PERFORMANCE AND CULTURE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

PERFORMANCE AND CULTURE - Essay Example Brecht invented and introduced the use of alienation effects in the theatre and plays. He is among the pioneer artist to develop a form of drama that has been called epic theatre in which ideas and didactic lessons are supposed to be more important and attention catching as compared with the other features and elements of the play (Frederic, 1992). Bertolt Brecht used his invented technique in many plays to attain his aim to encouraging people to think about the end, lesson and message rather focusing upon the emotions and characters. The following essay aim to discuss the way Brecht changed the traditional style in which the plays were written and staged. In this regard, the essay describes the efforts of Brecht in innovating new technique and style for the theatre and its use in his dramas. It has been unveiled that in the beginning Brecht was not completely successful to practice the alienation technique for gaining the desired results however; as his work grew mature he proved th e significance of the technique in form of several successful epic plays (Frederic, 1992). Bertolt Brecht and modernist theatre – Alienation technique and epic plays Bertolt Brecht held the firm belief that the actors should always strive to produce alienation effects in the drama in order to discard the traditional style of persuading the audiences with their characters in the play. Rather putting the audience into a trance the actors should go into the trace their selves so that they can present natural and lively performance in front of the audience. He believes that the way of speaking and the movements of the artists must be convincing and effective enough that audience can feel the real message behind the play rather getting lost in the fabrication of dialogues delivery. His dramas are considered as most importance and original work pieces in the European drama and he has widely recognized as most influential and prominent European materialist writer of the 20th century (Weber, 1984). The theatre practice of the twentieth century was heavily influenced and developed from the contributions of Brecht to the theatrical production and dramaturgy. He spent several decades in experimenting and developing the theory and practice of his epic theatre and devoted lot of time and efforts to bring something new and useful in the process of play making. He was inspired from the ideas of early theorists Erwin Piscator and Vrevolod Mayerhold regarding the use of theatre for as platform for the propagation of the political ideas. He believes that drama and theatre are medium for the transmission of ideas and thoughts and the audience should not stop thinking when the drama ends but the drama should be meaningful enough that the audience could initiate the thinking process during and after watching the drama (Willett, 1977). Brecht wants to support re-functioning of theatre in to a social use rather becoming a source of entertainment. His concentrated efforts and research work around the topic have resulted in the evolution and popularity of Brechtian theories and techniques that were widely uses in the theatre and cinematic practice. In the early days of his career in theatre and play making Brecht was more interested in doing experiments with dada and expressionism. However, as he proceeds with his work he attained maturity and new ideas and within few years he succeeded to develop a unique style of