Brecht epic theater as it will be in English. Brecht's legacy: German theater

The term "epic theater" was first introduced by E. Piscator, but it received 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) - German playwright, poet, publicist, director, theater theorist. He is a participant in the German Revolution of 1918. The first play was written by him in 1918. Brecht always took an active social position, which was manifested in his plays filled with an anti-bourgeois spirit. "Mother Courage and Her Children", "The Life of Galileo", "The Rise of Arthur Wie", "Caucasian Chalk Circle" are his most famous and repertoire plays. After Hitler came to power, Brecht emigrated from the country. He lived in many countries, including Finland, Denmark, the USA, creating at that time his anti-fascist works.

Brecht's theoretical views are set forth in the articles: "The Breadth and Diversity of the Realistic Manner of Writing", "Popularity and Realism", "Small Organon for the Theatre", "Dialectics in the Theatre", "Roundheads and Pointy Heads" and others. Brecht called his theory "epic theater". Brecht saw the main task of the theater as the ability to convey to the public the laws of the development of human society. In his opinion, the former drama, which he called "Aristotelian", cultivated feelings of pity and compassion for people. Instead of these feelings, Brecht calls on the theater to evoke the emotions of a social order - anger against the enslavers and admiration for the heroism of the fighters. Instead of dramaturgy, which counted on the empathy of the audience, Brecht puts forward principles for constructing plays that would cause surprise and effectiveness in the public, awareness of social problems. Brecht introduces a technique he called the "alienation effect", which consists in the fact that the well-known is presented to the public from an unexpected side. To do this, he resorts to breaking the stage illusion of "authenticity". He achieves fixing the viewer's attention on the most important thoughts of the author by introducing a song (zong), chorus into the performance. Brecht believed that the main task of the actor is social. He recommends that the actor approach the image created by the playwright from the position of a witness in court, passionately interested in finding out the truth (the "from the witness" method), that is, to comprehensively analyze the actions of the character and their motives. Brecht allows actor's reincarnation, but only during the rehearsal period, while on the stage the "showing" of the image takes place. Mise-en-scènes should be extremely expressive and saturated - up to a metaphor, a symbol. Brecht, working on the performance, built it on the principle of a film frame. To this end, he used the "model" method, that is, fixing on film the most striking mise-en-scenes and individual poses of the actor in order to fix them. Brecht was an opponent of the illusory nature recreated on the stage of the environment, an opponent of the "atmosphere of moods".

In Brecht's theater of the first period, the main method of work was the method of induction. In 1924, Brecht first acted as a director, staging the play The Life of Edward II of England at the Munich Chamber Theatre. Here he completely deprived his performance of the pomposity and ahistoricity that is customary for staging this kind of classic. The discussion about staging classical plays at that time in the German theater was in full swing. The expressionists were in favor of a radical reworking of the plays, because they were written in a different historical era. Brecht also believed that modernizing the classics could not be avoided, but believed that the play should not be completely deprived of historicism. He paid great attention to the elements of the square, folk theater, with their help enlivening his performances.

In the play "Eduard's Life..." Brecht creates a rather harsh and prosaic atmosphere on the stage. All characters were dressed in canvas costumes. Instead of the throne on the stage was placed a roughly knocked together chair, and next to it was a hastily constructed tribune for the speakers of the English Parliament. King Edward somehow awkwardly and uncomfortablely fit in an armchair, and around him stood the lords, huddled together. The struggle of these statesmen in the performance turned into scandals and squabbles, while the motives and thoughts of the actors were not at all distinguished by nobility. Each of them wanted to snatch his tidbit. Brecht, an inveterate materialist, believed that modern directors do not always take into account material incentives in the behavior of actors. On the contrary, he focused on them. In this first Brechtian production, the realism of the performance was born from a detailed, close examination of the smallest and most insignificant (at first glance) events and details. The main design element of the performance was a wall with many windows placed in the background of the stage. When, in the course of the play, the indignation of the people reached its climax, all the window shutters were opened, angry faces appeared in them, shouts, replicas of indignation were heard. And all this merged into a general rumble of indignation. The popular uprising was drawing near. But how could the battle scenes be solved? Brecht was prompted by a famous clown in his time. Brecht asked Valentine - what is a soldier like during a battle? And the clown answered him: "White as chalk, they won't kill him - he will be whole." All the soldiers of the performance performed in solid white make-up. Brekh will repeat this successful technique he has found several times in different variations.

After moving to Berlin in 1924, Brecht worked for some time in the literary section of the Deutsches Theatre, dreaming of opening his own theatre. In the meantime, in 1926, he, with young actors from the Deutsches Theater, is staging his early play Baal. In 1931, he worked on the Staatsteater stage, where he released a performance based on his play "What is this soldier, what is this", and in 1932, on the stage of the "Teater am Schiffbau-erdamm", he staged the play "Mother".

The building of the theater on the Schiffbauerdamm went to Brecht quite by accident. In 1928, the young actor Ernst Aufricht rents it and begins to assemble his troupe. The artist Kaspar Neher introduces Brecht to a theater tenant and they begin to work together. Brecht, in turn, invites director Erich Engel (1891-1966) to the theater, with whom he worked together back in Munich and who, together with Brecht, developed the style of the epic theater.

The Theater am Schiffbauerdamm opened with Brecht's Threepenny Opera directed by Erich Engel. The performance, in Yurekht's description, had the following appearance: "...In the back of the stage there was a large fairground hurdy-gurdy, jazz was located on the steps. When the music was playing, the multi-colored lights on the hurdy-gurdy flashed brightly. To the right and left there were two giant screens on which they projected pictures of Neher. During the performance of songs, their names appeared in large letters and lamps descended from the grate. To mix dilapidation with newness, luxury with squalor, the curtain was a small, not very clean piece of coarse calico moving along the wire. " The director for each episode found a fairly accurate theatrical form. He made extensive use of the mounting method. Nevertheless, Agnel brought to the stage not only social masks and ideas, but behind simple human actions he also saw psychological motives for behavior, and not just social ones. The music written by Kurt Weil played a significant role in this performance. These were zongs, each of which was also a separate number and was a "removing monologue" of the author of the play and the director of the play.

During the performance of the zong, the actor spoke on his own behalf, and not on behalf of his character. The performance turned out to be sharp, paradoxical, bright.

The theater troupe was rather heterogeneous. It included actors of different experience and different schools. Some have just started their artistic career, others are already accustomed to fame and popularity. But still, the director created a single ensemble of actors in his performance. Brecht highly valued this work by Engel and considered The Threepenny Opera to be an important practical embodiment of the idea of ​​epic theater.

Simultaneously with his work in this theater, Brecht tries his hand at other stages, with other actors. In the aforementioned 1931 production of his play "What is that soldier, what is that" Brecht arranged a farce on the stage - with disguise, masks, circus numbers. He frankly uses the techniques of the fair theater, unfolding a parable before the public. “They walked around the stage, holding on to the wire so as not to fall off the stilts hidden in their trousers, giant soldiers, hung with weapons, in tunics, smeared with lime, blood, and excrement ... Two soldiers, covering themselves with oilcloth and hanging the trunk of a gas mask in front, depicted elephant ... The last scene of the play - from the parted crowd to the fore runs out with a knife in his teeth, hung with grenades, in a uniform that stinks of trench mud, yesterday's timid and well-intentioned inhabitant, today's machine for killing people, "- this is how the critic spoke about the performance. Brecht portrayed the soldiers as a non-arguing gang. They, with the course of the performance, lost their human appearance, turned into ugly monsters, with disproportionate body proportions (long arms). According to Brecht, they were turned into this likeness of animals by the inability to think and evaluate their actions. Such was the time - the Weimar Republic was dying in front of everyone. Fascism was ahead. Brecht said that he retained in his performance the signs of the times born in the 1920s, but strengthened them by comparing them with modernity.

Brecht's last directorial work of this period was the play-arrangement of Gorky's novel Mother (1932). It was an attempt to once again embody the principles of epic theater on stage. The inscriptions, posters that commented on the course of events, the analysis of what was depicted, the refusal to get used to the images, the rational construction of the entire performance, spoke of its direction - the performance appealed not to the feelings, but to the mind of the viewer. The performance was ascetic in pictorial terms, as if the director did not want anything to prevent the audience from thinking. Brecht taught - taught with the help of his revolutionary pedagogy. This performance, after several performances, was banned by the police. The censorship was outraged by the final scene of the performance, when the Mother with a red flag in her hand walked in the ranks of her comrades in the struggle. The column of demonstrators literally moved towards the public ... and stopped at the very line of the ramp. It was the last revolutionary performance shown on the eve of Hitler's rise to power. In the period from 1933 to 1945, there were essentially two theaters in Germany: one - the propaganda organ of the Hitler regime, the other - living in the thoughts, projects and plans of all those who were cut off from their soil, the theater of exiles. Nevertheless, the experience of Brecht's epic theater entered the treasury of the theatrical ideas of the 20th century. They will use it more than once, including on our stage, especially in the Taganka Theater.

B. Brecht will return to East Germany and create there one of the largest theaters in the GDR - the Berliner Ensemble.

A striking phenomenon of theatrical art of the XX century. became "epic theater" German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). From the arsenal of epic art, he used many methods - commenting on the event from the side, slowing down the course of action and its unexpectedly fast new turn. At the same time, Brecht expanded the drama at the expense of the lyrics. The performance included performances by the choir, song-zongs, original insert numbers, most often not related to the plot of the play. Zongs to the music of Kurt Weil for the play The Threepenny Opera (1928) and Paul Dessau for the production of the play were especially popular. "Mother Courage and her children" (1939).

In Brecht's performances, inscriptions and posters were widely used, which served as a kind of commentary on the action of the play. Inscriptions could also be projected onto the screen, "alienating" the audience from the immediate content of the scenes (for example, "Don't stare so romantically!"). Every now and then the author switched the minds of the audience from one reality to another. A singer or narrator appeared before the audience, commenting on what was happening in a completely different way than the characters could do. This effect in Brecht's theatrical system is called “alienation effect” (people and phenomena appeared

in front of the viewer from the most unexpected side). Instead of heavy curtains, only a small piece of fabric was left to emphasize that the stage is not a special magical place, but only part of the everyday world. Brecht wrote:

“... The theater is designed not to create the illusion of lifelikeness, but, on the contrary, to destroy it, to “detach”, “alienate” the viewer from the depicted, thereby creating a new, fresh perception.”

Brecht's theatrical system took shape over thirty years, constantly refined and improved. Its main provisions can be represented as follows:

Questions for self-control

1. What aesthetic principles underlie the “Stanislavsky system”?

2. What famous performances were staged at the Moscow Art Theater?

3. What does the concept of "super task" mean?

4. How do you understand the term "art of reincarnation"?

5. What is the role of the director in Stanislavsky's "system"?

6. What principles underlie B. Brecht's theater?

7. How do you understand the main principle of B. Brecht's theater - "the effect of alienation"?

8. What is the difference between Stanislavsky's "system" and B. Brecht's theatrical principles?

“... at the heart of stage theory and practice Brecht lies the "alienation effect" (Verfremdungseffekt), which is easily confused with the etymologically close "alienation" (Entfremdung) Marx.

To avoid confusion, it is most convenient to illustrate the effect of alienation on the example of a theatrical production, where it occurs on several levels at once:

1) The plot of the play contains two stories, one of which is a parabola (allegory) of the same text with a deeper or "modern" meaning; often Brecht takes well-known subjects, pushing "form" and "content" in an irreconcilable conflict.

3) Plastic informs about the stage character and his social appearance, his attitude to the world of work (gestus, “social gesture”).

4) Diction does not psychologize the text, but recreates its rhythm and theatrical texture.

5) In acting, the performer does not reincarnate as the character of the play, he shows him, as it were, at a distance, distancing himself.

6) The rejection of the division into acts in favor of the "montage" of episodes and scenes and from the central figure (hero), around which classical dramaturgy was built (decentred structure).

7) Appeals to the audience, zongs, changing the scenery in full view of the viewer, the introduction of newsreels, titles and other "comments on the action" are also techniques that undermine the stage illusion. Patrice Pavy, Dictionary of the theatre, M., Progress, 1991, p. 211.

Separately, these techniques are found in the ancient Greek, Chinese, Shakespearean, Chekhov theater, not to mention the contemporary productions of Brecht by Piscator (with whom he collaborated), Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Eisenstein(of which he knew) and agitprop. Brecht's innovation lay in the fact that he gave them a systematic, turned into a dominant aesthetic principle. Generally speaking, this principle is valid for any artistic self-reflexive language, a language that has achieved "self-consciousness". With regard to the theater, we are talking about a purposeful "exposing the reception", "showing the show".

The political implications of “alienation,” as well as the term itself, did not arrive immediately at Brecht. It required an acquaintance (through Karl Korsch) with Marxist theory and (through Sergei Tretyakov) with the "strangement" of the Russian Formalists. But already in the early 1920s, he took an uncompromising position in relation to the bourgeois theater, which has a soporific, hypnotic effect on the audience, turning it into a passive object (in Munich, where Brecht began, then National Socialism was gaining strength with its hysteria and magical passes towards Shambhala). He called such a theater "cooking", "a branch of the bourgeois drug trade."

The search for an antidote leads Brecht to comprehend the fundamental difference between the two types of theater, dramatic (Aristotelian) and epic.

Drama theater seeks to subdue the emotions of the viewer, so that he “with his whole being” surrenders to what is happening on the stage, having lost the sense of the boundary between the theatrical performance and reality. The result is a cleansing of affects (as under hypnosis), reconciliation (with fate, fate, "human destiny", eternal and unchanging).

The epic theater, on the contrary, should appeal to the analytical abilities of the viewer, arouse doubt and curiosity in him, pushing him to realize the historically determined social relations behind this or that conflict. The result is a critical catharsis, an awareness of inconscience (“the auditorium must be aware of the unconsciousness that reigns on the stage”), the desire to change the course of events (no longer on the stage, but in reality). Brecht's art absorbs the critical function, the function of metalanguage, which is usually assigned to philosophy, art history or critical theory, becomes the self-criticism of art - the means of art itself.

Skidan A., Prigov as Brecht and Warhol rolled into one, or Gollem-Sovieticus, in Collection: Non-canonical classic: Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov (1940-2007) / Ed. E. Dobrenko and others, M., "New Literary Review", p. 2010, p. 137-138.

Bertolt Brecht was an outstanding reformer of the 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 assigned 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 "believable" imitation of life, a character - a role played by an actor (as opposed to the traditional practice of "reincarnating" an actor into a hero), depicted - exclusively as a stage sketch, specially freed from illusion "similarity" of life.

In an effort to recreate the "story", Brecht replaced the classical division of the drama into actions and acts with a chronicle composition, according to which the plot of the play was created by chronologically interconnected paintings. In addition, a variety of comments were introduced into the "epic drama", which also brought it closer to the "story": headlines that described the content of the paintings; songs ("zongs"), which additionally explained what was happening on stage; actors' appeals to the public; inscriptions designed on the screen, etc.

The traditional theater (“dramatic” or “Aristotelian”, since its laws were formulated by Aristotle) ​​enslaves the viewer, according to Brecht, with the illusion of credibility, completely immerses him in empathy, not giving him the opportunity to see what is happening from the outside. Brecht, who has a heightened sense of sociality, considered the main task of the theater to educate the audience in class consciousness and readiness for political struggle. Such a task, in his opinion, could be performed by the “epic theater”, which, in contrast to the traditional theater, addresses not the feelings of the viewer, but his mind. Representing not the embodiment of events on the stage, but a story about what has already happened, he maintains an emotional distance between the stage and the audience, forcing not so much to empathize with what is happening as to analyze it.

The main principle of the epic theater is the “alienation effect”, a set of techniques by which a familiar and familiar phenomenon is “alienated”, “detached”, that is, it suddenly appears from an unfamiliar, new side, causing the viewer “surprise and curiosity”, 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”, “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, etc.), focusing the viewer's attention not on what will happen, but on how it will be. take place. The other is zongs, songs introduced into the fabric of the play, but not continuing the action, but stopping it. Zong creates a distance between the actor and the character, since it expresses the attitude of the author and the performer of the role, not the character, to what is happening. Hence the special, "according to Brecht", way of the actor's existence in the role, which always reminds the viewer that in front of him is a theater, and not a "piece of life."

Brecht emphasized that the “alienation effect” is not only a feature of his aesthetics, but is inherent in art, which is always not identical with life. In developing the theory of the epic theater, he relied on many provisions of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment and the experience of oriental theater, in particular Chinese. The main theses of this theory were finally formulated by Brecht in the works of the 1940s: Buying Copper, Street Stage (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., down to the scenery, the features of the acting technique and stage lighting.

"Berliner Ensemble"

The Berliner Ensemble Theater was actually created by Bertolt Brecht in the late autumn of 1948. After his return to Europe from the United States, a stateless person and without permanent residence, Brecht and his wife, actress Helena Weigel, were warmly welcomed in the eastern sector of Berlin in October 1948. The theater on the Schiffbauerdamm, which Brecht and his colleague Erich Engel settled in at the end of the 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 to survive from the Theater on the Schiffbauerdamm led by Fritz Wisten, and for the next five years his troupe was sheltered by the German Theater.

The Berliner Ensemble was created as a studio theater at the German Theatre, which shortly before was headed by Wolfgang Langhof, who had returned from exile. The “Studio Theater Project” developed by Brecht and Langhoff involved in the first season attracting eminent actors from emigration “through short-term tours”, including Teresa Giese, Leonard Steckel and Peter Lorre. In the future, it was supposed to "create your own ensemble on this basis."

To work in the new theater, Brecht attracted his longtime associates - director Erich Engel, artist Caspar Neher, composers Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau.

Brecht spoke impartially about the then German theater: “... External effects and false sensitivity became the main trump card of the actor. Models worthy of imitation were replaced by underlined pomp, and genuine passion - by a simulated temperament. Brecht considered the struggle for the preservation of peace the most important task for any artist, and Pablo Picasso's dove of peace became the emblem of the theater placed on his curtain.

In January 1949, Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, a joint production by Erich Engel and the author, premiered; Helena Weigel acted as Courage, Angelika Hurwitz played Catherine, Paul Bildt played the Cook. ". Brecht began work on the play in exile on the eve of World War II. “When I wrote,” he admitted later, “it seemed to me that from the stages of several large cities a playwright’s warning would sound, a warning that whoever wants to have breakfast with the devil should stock up on a long spoon. Maybe I was naive at the same time ... The performances that I dreamed about did not take place. Writers cannot write as quickly as governments unleash wars: after all, in order to compose, you have to think ... "Mother Courage and her children" - late. Started in Denmark, which Brecht was forced to leave in April 1939, the play was completed in Sweden in the autumn of that 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", already with an updated cast (Ernst Busch played the Cook, Erwin Geschonnek played the Priest) was presented at the World Theater Festival in Paris and received the 1st prize - for the best play and best production (Brecht and Engel).

On April 1, 1949, the SED Politburo decided: “Create a new theater group under the direction of Helen Weigel. This ensemble will begin its activities on September 1, 1949 and will play three pieces of a progressive nature during the 1949-1950 season. The performances will be played on the stage of the German Theater or the Chamber Theater in Berlin and will be included in the repertoire of these theaters for six months. September 1 became the official birthday of the Berliner Ensemble; The "three plays of a progressive character" staged in 1949 were Brecht's "Mother Courage" and "Mr. Puntila" and A. M. Gorky's "Vassa Zheleznov", with Giese in the title role. Brecht's troupe gave performances on the stage of the German Theater, toured extensively in the GDR and in other countries. In 1954, the team received at its disposal the building of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

List of used literature

http://goldlit.ru/bertolt-brecht/83-brecht-epic-teatr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brecht,_Bertholt

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