Epic Theatre

Epic theatre is a form of didactic drama that encourages objectivity and the absence of empathy, and features an episodic structure and fractured narrative. The story line is often interrupted to address the audience directly with a particular argument, analysis, or documentation. Today, Epic theatre is most associated with Bertolt Brecht’s work from the late 1920s onwards. However, the development of the genre has a wider influence than Brecht alone. This guide explores the early origins of Epic theatre and discusses how Brecht developed them to create a very specific style and structure of theatrical performance.

Terminology

• Dialectical theatre: a label that the German modernist theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht came to prefer to Epic theatre near the end of his career
• Didactic: intended to teach, usually emphasising moral instruction.
• Episodic: containing or consisting of a series of separate parts or events.
• Gestus: a piece of physical action by actors on stage that communicates social meaning.
• Historicization: the alignment of a historical event in the past with current reality in order to comment on contemporary life.
• Nodal points: moments of decision.
• Tableaux: performers freeze in poses that create a picture of one important moment in the play.
• Verfremdungseffekt (V-effekt): a distancing device or defamiliarization effect.

Key Dates & Events

• 1898 - 1956 - Life of Bertolt Brecht.
• 1924 - Elisabeth Hauptmann first began to collaborate with Brecht and was the co-author of The Threepenny Opera (1928).
• 1927 - Brecht first collaborated with a young Kurt Weill on the political-satirical opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany (produced in 1930).
• February 1933 - Brecht left Nazi Germany fearing persection.
• May 1941 - Brecht moved to America.
• October 1947 - Brecht returned to Europe following interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
• 1949 - Brecht established the Berliner Ensemble in East Germany with his wife, Helene Weigel.
• 1956 - Brecht died of a heart attacked, aged 58.