted - exclusively a stage sketch, specially freed from illusion "semblance" of life.
In an effort to recreate the “story,” Brecht replaced the classical division of drama into actions and acts with a chronicle composition, according to which the plot of the play was created by chronologically interconnected pictures. In addition, various comments were introduced into the “epic drama”, which also brought it closer to a “story”: titles that described the content of the paintings; songs (“zongs”), which further explained what was happening on stage; actors' addresses to the public; inscriptions projected onto the screen, etc.
Traditional theater (“dramatic” or “Aristotelian”, since its laws were formulated by Aristotle) enslaves the viewer, according to Brecht, with the illusion of verisimilitude, completely immersing him in empathy, not allowing him the opportunity to see what is happening from the outside. Brecht, who had a keen sense of sociality, considered the main task of the theater to be the education in the viewer of class consciousness and readiness for political struggle. Such a task, in his opinion, could be accomplished by “epic theater,” which, as opposed to traditional theater, appeals not to the feelings of the viewer, but to his mind. Representing not the embodiment of events on stage, but a story about what has already happened, it maintains an emotional distance between the stage and the audience, forcing not so much to empathize with what is happening, but to analyze it.
The basic principle of epic theater is the “alienation effect,” a set of techniques by which a familiar and familiar phenomenon is “alienated,” “detached,” that is, unexpectedly appears from an unfamiliar, new side, causing “surprise and curiosity” in the viewer, stimulating “critical position in relation to the events depicted,” prompting social action. The “alienation effect” in plays (and later in Brecht’s performances) was achieved by a complex of expressive means. One of them is an appeal to already known plots (“The Threepenny Opera”, “Mother Courage and Her Children”, “Caucasian Chalk Circle”, etc.), focusing the viewer’s attention not on what will happen, but on how it will happen take place. Another is zongs, songs introduced into the fabric of the play, but not being a continuation of the action, but stopping it. Zong creates a distance between the actor and the character, since it expresses the attitude towards what is happening not of the character, but of the author and performer of the role. Hence the special, “Brechtian” way of existence of an actor in a role, always reminding the viewer that before him is theater, and not “a piece of life.”
Brecht emphasized that the “alienation effect” is not a feature of his aesthetics alone, but is initially characteristic of art, which is always not identical to life. In developing the theory of epic theater, he relied on many principles of Enlightenment aesthetics and the experience of Eastern theater, in particular Chinese. The main theses of this theory were finally formulated by Brecht in the works of the 1940s: “Buying Copper”, “Street Scene” (1940), “Small Organon” for the Theater (1948).
The “alienation effect” was the core that permeated all levels of the “epic drama”: the plot, the system of images, artistic details, language, etc., right down to the scenery, features of acting technique and stage lighting.
"Berliner Ensemble"
The Berliner Ensemble Theater was actually created by Bertolt Brecht in the late autumn of 1948. Finding himself stateless and without permanent residence after his return to Europe from the United States, Brecht and his wife, actress Helena Weigel, were warmly welcomed in the eastern sector of Berlin in October 1948. The theater on Schiffbauerdamm, which Brecht and his colleague Erich Engel inhabited back in the late 20s (in this theater, in particular, in August 1928, Engel staged the first production of “The Threepenny Opera” by Brecht and K. Weill), was occupied by the Volksbühne troupe ", whose building was completely destroyed; Brecht did not consider it possible for the team headed by Fritz Wisten to survive from the Theater on Schiffbauerdamm, and for the next five years his troupe was sheltered by the Deutsches Theater.
The Berliner Ensemble was created as a studio theater at the Deutsche Theater, which had recently been headed by Wolfgang Langhof, who had returned from exile. Developed by Brecht and Langhof, the “Studio Theater Project” envisaged in the first season attracting eminent actors from emigration “through short tours”, including Therese Giese, Leonard Steckel and Peter Lorre. In the future, it was planned to “create our own ensemble on this basis.”
Brecht invited his longtime associates to work in the new theater - director Erich Engel, artist Caspar Neher, composers Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau.
Brecht spoke impartially about the German theater of that time: “...External effects and false sensitivity became the main trump card of the actor. Models worthy of imitation were replaced by emphasized pomp, and genuine passion by feigned temperament.” Brecht considered the struggle to preserve peace to be the most important task for any artist, and the emblem of the theater, placed on its curtain, was Pablo Picasso's dove of peace.
In January 1949, the premiere of Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, a joint production by Erich Engel and the author, took place; Helena Weigel played the role of Courage, Angelika Hurwitz played Katrin, and Paul Bildt played the Cook. " Brecht began working on the play in exile on the eve of World War II. “When I was writing,” he later admitted, “I imagined that from the stages of several large cities the playwright’s warning would sound, a warning that anyone who wants to have breakfast with the devil must stock up on a long spoon. Maybe I was naive in doing so... The performances I dreamed of did not take place. Writers cannot write as quickly as governments start wars: after all, to write, you have to think... “Mother Courage and Her Children” is late.” Begun in Denmark, which Brecht was forced to leave in April 1939, the play was completed in Sweden in the autumn of the same year, when the war was already underway. But, despite the opinion of the author himself, the performance was an exceptional success, its creators and performers of the main roles were awarded the National Prize; in 1954, Mother Courage, with an updated cast (Ernst Busch played the cook, Erwin Geschonneck played the priest) was presented at the World Theater Festival in Paris and received 1st prize - for best play and best production (Brecht and Engel).
On April 1, 1949, the SED Politburo decided: “To create a new theater group under the leadership of Elena Weigel. This ensemble will begin its activities on September 1, 1949 and will play three plays of a progressive nature during the 1949-1950 season. The performances will be performed on the stage of the Deutsches Theater or the Kammertheater in Berlin and will be included in the repertoire of these theaters for six months.” September 1st became the official birthday of the Berliner Ensemble; “three plays of a progressive nature” staged in 1949 were “Mother Courage” and “Mr. Puntila” by Brecht and “Vassa Zheleznova” by A. M. Gorky, with Giese in the title role. Brecht's troupe gave performances on the stage of the Deutsches Theater and toured extensively in the GDR and other countries. In 1954, the team received the building of the Theater on Schiffbauerdamm at its disposal.
List of used literature
http://goldlit.ru/bertolt-brecht/83-brecht-epic-teatr
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brecht,_Bertolt
http://to-name.ru/biography/bertold-breht.htm
http://lib.ru/INPROZ/BREHT/breht5_2_1.txt_with-big-pictures.html
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Courage_and_her_children
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/bse/68831/Berliner
"Epic Theater"
Brecht dramatic epic theater
In his works “On the Way to the Modern Theatre”, “Dialectics in the Theatre”, “On Non-Aristotelian Drama” and others, published in the late 20s and early 20s, Brecht criticized contemporary modernist art and outlined the main provisions of his theory of “epic theater” . Certain provisions relate to acting, dramatic construction, theatrical music, scenery, use of cinema, etc. Brecht called his dramaturgy “non-Aristotelian”, “epic”. This name is due to the fact that traditional drama is built according to the laws formulated by Aristotle in his work “Poetics”. They required the actor to become emotionally involved in the character.
Brecht based his theory on reason. “Epic theater appeals not so much to the senses as to the reason of the spectator,” wrote Bertolt Brecht. In his opinion, the theater was supposed to become a school of thought, show life from a truly scientific position, in a broad historical perspective, promote advanced ideas, help the viewer understand the changing world and change themselves. Brecht emphasized that his theater should become a theater “for people who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands,” that it should not only reflect events, but also actively influence them, stimulate, awaken the activity of the viewer, force him not to empathize, but to argue , take a critical position, take an active part. At the same time, the writer himself did not at all shy away from the desire to influence both feelings and emotions.
If drama presupposes active action and a passive viewer, then epic, on the contrary, presupposes an active listener or reader. It was precisely from this understanding of theater that Brecht’s idea of an active spectator, ready to think, emerged. And thinking, as Brecht said, is something that precedes action.
However, it was impossible to create an existing theater using aesthetics alone. Brecht wrote: “In order to eliminate this theater, that is, in order to abolish it, remove it, sell it off, it is already necessary to involve science, just as to eliminate all kinds of superstitions we also involved science” B. Brecht “Conversation on Cologne Radio.” And such a science, according to the writer, should have become sociology, that is, the doctrine of the relationship of man to man. She had to prove that Shakespearean drama, which is the basis of all drama, no longer has the right to exist. This is explained by the fact that those relationships that made it possible for the drama to appear have historically outlived their usefulness. In the article “Shouldn’t we eliminate aesthetics?” Brecht directly pointed out that capitalism itself destroys drama and thereby creates the preconditions for a new theater. “The theater must be revised as a whole - not only the texts, not only the actors, or even the entire character of the production, this restructuring must involve the viewer, must change his position,” writes Brecht in the article “Dialectical Dramaturgy.” In epic theater, the individual ceases to be the center of the performance, so groups of people appear on stage, within which an individual takes a certain position. At the same time, Brecht emphasizes that not only the theater, but also the viewer himself must become collectivist. In other words, epic theater must involve whole masses of people in its action. “This means,” Brecht continues, “the individual, even as a spectator, ceases to be the center of the theater. He is no longer a private citizen who “honors” the theater with his visit, allowing the actors to act out something before him, consuming the work of the theater; he is no longer a consumer, no, he must produce himself.”
To implement the provisions of the “epic theater,” Brecht used in his work the “alienation effect,” that is, an artistic technique whose purpose is to show the phenomena of life from an unusual side, to force one to look at them differently, to critically evaluate everything that happens on stage. To this end, Brecht often introduces choruses and solo songs into his plays, which explain and evaluate the events of the play, revealing the ordinary from an unexpected side. The “alienation effect” is also achieved by the acting system. With the help of this effect, the actor presents the so-called “social gesture” in an “alienated” form. By “social gesture” Brecht understands the expression in facial expressions and gestures of social relations that exist between people of a certain era. To do this, it is necessary to depict every event as historical. “A historical event is a transitory, unique event associated with a certain era. In the course of it, relationships between people are formed, and these relationships are not just universal, eternal in nature, they are distinguished by their specificity, and they are criticized from the point of view of the subsequent era. Continuous development alienates us from the actions of people who lived before us.”B. Brecht “A brief description of a new acting technique that causes the so-called “alienation effect.” This effect, according to Brecht, makes it possible to make striking those events of everyday life that seem natural and familiar to the viewer.
According to Brecht's theory, epic theater should tell the viewer about certain life situations and problems, while maintaining conditions under which the viewer would maintain, if not calm, then control over his feelings. So that the viewer would not succumb to the illusions of stage action, would observe, think, determine his principled position and make decisions.
In 1936, Brecht formulated a comparative characteristic of dramatic and epic theater: “The spectator of a dramatic theater say: yes, I already felt it too. That's how I am. This is quite natural. It'll be this way forever. The suffering of this man shocks me, because there is no way out for him. This is great art: everything in it goes without saying. I cry with those who cry, I laugh with those who laugh. The spectator of the epic theater says this I would never have thought. This should not be done. This is extremely amazing, almost incredible. This must end. The suffering of this man shocks me, because a way out is still possible for him. This is great art: nothing in it goes without saying. I laugh at those who cry, I cry at those who laugh” B. Brecht “The Theory of Epic Theater”. To create such theater requires the joint efforts of a playwright, director and actor. Moreover, for an actor this requirement is of a special nature. An actor must show a certain person in certain circumstances, and not just be him. At some moments of his stay on stage, he must stand next to the image he creates, that is, be not only its embodiment, but also its judge.
This does not mean that Bertolt Brecht completely denied feelings in theatrical practice, that is, the merging of the actor with the image. However, he believed that such a state could occur only momentarily and, in general, should be subordinated to a reasonably thought-out and consciously determined interpretation of the role.
Bertolt Brecht paid great attention to scenery. He demanded that the stage builder thoroughly study the plays, take into account the wishes of the actors and constantly experiment. All this served as the key to creative success. “The stage builder should not put anything in a once and for all fixed place,” Brecht believes, “but he should not change or move anything for no reason, for he gives a reflection of the world, and the world changes according to laws that are far from completely open” B. Brecht "On the design of the stage in the non-Aristotelian theater." At the same time, the stage builder must remember the critical gaze of the viewer. And if the viewer does not have such a look, then the task of the stage builder is to endow the viewer with it.
Music is also important in the theater. Brecht believed that in the era of the struggle for socialism, its social significance increases significantly: “Whoever believes that the masses who have risen to fight unbridled violence, oppression and exploitation are alien to serious and at the same time pleasant and rational music as a means of promoting social ideas, he I did not understand one very important aspect of this struggle. However, it is clear that the impact of such music depends largely on how it is performed” B. Brecht “On the use of music in the “epic theater”. Therefore, the performer must comprehend the social meaning of the music, which will make it possible to evoke in the viewer an appropriate attitude towards the action on stage.
Another feature of Brecht's works is that they have rather explicit subtext. Thus, one of the most famous plays, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” was created at the time when Hitler unleashed the Second World War. And although the historical basis of this work was the events of the Thirty Years' War, the play itself, and especially the image of its main character, acquires a timeless sound. Essentially, this is a work about life and death, about the influence of historical events on human life.
At the center of the play is Anna Fierling, who is better known as Mother Courage. For her, war is a way of existence: she pulls her van after the army, where everyone can purchase the necessary goods. The war brought her three children, who were born from different soldiers from different armies, the war became the norm for Mother Courage. For her, the reasons for the war are indifferent. She doesn't care who the winner is. However, the same war takes everything away from Mother Courage: one by one, her three children die, and she herself is left alone. Brecht's play ends with a scene in which Mother Courage herself is pulling her wagon after the army. But even in the finale, mother did not change her thoughts about the war. What is important for Brecht is that the epiphany came not to the hero, but to the viewer. This is the meaning of “epic theater”: the viewer himself must condemn or support the hero. Thus, in the play “Mother Courage and Her Children,” the author makes the main character condemn the war and ultimately understand that war is destructive and merciless to everyone and everything. But Courage never receives an “epiphany.” Moreover, the very business of Mother Courage cannot exist without war. And therefore, despite the fact that the war took her children, Mother Courage needs war, war is the only way for her to exist.
Bertolt Brecht and his "epic theater"
Bertolt Brecht is the largest representative of German literature of the 20th century, an artist of great and multifaceted talent. He has written plays, poems, and short stories. He is a theater figure, director and theorist of the art of socialist realism. Brecht's plays, truly innovative in their content and form, have traveled to theaters in many countries around the world, and everywhere they find recognition among the widest circles of spectators.
Brecht was born in Augsburg, into a wealthy family of a paper mill director. Here he studied at the gymnasium, then studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Munich. Brecht began writing while still in high school. Beginning in 1914, his poems, short stories, and theater reviews began to appear in the Augsburg newspaper Volkswile.
In 1918, Brecht was drafted into the army and served as an orderly in a military hospital for about a year. In the hospital, Brecht heard plenty of stories about the horrors of war and wrote his first anti-war poems and songs. He himself composed simple melodies for them and, with a guitar, clearly pronouncing the words, performed in the wards in front of the wounded. Among these works especially “Ballada” stood out about a dead soldier”, which condemned the German military, which imposed war on the working people.
When the revolution began in Germany in 1918, Brecht took an active part in it, although And I didn’t quite clearly imagine its goals and objectives. He was elected a member of the Augsburg Soldiers' Council. But the greatest impression on the poet was made by the news of the proletarian revolution V Russia, about the formation of the world's first state of workers and peasants.
It was during this period that the young poet finally broke with his family, with his class and “joined the ranks of the poor.”
The result of the first decade of poetic creativity was the collection of Brecht’s poems “Home Sermons” (1926). Most of the poems in the collection are characterized by deliberate rudeness in depicting the ugly morality of the bourgeoisie, as well as hopelessness and pessimism caused by the defeat of the November Revolution of 1918
These ideological and political features of Brecht's early poetry characteristic and for his first dramatic works - "Baal",“Drums in the Night” and others. The strength of these plays lies in sincere contempt And condemnation of bourgeois society. Recalling these plays in his mature years, Brecht wrote that in them he was “without regrets showed how the great flood fills the bourgeois world".
In 1924, the famous director Max Reinhardt invites Brecht as a playwright to his theater in Berlin. Here Brecht gets closer With progressive writers F. Wolf, I. Becher, with the creator of the workers' revolutionary theater E. Piscator, actor E. Bush, composer G. Eisler and others close to him By spirit of artists. In this setting, Brecht gradually overcomes his pessimism, more courageous intonations appear in his works. The young dramatist creates satirical topical works, in which he sharply criticizes the social and political practices of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Such is the anti-war comedy “What is this soldier, what is that” (1926). She written at a time when German imperialism, after the suppression of the revolution, began to energetically restore industry with the help of American bankers. Reactionary elements Together with the Nazis, they united in various “bunds” and “vereins” and promoted revanchist ideas. The theater stage was increasingly filled with sappy, didactic dramas and action films.
Under these conditions, Brecht consciously strives for art that is close to the people, art that awakens the consciousness of people and activates their will. Rejecting decadent dramaturgy, which takes the viewer away from the most important problems of our time, Brecht advocates a new theater, designed to become an educator of the people, a conductor of advanced ideas.
In his works “On the Way to the Modern Theatre”, “Dialectics in the Theatre”, “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, etc., published in the late 20s and early 30s, Brecht criticizes contemporary modernist art and sets out the main provisions of his theory "epic theater." These provisions relate to acting, construction dramatic works, theatrical music, scenery, the use of cinema, etc. Brecht calls his dramaturgy “non-Aristotelian”, “epic”. This name is due to the fact that ordinary drama is built according to the laws formulated by Aristotle in his work “Poetics” and requiring the actor’s mandatory emotional adaptation to the character.
Brecht makes reason the cornerstone of his theory. “Epic theater,” says Brecht, “appeals not so much to the feelings as to the reason of the spectator.” Theater should become a school of thought, show life from a truly scientific perspective, in a broad historical perspective, promote advanced ideas, help the viewer understand the changing world and change themselves. Brecht emphasized that his theater should become a theater “for people who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands,” that it should not only reflect events, but also actively influence them, stimulate, awaken the activity of the viewer, force him not to to empathize, but to argue, to take a critical position in a dispute. At the same time, Brecht by no means renounces the desire to influence feelings and emotions.
To implement the provisions of the “epic theater”, Brecht uses in his creative practice the “alienation effect”, i.e. an artistic technique, the purpose of which is to show the phenomena of life from an unusual side, to force others to look differently. look at them, critically evaluate everything that happens on stage. To this end, Brecht often introduces choruses and solo songs into his plays, explaining and evaluating the events of the play, revealing the ordinary from an unexpected side. The “alienation effect” is also achieved by the acting system, stage design, and music. However, Brecht never considered his theory to be finally formulated and until the end of his life he worked on improving it.
Acting as a bold innovator, Brecht at the same time used all the best that was created by German and world theater in the past.
Despite the controversial nature of some of his theoretical positions, Brecht created truly innovative, combative drama, which has a keen ideological focus and great artistic merit. Through the means of art, Brecht fought for the liberation of his homeland, for its socialist future, and in his best works he acted as the largest representative of socialist realism in German and world literature.
In the late 20s - early 30s. Brecht created a series of “instructive plays” that continued the best traditions of workers’ theater and were intended for agitation and propaganda of progressive ideas. These include “The Baden Teaching Play”, “The Highest Measure”, “Saying “Yes” and Saying “Pet””, etc. The most successful of them are “St. Joan of the Slaughterhouses” and a dramatization of Gorky’s “Mother”.
During the years of emigration, Brecht's artistic skill reached its peak. He creates his best works, which made a great contribution to the development of German and world literature of socialist realism.
The satirical play-pamphlet “Roundheads and Sharpheads” is an evil parody of Hitler’s Reich; it exposes nationalist demagoguery. Brecht also does not spare the German inhabitants, who allowed the fascists to fool themselves with false promises.
The play “The Career of Arthur Wee, Which Might Not Have Happened” was written in the same sharply satirical manner.
The play allegorically recreates the history of the emergence of the fascist dictatorship. Both plays formed a kind of anti-fascist duology. They abounded in techniques of the “alienation effect,” fantasy and grotesquery in the spirit of the theoretical principles of “epic theater.”
It should be noted that, while speaking against the traditional “Aristotelian” drama, Brecht did not completely deny it in his practice. Thus, in the spirit of traditional drama, 24 one-act anti-fascist plays were written, included in the collection “Fear and Despair in the Third Empire” (1935-1938). In them, Brecht abandons his favorite conventional background and in the most direct, realistic ma-nere paints a tragic picture of the life of the German people in a country enslaved by the Nazis.
The play in this collection “Rifles” Teresa Carrar" in ideological relationship continues the line outlined in dramatization"Mothers" by Gorky. At the center of the play are the current events of the civil war in Spain and the debunking of the harmful illusions of apoliticality and non-intervention at the time of the historical trials of the nation. A simple Spanish woman from Andalusia, a fisherman Carrar I lost my husband in the war and now, afraid of losing my son, in every possible way prevents him from volunteering to fight against the Nazis. She naively believes in the assurances of the rebellious generals, What do you want Not neutral civilians were touched. She even refuses to hand over to the Republicans rifles, hidden from the dog. Meanwhile, the son, who was peacefully fishing, is shot by the Nazis from the ship with a machine gun. It is then that enlightenment occurs in Carrar’s consciousness. The heroine is freed from the harmful principle: “my house is on the edge” - And comes to the conclusion about the need to defend people's happiness with arms in hand.
Brecht distinguishes two types of theater: dramatic (or “Aristotelian”) and epic. The dramatic seeks to conquer the emotions of the viewer so that he experiences catharsis through fear and compassion, so that he surrenders with his whole being to what is happening on stage, empathizes, worries, losing the sense of the difference between theatrical action and real life, and feels like not a spectator of the play , but a person involved in actual events. Epic theater, on the contrary, must appeal to reason and teach, must, while telling the viewer about certain life situations and problems, must observe the conditions under which he would maintain, if not calm, then in any case control over his feelings and in fully armed with clear consciousness and critical thought, without succumbing to the illusions of stage action, he would observe, think, determine his principled position and make decisions.
To clearly identify the differences between dramatic and epic theater, Brecht outlined two series of characteristics.
No less expressive is the comparative characteristic of dramatic and epic theater, formulated by Brecht in 1936: “The spectator of a dramatic theater says: yes, I already felt this too. - That’s how I am. - This is quite natural. - So will always be. - The suffering of this person shocks me, because there is no way out for him. - This is great art: everything in it goes without saying. - I cry with the one who weeps, I laugh with the one who laughs.
The spectator of the epic theater says: I would never have thought of this. - This should not be done. - This is extremely amazing, almost unbelievable. - This must be put to an end. - The suffering of this man shocks me, for for him a way out is still possible. - This is great art: in it nothing goes without saying. - I laugh at the one who cries, I cry over the one who laughs.”
To create the distance between the viewer and the stage necessary so that the viewer can, as it were, “from the side” observe and conclude that he “laughs at the one who is crying and weeps at the one who laughs,” i.e., so that he sees further and understands more, than stage characters, so that his position in relation to the action is one of spiritual superiority and active decisions - this is the task that, according to the theory of epic theater, the playwright, director and actor must jointly solve. For the latter, this requirement is particularly binding. Therefore, an actor must show a certain person in certain circumstances, and not just be him. At some moments of his stay on stage, he must stand next to the image he creates, i.e., be not only its embodiment, but also its judge. This does not mean that Brecht completely denies “feeling” in theatrical practice, that is, the merging of the actor with the image. But he believes that such a state can occur only momentarily and, in general, must be subordinated to a reasonably thought-out and consciously determined interpretation of the role.
Brecht theoretically substantiates and introduces into his creative practice the so-called “alienation effect” as a fundamentally obligatory moment. He considers it as the main way of creating a distance between the viewer and the stage, creating the atmosphere provided for by the theory of epic theater in the attitude of the audience to the stage action; Essentially, the “alienation effect” is a certain form of objectification of the depicted phenomena; it is intended to disenchant the thoughtless automatism of the viewer’s perception. The viewer recognizes the subject of the image, but at the same time perceives its image as something unusual, “alienated”... In other words, with the help of the “alienation effect” the playwright, director, actor show certain life phenomena and human types not in their usual, familiar and familiar form, but from some unexpected and new side, forcing the viewer to be surprised, to look at it in a new way, it would seem. old and already known things, become more actively interested in them. to explore and understand them more deeply. “The meaning of this technique of “alienation effect,” explains Brecht, “is to instill in the viewer an analytical, critical position in relation to the events depicted” 19 > /
In Brecht's Art in all its spheres (drama, directing, etc.), “alienation” is used extremely widely and in the most diverse forms.
The chieftain of the robber gang - a traditional romantic figure of old literature - is depicted bending over a receipt and expenditure book, in which, according to all the rules of Italian accounting, the financial transactions of his “company” are described. Even in the last hours before execution, he balances debits with credits. Such an unexpected and unusually “alienated” perspective in the depiction of the criminal world quickly activates the viewer’s consciousness, leading him to a thought that may not have occurred to him before: a bandit is the same as a bourgeois, so who is a bourgeois - not a bandit? is it?
In the stage adaptation of his plays, Brecht also resorts to “alienation effects.” He introduces, for example, choirs and solo songs, so-called “songs,” into plays. These songs are not always performed as if “in the flow of action”, naturally fitting into what is happening on stage. On the contrary, they often pointedly fall out of the action, interrupt and “alienate” it, being performed on the proscenium and facing directly into the auditorium. Brecht even specifically emphasizes this moment of breaking the action and transferring the performance to another plane: during the performance of songs, a special emblem is lowered from the grate or special “cellular” lighting is turned on on the stage. Songs, on the one hand, are designed to destroy the hypnotic effect of the theater, to prevent the emergence of stage illusions, and, on the other hand, they comment on the events on stage, evaluate them, and contribute to the development of critical judgments of the public.
All production technology in Brecht's theater is replete with “alienation effects.” Changes on stage are often made with the curtain drawn back; the design is “suggestive” in nature - it is extremely sparing, containing “only what is necessary,” i.e., a minimum of decorations that convey the characteristic features of the place And time, And a minimum of props used and participating in the action; masks are used; the action is sometimes accompanied by inscriptions projected onto the curtain or backdrop and conveying in an extremely pointed aphoristic or paradoxical form social meaning plots, etc.
Brecht did not consider the “alienation effect” as a feature unique to his creative method. On the contrary, he proceeds from the fact that this technique is, to a greater or lesser extent, inherent in the nature of all art, since it is not reality itself, but only its image, which, no matter how close it is to life, still cannot be identical to her and therefore, it contains one or another measure convention, i.e. distance, “alienation” from the subject of the image. Brecht found and demonstrated various “alienation effects” in ancient and Asian theater, in the paintings of Bruegel the Elder and Cezanne, in the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Feuchtwanger, Joyce, etc. But unlike other artists, who "alienation" may be present spontaneously, Brecht, an artist of socialist realism, consciously brought this technique into close connection with the social goals that he pursued with his work.
Copy reality in order to achieve the greatest external resemblance in order to preserve its immediate sensory appearance as closely as possible, or “organize” reality in the process of its artistic depiction in order to fully and truthfully convey its essential features (of course, in a concrete image incarnation)—these are the two poles in the aesthetic problems of contemporary world art. Brecht takes a very definite, distinct position in relation to this alternative. “The usual opinion is,” he writes in one of his notes, “that a work of art is the more realistic the easier it is to recognize reality in it. I contrast this with the definition that a work of art is the more realistic, the more conveniently the reality is mastered in it for cognition.” Brecht considered the most convenient for understanding reality to be conventional, “alienated” forms of realistic art, which contain a high degree of generalization.
Being artist thoughts and attaching exceptional importance to the rationalistic principle in the creative process, Brecht always, however, rejected schematic, resonant, insensitive art. He is a mighty poet of the stage, addressing reason viewer, simultaneously searching And finds an echo in his feelings. The impression made by Brecht's plays and productions can be defined as “intellectual excitement,” that is, such a state of the human soul in which acute and intense work of thought arouses, as if by induction, an equally strong emotional reaction.
The theory of "epic theater" and the theory of "alienation" are the key to Brecht's entire literary work in all genres. They help to understand and explain the most significant and fundamentally important features of both his poetry and prose, not to mention his drama.
If the individual originality of Brecht’s early work was largely reflected in his attitude towards expressionism, then in the second half of the 20s, many of the most important features of Brecht’s worldview and style acquired special clarity and certainty, confronting the “new efficiency”. Much undoubtedly connected the writer with this direction - a greedy passion for the signs of modern life, an active interest in sports, the denial of sentimental daydreaming, archaic “beauty” and psychological “depths” in the name of the principles of practicality, concreteness, organization, etc. And at the same time, many things separated Brecht from the “new efficiency”, starting with his sharply critical attitude towards the American way of life. More and more imbued with the Marxist worldview, the writer entered into an inevitable conflict with one from the main philosophical postulates of the “new efficiency” - with the religion of technicalism. He rebelled against the tendency to assert the primacy of technology over social And humanistic principles life: The perfection of modern technology did not blind him so much that he did not weave in the imperfections of modern society, which was written on the eve of the Second World War. The ominous outlines of an impending catastrophe were already looming before the writer’s mind’s eye.
The Berlin Opera is the largest concert hall in the city. This elegant, minimalist building dates back to 1962 and was designed by Fritz Bornemann. The previous opera building was completely destroyed during World War II. About 70 operas are staged here every year. I usually go to all Wagner productions, the extravagant mythical dimension of which is fully revealed on the stage of the theater.
When I first moved to Berlin, my friends gave me a ticket to one of the productions at the Deutsches Theater. Since then it has been one of my favorite drama theaters. Two halls, a varied repertoire and one of the best acting troupes in Europe. Every season the theater shows 20 new performances.
Hebbel am Ufer is the most avant-garde theater, where you can see everything except classical productions. Here the audience is drawn into the action: they are spontaneously invited to weave lines into the dialogue on stage or to scratch on the turntables. Sometimes the actors do not appear on stage, and then the audience is invited to follow a list of addresses in Berlin to catch the action there. The HAU operates on three stages (each with its own program, focus and dynamics) and is one of the most dynamic modern theaters in Germany.
