UNIT 1 BERTOLT BRECHT: LIFE, TIMES, Bertolt Brecht: Life,

Times, Works
WORKS

Structure

1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction: The Early Years
1.2 The Changing Times, Adulthood and Brecht
1.3 Brecht’s Growing Interest in Marxism and The influence of Piscator
1.4 Brecht in Exile
1.5 Brecht’s Return to Germany
1.6 An Overview of the Times in which Brecht Lived
1.7 Brecht’s Response to the Times
1.8 Brecht’s Writings
1.9 Let Us Sum Up
1.10 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions
1.11 References

1.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit we will study the life of Bertolt Brecht, the playwright whose
distinctive style of epic theatre and the use of the Alienation Effect changed
the course of not just European but also world theatre history. We will survey
the times in which he lived and analyse how they influenced his writing. We
will also have a brief look at his major works.

1.1 INTRODUCTION: THE EARLY YEARS

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Bertolt Brecht: The A stamp printed in Germany shows characters in Brecht’s head, Birth
Good Woman of
Szechuan Centenary of Bertolt Brecht ([Link] [Link]/stamp-printed-
Germany-shows-characters-Brecht-s-head-birth-centenary-Bertolt-
dramatist-circa-image220394987)

The history of modern drama might have been a very different narrative
without the presence of Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht known popularly as
Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956). While his early life saw
nothing to distinguish him from the middle-class artists of the times (Fuegi),
his contribution as a dramatist and a theatre practitioner to innovative
theatrical techniques (Barber), is distinctive and sets him apart. Brecht’s
strategies to revolutionize theatre and free it from its bourgeois values make
his impact upon European theatre extremely significant. He wore many hats
as apart from being a modern experimental playwright, he was also a poet
using German in the most strident of ways. (Robert Gordon)

Some ready references online for a chronology of Brecht’s life:

[Link]
[Link]
tp://[Link]/2013/11/[Link]

Many aspects of Brecht’s writing can be attributed to his family, his

upbringing, customs, and more, and of course to the historical happenings
within and outside his country. Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10,
1898, to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father in Augsburg, Germany.
Hailing from middle-class stock with middle-class values, Brecht’s father
worked in a paper mill where he rose to the rank of director of the mill, his
ambitions typical of his class. His mother was a ritualistic and bookish
woman who ensured that Brecht learned the Bible and went to
denominational schools in his early years. This perhaps explains why
Brecht’s first writing in 1914 was a play entitled Die Bible or The Bible.
Later, Brecht grew to hate this bourgeoisie mindset of the middle class into
which he was born, preferring a more proletariat approach and was perceived
as a rebel, in his views.

Despite his radicalism, in his childhood, Brecht internalized all the patriotic
sentiment, the reverence for the Kaiser, along with a sense of religiosity that
marked the young German artists of his times. Brecht went on to study
medicine and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich in
1917; he also attended Arthur Kutscher’s Theatre Seminar. Soon, he had to
give up his studies as he was called upon to enlist in the war where he served
as an orderly in a military hospital towards the end of the First World War.
Initially, Brecht supported the war but soon his experience of the World War
that seemed to continue relentlessly blunted the patriotic and religious
fervour in him to the extent that he criticized it openly and strongly.

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 Bertolt Brecht: Life,
As he was a medical orderly in a military hospital, he told Sergei Times, Works
Tretyakov: "I was mobilized in the war and placed in a hospital. I dressed
wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, performed blood-transfusions. If the
doctor ordered me: 'Amputate a leg, Brecht!' I would answer: 'Yes, Your
Excellency!' and cut off the leg. If I was told: 'Make a trepanning!' I opened
the man's skull and tinkered with his brains. I saw how they patched people
up in order to ship them back to the front as soon as possible." (4)
Brecht later wrote a poem about his experiences, entitled Legend of a Dead
Soldier: "They poured some brandy down his throat/The rotten corpse to
rouse/Two hefty nurses grabbed his arms/And his half-naked
spouse/Because the rotten body stank/A parson limped ahead/And over him
his incense swung/To cover the stench of the dead/The band in the van with
rum-tum-tum/Played him a rousing march/The soldier as he had been
drilled/Kicked his legs high from his arse." (5)
[Link]

It affected others in much the same way and disillusionment became the
order of the day. This is evidenced by the fact that Brecht wrote verses in
praise of the country and its Kaiser till about 1917 but reacted sharply to the
bleakness and desolation of the War. He wrote the play, Baal, in 1918, about
a dark aimless character, a wastrel, whose only interest seems to be his sexual
exploits and even murder. There was no romanticization of the hero as Brecht
like his fellow poets and playwrights felt the tragedy of war outweighing the
heroism. The first successful play that Brecht wrote was Drums in the Night
in 1922 and the following year, Baal was finally produced. To reiterate, most
people especially artists felt a sense of meaninglessness at the futility of war
and its negative effects on post War German Society.

1.2 THE CHANGING TIMES, ADULTHOOD

AND BRECHT
Among the companions that Brecht had, were a group of Dadaists who
protested against the values that had led to the World War and who opposed
the bourgeoisie mindset vehemently. One can see the despair-induced
cynicism in Baal and Drums of Night. However, the darkness that Brecht
experienced did not prevent him from his quest for a better world. In 1919 he
joined the Independent Social Democratic Party which led to his faith in the
Communist ideal and stimulated his interest in Marxism. In the same year,
Brecht began to write theatre reviews for Volkswillen, an independent local
newspaper with a socialist agenda. On the personal front, he had a son with
his girlfriend Paula Banholzer in 1919. In 1920, he was named the Chief
Advisor on play selection at the Munich Kammerspiele.

Brecht became acquainted with several key persons who dominated the
Berlin cultural scene between 1921 and 1922 including the playwright
73
Bertolt Brecht: The ArnoltBronnen with whom he collaborated to create a joint venture, the
Good Woman of
Szechuan ArnoltBronnen, and Bertolt Brecht Company.

In 1923, he married Marianne Zoff, the opera singer and actress and they had
a daughter 1923 named Hanne Hiob who grew to be a fine actress. Success
came his way in the form of the Kleist Prize which was awarded to him in
1922 for his first three plays, Baal, Drums in the Night, and the Jungle.

In 1924, Brecht moved from Bavaria to Berlin where he found himself in the
company of many who had adopted the same anti-bourgeois stance as him. A
major landmark in Brecht’s career was the adaptation of Christopher
Marlowe’s Edward II in 1924 done with Lion Feuchtwanger, novelist and
playwright, and his acquaintance since 1919. This paved the way for other
adaptations of the classics in the future and was also responsible for the
conception of what came to be known as Epic Theatre. In the September of
1924, Brecht got a job as Assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches
Theatre. In fact, from 1924 to 1933, Brecht worked briefly with both, Max
Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. The same year, Brecht, who had several
relationships with women, had a son, Stefan with the actress Helene Weigel
whom he later married in 1929 after divorcing Marianne Zoff in 1927. He
had a daughter too with Weigel, in 1930, whom he named Barbara.

1.3 BRECHT’S GROWING INTEREST IN

MARXISM AND THE INFLUENCE OF
PISCATOR
Brecht’s acquaintanceship with Karl Korsch, a German Marxist theoretician
and political philosopher, further cemented his interest in Marxism and its
tenets and by 1926, Brecht was immersed in reading Das Kapital. This
writing engendered a feeling of hope in that shattered and ravaged world that
all seemed to inhabit. The communist ideal perhaps saved Brecht from
becoming completely embittered by what he saw of humanity during the
World War. It signified a world where a spirit of humanity and justice
prevailed. According to Karl Marx, religion and sentimentality prevented the
working class and poor people from being able to discern class structures and
the power equations within which they were forced to survive. Marx
promoted reason and class consciousness as the only tools that would help
people understand that they owned their destinies. He propagated that the
poor overthrow the system that fixed their position of inequality.

What Marx theorized, Piscator put into practice. We have learned that Brecht
worked briefly with Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. From the latter, he
learned immensely. Erwin Piscator was an actor and director who was deeply
influenced by the Dada movement which began in Zurich and later spread all
over Germany in the War years. The movement was anti-establishment and
challenged every traditional notion of art and culture. The Dadaists believed
in ‘disrupting the spectacle’ and ‘offending the audience’. Amongst their art
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forms was photo montage which was a mix of graphics with photographic Bertolt Brecht: Life,
Times, Works
images. Combined, they were an effective propagandist tool. Piscator used
the photomontage prop of the Dadaists to promote his ideas regarding the
purpose of theatre. For him, the theatre was inseparable from the proletarian
or working-class struggle. In a lot of Piscator’s plays, the protagonist would
turn into a contemporary political figure and the play would then serve to
initiate discussion and debate on current politics. The use of film as a kind of
running documentary would act as commentary and lend authenticity to the
depiction For Piscator, the message of the play was everything.

Brecht assimilated all the aspects of the intellectual and artistic climate of his
times and these were reflected in his writings. In 1927, he published a
volume of poetry called Hauspostille, and the following year, a musical with
a libretto called The Threepenny Opera by Brecht opened at the Theatre am
Schiffbauerdamm and was a great success. Two years later, another musical
with a libretto called The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany premiered in
Leipzig and it caused a riot. That did not deter Brecht and in 1932, a political
film called KuhleWampe made by Brecht premiered in Moscow but was
banned by theatres in Germany.

1.4 BRECHT IN EXILE

Brecht’s writing was seen as a threat and when Adolf Hitler came to power in
1933, Brecht fled to Denmark from Germany to protect himself. His fears for
his safety were not unjustified as in 1935; Brecht was stripped of his German
citizenship. The outcome was a play by Brecht called Fear and Misery of the
Third Reich which premiered in Paris in 1938.

In 1941, Brecht relocated to Santa Monica in California, the same year that
the extremely famous play written by him, Mother Courage and Her
Children premiered in Switzerland. Brecht became a member of the Council
for a Democratic Germany in 1944 and the previous year, two of his plays,
The Good Person of Szechwan and Life of Galileo premiered in Zurich. It is
said that he had a child with Ruth Berlau in 1944 but that the baby did not
survive. In 1946, Brecht’s adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi premiered in
Boston. On October 30th, Brecht was subpoenaed to appear before the House
Un-American Activities (HUAC) where he testified that he was not a
member of the communist party; he left the US on the same day.

1.5 BRECHT’S RETURN TO GERMANY

In 1948, Brecht returned to Germany after 15 years of exile and in the same
year, his plays, MrPuntila and his Man Matti premiered in Zurich and his
adaptation of Antigone in Switzerland. The year also saw the publication of A
Short Organum for the Theatre

The next year, in 1949, Brecht established the Berliner Ensemble along with
Helen Weigel. This was subsidized by the state and attained the stature of 75
Bertolt Brecht: The being the most progressive theatre in Europe. In 1953, Brecht was elected
Good Woman of
Szechuan President of the German section of PEN which was a worldwide association
of writers. The next year saw the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Mother
Courage being named the Best Play and Best Production at the ParisTheatre
des Nations festival. There was also a revival of The Threepenny Opera at the
Theatre de Lys on Broadway and it ran 2611 performances. In 1955 Brecht
received the Stalin Peace Prize and the following year, on the 14th of August
1956, Brecht died of a heart attack. He was a young 58 but he left behind a
rich legacy of plays and poems and his contribution to modern European
drama is unparalleled.

1.6 AN OVERVIEW OF THE TIMES IN WHICH

BRECHT LIVED
It is evident from what we have studied so far of Brecht’s timeline that the
artist lived through global history that was fraught with some of the most
unthinkable happenings that changed the world and the perceptions of people
forever.

The two World Wars that Brecht was witnessed in his lifetime, cast their
shadow on all of Europe. Germany was a major player in these wars. We
have already seen in the previous sections of this Unit that Brecht was
typically extremely patriotic in his childhood. To quote:

In 1813, Brecht imagines the battle of Leipzig, writing of how "German men,
with their clashing weapons strong, / saved the tottering state". In "1913",
the poet writes: "now, after one hundred years, once again a world is
standing / stiffly against us and we are quite alone / so the call goes out from
the Baltic to the Rhine / to be truly united and strong". Brecht goes on to
plead: "give us, God, in wars and perils / real German men, of steel and iron,
/ like those in the battle one hundred years ago. “The verses are unattributed,
but Stephen Parker, a German professor at the University of Manchester,
identified them as the work of a 15-year-old Brecht after linking an August
1913 diary entry to the literary magazine. Brecht wrote in his diary:
"Yesterday sent off a poem 'A Hundred Years Ago', which I'd written in the
night. Afterwards I saw that various things were missing and that the title
was wrong."

([Link]
teenage-poems-1813-1913

Brecht's feelings about war cast in a new light by the emergence of teenage
poems by Alison Flood)

But Brecht’s experience of the war disenchanted him completely and made
him overtly critical of the political machinations of the powers that appeared
to be deciding the fate of nations. What were the effects of these World wars
on Germany in particular and the world in general and how did Brecht
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respond to them? Broadly speaking, the nightmare of the repeated world wars Bertolt Brecht: Life,
Times, Works
devastated empires and led to a concerted effort on the part of Europe’s
colonies to assert their independence. This was perhaps a positive outcome,
but it came at the cost of huge losses of life. We will study the effects of the
wars closely in subsequent sections of this unit.

1.7 BRECHT’S RESPONSE TO THE TIMES

In previous sections of this Unit, one has observed Brecht’s response to the
times both through his writings as though his ideological leaning – his
attraction for Socialism and the philosophy of Karl Marx, his joining the
Socialist party, his abhorrence of the bourgeoisie mentality, and support of
the proletariat. It has also been observed that his plays and other writing
reflected his reaction to the nation and the world that he saw before him.

It was also moralistic in that it nudged people into examining their

conscience and looking into their accountability. In many of the epigrams,
Brecht’s repugnance of Hitler and the Nazi leadership is visible as his belief
that the World Wars were engineered completely by vicious and
unscrupulous leadership. Equally evident is Brecht’s view that he saw the
World Wars as an extension of the same cruelty, greed, and violence that
marked relationships of power within the class struggles of the rich and the
poor. The book also makes clear the fact that Brecht saw no heroes in the
war; he saw only profiteering, greed, and malevolence. His critique was not
just of Hitler and the German leadership but all the allies. Some of his poems
reveal his understanding that fear fuelled the soldiers who fought the war.
Many of his poems and the accompanying photographs record his deep sense
of agony at the plight of those killed, be it, young soldiers or civilians. An
important aspect that is also discernible in this book is Brecht’s attitude to
women, especially in terms of how they were affected by the war. The
excruciating agony of a mother losing her children to the war or the
rapaciousness during war times in which the woman’s body is considered to
be a territory to be conquered in the same way as land and property, the
prostitution of women particularly during war times and the commodification
of women especially in their sexual depiction in magazines- all of this
features in his poems. ([Link]
history-bertolt-brechts-war-primer/)

Brecht’s response to the times reflected in the choices he made, in the way he
lived his life, and in all of his writings be it fiction or poetry, drama or film,
and also in the theoretical underpinnings for his experimentation with theatre
and drama.

1.8 BRECHT’S WRITINGS

Brecht’s repertoire was vast indeed as can be seen by the long list of writings
by him. He wrote fiction, plays, screenplays, poetry as well as theoretical
77
Bertolt Brecht: The works. He was also a critic. It would be useful to have a brief look at some of
Good Woman of
Szechuan his most significant works.

While his forays into fiction were not too many and include Stories of
MrKeuner, Threepenny Novel (1934), and The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius
Caesar (unfinished, published in 1957), his plays are a rich legacy indeed.

Some of the most significant themes of Brecht’s plays are:

Baal (1918/1923): was Brecht’s first full-length play referred to in an earlier

section, written when he was twenty. A central character is a man who is
shown to be exploitative, rapacious, and whose morality is always suspected.
However, Brecht also draws one’s attention to the environment around Baal
which is peopled by equally morally ambiguous characters whose agendas
are doubtful. The message underlying such depiction is that individual ethics
cannot be separated from societal practices and codes of behavior. The play
was written before he developed a strong Marxist outlook, but it reveals that
Brecht was troubled by the class inequities that drove people to project
themselves in a particular way.

Drums in the Night (1918–20/1922): was Brecht’s second play written

while he was serving as a medical orderly in the armed forces during the
War. The narrative is about a German soldier reported missing in action, who
returns home after the War. It is a five-act play set in Berlin during a single
night in November 1918 with Act 1 beginning with twilight and Act Vending
at dawn. The play took place when the Spartacist League which was a
Communist faction group led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
conflicted with the Social Democratic Party. This play is important primarily
because it foregrounds the emerging Alienation effect that Brecht used (this
will be studied in detail in the next unit). For example, Brecht wanted
signboards hung in the auditorium with such signs as ‘Every man for himself,
etc. There was a title for each Act and Brecht wanted the audience to be
aware of how the title related to the action of the play so that they were not
immersed in the emotional aspect of the play but remained rational and
critical.

Man Equals Man also A Man's a Man (1924–26/1926): is a play that

probes into the social factors responsible for forcibly transforming Galy Gay,
an Irish civilian living in a fictional British colony (in India), into a
bloodthirsty soldier. Brecht’s interest in communism and his acceptance of
the increasing mechanization of man in an age of technological advancement
is seen in this play about war and human identity

The Threepenny Opera (1928): was one of Brecht’s financially successful

plays and was an adaptation of John Gay’s Beggars Opera. He wrote it with
the assistance of the translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and music by Kurt
Weill. The original English setting was retained by Brecht but he shifted the
action from the early 18th century to the Victorian era. He wanted to convey
78 that across time, villainy prevails and that it cuts across classes. This play is
an early example of Brecht’s epic theatre and its intention to arouse the Bertolt Brecht: Life,
Times, Works
audience from apathy to a sense of social responsibility.

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany (1927–29/1930): is an opera

that captures the basic instincts of man. It tells the tale of three criminals who
create a city to make money, a city where only money speaks and where all
one lives by is the pleasure principle. It is a city marked by lawlessness and
debauchery. A hurricane that looms by closely further encourages anarchy
and soon the city is destroyed by the self-created delirium. It was Brecht’s
first major collaboration with Kurt Weill, the composer and it sent
shockwaves through the audience when it premiered in Leipzig in 1930.

Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1929–31/1959): is Brecht’s rewriting (in a

sense) of the original Joan of arc, a woman who was finally burnt at the
stakes despite her innocence and goodness. In his version, Brecht sets the
play in Chicago around a confrontation between Pierpont Mauler, a man well
known in the meat industry and Joan Dark, a member of a Missionary group
called the ‘Black Straw Hats’ who tried to help those who worked under
Mauler. The play revolves around the maxim that money begets money but at
what cost- the cost of humanity. The moneyed are powerful but lack all
decency, all humane feeling.

The Mother (1930–31/1932): is set in pre-revolutionary Russia and was

based on the famous novel by Maxim Gorky with the same name. It is the
story of PelageaVlassova in successive episodic scenes; a woman typical of
her illiterate class who believes that her destiny is unchangeable and pre-
decided. She is drawn to revolutionary activity to save her son who is a
member of the Communist Party. However, she fails and her son is
imprisoned and shot. After his death, the grief-stricken mother is determined
to carry on the revolutionary struggle by educating co-workers. She emerges
as a positive hero in the play and stands out in Brecht’s works.

Life of Galileo (1937–39/1943): first performed in Zurich, accompanied by

music by the German composer Hanns Eisler, the play is a saga of the
brilliant findings of Galileo Galilei, the Italian philosopher, and astronomer
Galileo Galilei. It documents the tragic persecution and punishment meted
out to him by the Catholic Church for sharing his scientific findings with
the world. Thus the play’s focus is the conflict between scientific truth and
religious belief. The play applauds Galileo’s resilience against the battle
waged by the Church against him. It is perhaps symbolic of Brecht’s search
for truth in the darkness of ignorance and a tribute to one of the finest
scientific minds.

Mother Courage and Her Children (1938–39/1941): is a play that sharply

discourages any glorification of the War and creation of war heroes. The
central character, Mother Courage is shown to be a cunning and manipulative
person conniving her way through the Thirty Years’ War in Germany and
Poland. At a rapid pace over twelve scenes, Brecht’s play allows no room for
79
Bertolt Brecht: The sentimentalizing. Rather it is a clinical dissection of the terrible times of the
Good Woman of
Szechuan war which do not make space for any kind of goodness, a time when
corruption is the order of the day. The play is one of the most celebrated uses
of the Alienation effect.

Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti (1940/1948): is the story of the relationship
that MrPuntila, an aristocratic landowner has with Matti, his servant as also
with his daughter Eva. Puntila wants his daughter to marry an Attache but
Eva is in love with Matti; hence Puntila has to contend with that as also with
his alcoholism. The play highlights the duality of Puntila and hence
underlines the device of the split character. The film by Vishal Bhardwaj,
Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola, draws its inspiration from this play.

The Good Person of Szechwan (1939–42/1943): is a very popular play by

Brecht. It tells the tale, like a parable, of three gods who come to earth to
locate one completely good person. They search high and low till they find
She The, a penniless prostitute who is a do-gooder and who offers them
shelter where all else shut their doors. The Gods reward her such that she can
buy a tobacco shop and start a business, only to have her good nature
exploited by all around her who feel that they are entitled to do so. This
includes the young pilot she falls in love with and rescues as also his mother.
So harassed is Shen, that she is forced to invent an alter ego, Shui Ta to deal
ruthlessly with those who dupe her and coerce her. The play thus underlines
how difficult it is for good to survive in this evil and corrupt world. We will
study this play at length in subsequent units.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941/1958): is another parable play of

Brecht’s which showcases his hatred of Hitler. It is a satirical allegory of
Hitler and the Nazi party’s rise to power before World War II. Apart from Ui
representing Hitler in the play, all the characters had their counterparts in real
life as well. The play is also a typical Brechtian play in terms of the form,
structure, and devices used to create a documentary effect so that the
audience could critique rather than empathize with what they saw before
them. So, there is the Prologue which is a direct address to the audience by an
‘actor’ who reveals the entire plot so that the spectators concentrate not on
what happens next but on the messages conveyed through the ‘ how’ and the
‘why’ things happened as they did. And alongside the performance was the
Piscatorian use of film that showed relevant snippets from the actual life of
Adolf Hitler.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1943–45/1948): is a play within a play. In

parable form, Brecht asks the audience to consider what Europe might look
like after the War and the principles by which the world could be shaped
thereafter. It was written after Brecht had taken refuge in America and the
war was almost over. The play puts into the limelight the conflict between
law and justice, especially in complex situations. Two farms are seen to be in
a dispute over the ownership of a valley and once they reach an agreement of
80 sorts, the villagers put up a play called The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The
message is that ownership should be claimed by the one who can take care of Bertolt Brecht: Life,
Times, Works
things. It was a comment on Fascism.

Apart from the screenplays, fiction and stage plays that Brecht wrote, was
also poetry. Brecht wrote hundreds of poems, many of which feature in his
plays. Most of his poems express his angst about the War, class conflict, and
injustice. There is a message in each song and their relevance cuts across
time. Brecht theorized as well about theatre and the important theoretical
works associated with Brecht are The Modern Theatre is the Epic
Theatre(1930); The Street Scene (written 1938, pub 1950); and A Short
Organum for the Theatre (written 1948, pub 1949)

1.9 LET US SUM UP

It is very evident from what we have studied that Brecht was a man who was
deeply affected by the two world wars that he witnessed. He lived at a time of
tremendous and unimaginable upheavals which completely transformed the
old order of life. It was certainly an abnormal time for a person who had to
witness two wars of such magnitude in his lifetime. What makes Brecht stand
out is his quest for a solution that he sought in Marxism. He felt that the
Marxist ideal could be the only thing that could save the world. So, he
wanted his plays and theatrical techniques that he adopted to provoke
audiences from a state of mute empathizing to that of activism. He wanted
them to become spectators. We will learn more about these as we move on to
the units that follow.

1.10 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. What kind of an upbringing did Brecht have in his youth? Did he follow
the prescribed path?
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2. What was Brecht’s initial response to the war?
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Bertolt Brecht: The 3. As the war continued, what was the attitude towards war by the German
Good Woman of
Szechuan artists including Brecht and how did this attitude reflect in his writings?
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4. Why did Brecht turn towards Marxism?
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5. What according to Piscator was the purpose of theatre and what were
some of the props he used to achieve this objective?
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6. What was the primary focus of Brecht when he wrote his plays? How did
he view spectators?
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7. Do you know of any Bollywood film based on Brecht’s writings (an
example is Matru ki bijli ka mandola?) What is the underlying message
of these films?
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1.11 REFERENCES Bertolt Brecht: Life,
Times, Works

1. Bertolt Brecht Author(s): John Fuegi Source: Colloquia Germanica ,

1976/77, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1976/77), pp. 299-308 Published by: Narr
Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG Stable URL:
[Link]
2. The Life and Works of Bertolt Brecht- Article written by Benjamin Barber
[Link]
3. Brecht, interruptions and epic theatre- Article written by Robert Gordon
[Link]
and-epic-theatre#
4. [Link]
15/eduqas/[Link]
5. [Link]
6. [Link]
teenage-poems-1813-1913Brecht's feelings about war cast in new light
by emergence of teenage poems by Alison Flood
7. [Link]
brechts-war-primer/
8. [Link]
9. [Link]
10. [Link]
11. [Link]
12. U[Link]
brecht-kurt-weill/die-dreigroschenoper-the-threepenny-opera-the-
beggars-opera-with-die-songs-der-dreigroschenoper
13. [Link]
and-television/threepenny-opera
14. [Link]
9781408161418&tocid=do-9781408161418-div-40000001&st=
15. [Link]
P3KAJQ74ACP6
16. [Link]
17. [Link]
18. [Link]
19. [Link]
20. [Link]
Classics/dp/014310537X/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=stag01d-
20&linkId=d28f655c38f098597f1782ea5844f276&linkCode=ktl
21. [Link]
22. [Link]
[Link]

83
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of UNIT 2 POLITICS, SOCIAL CHANGE AND
Szechuan
STAGE

Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 Features of the Age
2.1.1 Science, Technology And War
2.1.2 The Intellectual Climate

2.2 Social Change in an Age of Darkness

2.3 Brecht and Epic Theatre
2.4 Brecht and the Verfremdungseffekt
2.5 Brecht and the Street Scene as a Model for Epic Theatre
2.6 Brecht: Spass and Gestus
2.7 Did Brecht Succeed?
2.8 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions
2.9 References

2.0 OBJECTIVES
In the previous Unit, one had an insight into the life and times of Bertolt
Brecht. One observed that it was a turbulent time marked by the two World
Wars. In this Unit, we will study the political and social situation in more
detail and analyze the changes that occurred in society. In turn, how did that
impact theatre: the themes and content of each play, the methodology
adopted by the dramatist, and the staging of plays. We will study the
elements of Brechtian theatre, its aims, and the techniques adopted by Brecht
to achieve these aims.

2.1 FEATURES OF THE AGE

2.1.1 Science, Technology and War
If we consider Ibsen to have ushered in the Modern European Drama period,
the timeline we are looking at is broadly between 1850 to 1950. This period
can be regarded as the Second Industrial Revolution or at least the second
phase of the Industrial Revolution. The phase saw tremendous advances in
science and an upsurge of inventions, some of which was to improve existing
machines already in use. Agriculture and medicine were two areas in which
rapid changes could be seen. Petroleum, the new source of energy led to the
automobile and trucks industry receiving a boost. Undoubtedly, the
development of electricity led to an expansion of industrial and business
enterprises throughout Europe, Britain, and America. Everyday life changed
84
for people with such inventions like the washing machine (1858), the Politics, Social
Change and Stage
telephone (1876), safety razor (1901), air conditioning (1902), cornflakes
(1906), microwave (1946), and credit card (1950) which added to a more
comfortable lifestyle.
On the surface of it, these inventions appear to be life-changing and
extremely positive. A closer look reveals other developments. In 1862,
Richard Gatling patented the machine gun; in 1866, Alfred Nobel invented
dynamite; in 1903 the Wright brothers invented the first gas mortared and the
manned airplane; in 1907, the very first piloted helicopter was invented by
Paul Cornu; in 1914, Garrett A. Morgan invented a gas mask; in 1937, the
first jet engine was built and in 1945, the atomic bomb was invented, among
a whole host of other inventions. What do these inventions tell us? That war
was just around the corner as these are war facilitating inventions. And sure
enough, two of the deadliest human conflicts took place within two decades
from each other. In the previous section, we noted that the wars did affect the
way that intellectuals and artists responded to politics, governance, and
society. Certainly, Brecht responded visibly to the political situation and the
World War and this could be seen not just in his changed attitude to the
nation and society at large but also in the way it affected the theatrical
techniques he adopted and the kind of spectatorship he expected.
At the end of the First World War, more than 16 million people including
civilians lost their life. Many who survived the War lived with mutilated and
disfigured faces for which even grafting (which picked up due to the Wars)
could not help and thus lead to casts being worn on faces. The physiological
impact was matched in equal measure by the psychological effects of the War
where there was a lot of shell shock and post-war stress due to trauma that
was experienced especially by those serving in the war. The upper classes
suffered greater proportional loss as compared to the lower classes. That, and
the introduction of universal suffrage in Europe, as well as the increasing
power of trade unionism, led to the working class achieving a greater
political and social representation. Socialism became the rallying cry as did
women’s emancipation since many women were forced to perform jobs that
had been strictly dominated by men so far. The Socialist movement, though
well organized in some countries including Germany, could not prevent the
war. As the war continued, the deplorable working conditions for factory
workers engaged especially at armaments factories, worsened and socialist
groups began to agitate for peace (this prepared the climate for the 1917
Russian Revolution) and by the end of the war, the socialists and trade
unionists emerged as a force to reckon with. Another important outcome of
the First World War was the enhanced role of the State, for example, in
Germany soon after the war commenced, the government took over control
of the banks, foreign trade, set the prices for goods including food and
armaments. (Fraser Cameron).
The Second World War has been seen as the most brutal and annihilating of
all wars in human history with more than 57 million lives lost of which in 85
Bertolt Brecht: The Germany alone, more than four million soldiers were killed. The civilian toll
Good Woman of
Szechuan in each country outnumbered the military forces and the greatest termination
was that of the six million Jews in the Holocaust. Not just Europe but the
entire world reeled under the devastation be it Asia, Africa, or the Middle
East; and the tale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is as unforgettable as the
Holocaust. The colonial empires faced increased and aggressive demands for
independence by their colonies. The shift of global power from the UK,
Germany, and France to the US and Russia paved the way for the Cold War
and established the US as a superpower. The use of atom bombs set the stage
for a new kind of warfare in times to come, one which would be backed by
an active nuclear weapons industry. And the Second World War also gave
the impetus for the formation of the United Nations in 1945, which aimed to
not repeat the mistakes of the interwar years that had augmented the Great
Depression. Europe was no longer undivided after the Second World War.
(Fraser Cameron).

2.1.2 The Intellectual Climate

While the scientific and political temper of the period under consideration
evolved in a particular manner, the intellectual climate too saw some new
currents that shaped perception and thinking. Some of the key figures whose
works were influential are Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Charles Darwin
(1809-1882), and Karl Marx (1818-1883). Though this has been discussed in
a previous Unit (Ibsen), to reiterate, Comte’s theory of Positivism, Darwin’s
theory of evolution and survival of the fittest elucidated in The Origin of the
Species (1859), and Marx’s propagation of the ideal of Communism in his
The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital(1867) left their mark in
the way that intellectuals and even the common man perceived the
contemporary world. Apart from those mentioned so far, other philosophers
of this period who made a significant contribution to artistic and literary work
in particular and knowledge generally are Freidrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
and Sigmund Freud(1856-1939).

Nihilism, which in common parlance is seen as an expression of anarchy and

revolutionary opposition to the established order, is often attributed to
Nietzsche. His writings did contain many references to Nihilism and his
thinking influenced philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida, and Michel
Foucault; psychoanalysts like Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud; and writers such
as Camus, Sartre, Mann, and Hesse. Nietzsche announced the death of God in
one of his writings, a death that he saw as equivalent to the end of truth. This
not only put to the fore the implications of a godless world but also contained
the seeds of nihilism. However, Nietzsche did not promote Nihilism as
opposition to the established order, being an end in itself, but believed that
reality was always in a state of flux, always changing form. The Nazi Party
also used some of Nietzsche’s work to justify their activities, thus tarnishing
his reputation.

While Nietzsche’s writing and philosophy loomed large in the background of

86
the World Wars, Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis provided a new, Politics, Social
Change and Stage
psychological approach to the understanding, analysis, and treatment of the
‘abnormal’ adult behavior as opposed to the traditional view that such
behavior was physiological in origin and needed to be treated thus. (Hossain)

John Drakakis identifies three basic principles of Freud. “The first is psychic
determinism, the principle that all mental events, including dreams, fantasies,
errors, and neurotic symptoms have meaning. The second is the primacy of
the unconscious mind in mental life, the unconscious being regarded as a
dynamic force drawing on the energy of instinctual drives, and as the location
of desires which are repressed because they are socially unacceptable or a
threat to the ego. “The third is a developmental view of human life, which
stresses the importance of infantile experience and accounts for personality in
terms of the progressive channeling of an undifferentiated energy or libido.”
Several well-known Freudian concepts such as infantile sexuality Oedipus
complex, and art as neurosis as also the techniques of free association and
dream analysis arise from the above-mentioned principles

Of all these great thinkers, Marx had a very profound influence on the
struggling artists and we have already observed that Brecht was deeply
immersed in understanding the communist ideal as the only possible solution
to free the world from oppression due to class structures. This impacted both,
his writing as well as the way he led his life.

Briefly, what did Marx propagate? Karl Marx perceived the world as divided
into two major classes, the working class or proletariat( workers) and the
ruling class (or owners of factories/land/ buildings, etc). Furthermore, he
observed that this was an unequal relationship in terms of powerlessness and
power where the working class was oppressed and the ruling class was the
oppressor. He envisioned a classless society where everybody is equal and
free from their class position and role and the ideal form of that was
Communism. Under the tutelage of the leftist philosopher Karl Korsch and
later at the Marxist Evening School at Berlin, Brecht studied Marx and
Marxist writings while moving in circles that had many Leftist thinkers and
artists. What attracted Brecht to Marxism was the fact that it pursued the
contradictions and antagonisms in society, understood them, and then showed
how they could be changed. In other words, Marxist thought spelled hope for
the future. So struck was Brecht by these Marxist ideas that he began to use
theatre as a vehicle to spread political messages about class struggle.

Auguste Comte Charles Darwin Karl Marx

87
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of
Szechuan

Freidrich Nietzsche Sigmund Freud Erwin Piscator

Sources: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France
([Link]
._Comte,_Paris)_(2424895050).jpg);
([Link]
([Link]
([Link]
([Link]
([Link]

In the previous section of this unit, we learned that Brecht spent a brief time
with Reinhardt and Piscator. Despite the brevity of his time with Reinhardt
and Piscator, Brecht learned immensely from them, particularly from the
latter’s agitprop mode of theatre that aimed at indoctrinating the masses and
agitating their critical acumen, to create a new scientific and Marxist theatre.
It is pertinent to study the influence of Erwin Piscator upon Brecht. Who was
Erwin Piscator? In a nutshell, Erwin Piscator was one of the prominent
creators of Epic Theatre in Weimar, Germany in the 1920s
Piscator’s epic theatre was political theatre, the politics being anti-war, anti-
bourgeoisie, and pro proletariat. As Martin Esslin has pointed out: "Piscator
sought a topical, highly political theatre. He relegated the author to a
relatively minor position and was often content to compile his productions
out of newspaper reports or documentary material. Piscator put these
spectacles on to a constructivist stage and used graphs of statistics,
explanatory captions, lantern slides of photographs or documents, newsreels,
and documentary film sequences to convey the political or sociological
background of the play, while the propaganda lesson was drawn by choruses,
spoken or sung, on stage or in the auditorium, so that the spectators were
inevitably drawn into the action. His aim was a theatre that would be
political, technological - and epic. By the latter term, he meant a drama which
would be utterly different from the conventional 'well-made' play: a kind of
illustrated lecture or newspaper report on a political or social theme, loosely
constructed in the shape of a serious revue: a sequence of musical numbers,
sketches, film, declamation, sometimes linked by one or several narrators."
Piscator aimed to make theatre a political institution; he believed in
proletarian theatre and revolutionary art. In other words, he believed that
everyone in the theatre was equal whether it was the actor or the costume
designer or the manager, etc; a theatre sans hierarchy i.e. a break from all
capitalist traditions of class and structure. He believed in a theatre where the
88 message or educational influence of the play was more important than the
aesthetic value. Piscator, like Brecht, was completely against the War and Politics, Social
Change and Stage
many of his plays were a bitter indictment of the War where he used
photomontage to convey his hatred of the propagators of War. Piscator went
on to become the Director of the Proletarische Theater (proletarian theatre) in
Berlin and the same year, he also joined the newly formed Communist Party
(CP). Theatre, for Piscator and others of his ilk, was a vehicle of the worker’s
movement and aimed to create a revolution that would lead to the realization
of the communist ideal.
In 1923, Piscator took charge of the Central Theatre in Berlin where he
continued to practice his ‘epic theatre’, and in 1924, he became the Director
of the Volksbuhne (people’s theatre or worker’s theatre). By 1930, more than
300 agitprop theatre groups performed their propagation of communism
facilitated by the Communist party. To accommodate the vast audience that
he envisaged for his theatre, Piscator commissioned Walter Gropius to design
what he called the ‘total theatre’ in Berlin in 1927, a building that could be
fully adaptable for an audience of at least 2000 people at one time, a number
that he thought was in keeping with the mass worker’s movement. Meantime
he rented the Nollendorfplatz Theatre with a seating capacity of 1200 and this
theatre is still operational. By this time Brecht was working with Piscator and
was able to witness how Piscator treated theatre like a parliament where the
audience was enabled to make political decisions through the agitprop
paraphernalia (slogans, posters, documentary evidence, etc) used for
performances. Though it is Brecht who has been credited with the use of Epic
theatre, it cannot be denied that Brecht was greatly influenced by the work of
Piscator in terms of the promotion of the Marxist ideology, how the plays
were staged, and the objectives behind the themes and issues that his plays
dealt with.
A very important and perhaps mutually enriching relationship was the one
that Brecht had with the famous actor, Charlie Chaplin. Brecht enjoyed
watching films but critiqued the happy ending that many Hollywood films
had. In Chaplin’s films, he found the issues raised close to his heart.
Chaplin’s films were often a biting satire on the wars or the rise of
imperialism and dictatorship of which one of the most significant ones is The
Great Dictator. The films depicted the plight of the hapless workers totally at
the mercy of the wily, manipulative and cruel industrialists/upper-class elite.
(Harry A. Grace)Chaplin was almost a continuing point of reference for
Brecht. In turn, when Brecht befriended Chaplin during his exile years, he
influenced Chaplin during the production of his satire Monsieur Verdoux. To
quote Paul Flaig, ‘…..Brecht’s Chaplin was not simply “ a repository for the
dreams of redemption and radical change” or “ a meeting ground for the
articulate and the mute masses”. Rather than finding in Chaplin a playful
fantasy or fleeting utopianism, Brecht put the Tramp to work by converting
pratfalls, gags, and stumbles into the very means of social hierarchies’ points
of exclusion as well as those places most laughably weak and capable of
reorientation’.(Paul Flaig)
89
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of 2.2 SOCIAL CHANGE IN AN AGE OF
Szechuan DARKNESS
Based on what we have studied so far, it becomes clear that Brecht lived in
an era of complete turmoil and hitherto unimagined horror leading to a
complete upheaval of the world order; a challenging time that made faith in
God and godliness take a complete downswing. The First World War was
truly a nightmare come to life leading to what appeared to be almost an
unreal, bizarre, and horrifying political landscape. And then on its heels came
the Second World war leaving what little was left of faith and hope in shreds.
One can easily trace the roots of many of the cultural, intellectual, and artistic
movements of the time to the War, such as Realism, Naturalism, Dadaism,
Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty, Symbolism, Epic Theatre, and Theatre of the
Absurd. In the context of theatre in Europe, one can perceive the trajectory in
terms of evolution, from the desire to express reality (for example, the Realist
school of acting propounded by Stanislavski and the Realistic plays of Ibsen).
This led to a realization that one cannot escape reality and its inevitable tragic
consequences (for example, the Naturalistic way of looking at life as seen
best in plays by Ibsen and Strindberg). And finally, to a determination to
redress the situation or existing reality and bring social change (as with
Brecht). A recapitulation of the Units before this Unit on Brecht will make
the evolution quite clear.

If we examine the primary influences upon Brecht (Marx, Piscator, Chaplin),

we see a pattern emerge. Brecht was clearly of the view that the times he
lived in needed a revolutionary change that could only be facilitated by
adopting a Marxist stance to every dimension of life and art. This percolated
to the themes/form of his plays, the kind of acting style he adopted, stage
setting and design, music, props, his expectations of the role of the
audience/actor, and the very purpose of theatre. In a sense, theatre, as
practiced by Brecht, could be seen almost as a rehearsal for a necessary
revolution. A revolution against bourgeois middle-class values; a revolution
against political and social status quo; against the Establishment; against
capitalism. A revolution against the fabric of society seemed to be crumbling
under the onslaught of wars, industrialism, growing technology, and the
pervasive spirit of dehumanization. The Brechtian theatre has thus rightly
been seen as a theatre of social revolt. It is a distinctive kind of theatre and
we will now explore the most remarkable characteristics of this theatre.

2.3 BRECHT AND EPIC THEATRE

We have studied the close association between Brecht and Piscator. One of
the outcomes of that association was the formulation of what was called Epic
Theatre by Piscator, promoted and popularised very effectively by Brecht.

It was habitual for Brecht to make detailed notes on each scene of his plays
90 which explained in detail his reasons for shaping the scene as he did. Thus he
showed the ‘construction’ of the play in all its parts. In his A Short Organum Politics, Social
Change and Stage
for the Theatre, Brecht wrote about his practice. It is this focus on the
production and the mechanism of the play rather than on the ‘story’, on the
self-consciousness of the dramatic art, that defines epic theatre, a term he first
used in 1926. In other words, he wanted the audience to be constantly aware
of the fact that they were watching a play. Quite unlike what the realists like
Ibsen had wanted, which was that the audience gets so involved in the play
that they empathize completely and forget that it is a play. They are expected
to be absorbed in the unfolding drama. It was Man Equals Man(1926) that
saw Brecht first experimenting with Epic theatre. In its production, the
audience was encouraged to view the play through the eyes of a boxing fan.
This fan while concerned somewhat about the outcome of the match was
more interested in providing a running commentary on the boxers’ techniques
to achieve success. Located somewhere in colonial India, the play exposes
how the army molds individuals to become useful as soldiers or factory
workers or students with a total rejection of what the individual may want to
be as seen in these lines:

Tonight you will see

A man reassembled like a car.
Leaving all his components
Just as they are.
(Translator, Gerhard Nellhaus)

The seed of the concept used in the play lay in Brecht’s understanding of the
Marxian notion of class structures according to which one’s birth in a class
decides the class identity of that individual and a change in the material
circumstances offers the dialectical possibility of transforming the social and
personal relationships of the person.

While Piscator used a lot of real-life information which he converted into reel
life using technological devices such as documentary films or photographs to
supplement the message/issues raised in his plays and provide a real-life
context to the dramatic representation, Brecht stretched it even further to
include the very foundations of the dramatic structure itself. This was most
visible in his play The Threepenny Opera. Brecht believed that the very
structure of dramatic representation could be used to critique society and
simultaneously promote social change. Contrary to the theory of synthesis of
all art forms as put forward by Richard Wagner, Brecht along with Weill
underlined the importance of breaking up dramatic art into all its parts.
By interrupting the flow of dramatic action with projected subtitles
announcing the outcome of each scene, abrupt changes in lighting to signal a
break between dialogue and songs, and actors stepping out of the scene to
sing directly to the audience, Brecht ‘literalized’ the performance by openly
displaying the technical and dramaturgical mechanism of the play’s
construction. By emphasizing the spectator’s awareness of the methods of its
91
Bertolt Brecht: The production, the show aimed to expose the contradictions between the
Good Woman of
Szechuan characters’ outmoded ideology of romantic love and the economic
circumstances that motivate their calculated attempts to exploit one another
for financial profit. (Robert Gordon)
So Brechtian Epic Theatre opposed the conventional principles of dramatic
theatre as laid down by Aristotle. One major aspect of this subversion was the
breaking down of the traditional storytelling narrative into its many parts as
examined earlier. The other was a complete rejection of Aristotle’s
conception of catharsis or the purging of emotions like pity or fear. Brecht
rejected the idea of catharsis as he wanted his audience to actively rebel
against what dissatisfied them in society through his epic theatre. He sought
to restore dignity to the oppressed and the marginalized and for that, he felt
an imperative need for the audience to develop a critical spirit towards the
depiction of society in the play and carry it forward to real life.
Sentimentalizing or romanticizing the dramatic representation, he felt, was an
unproductive exercise. Brecht thus saw certain pedagogical merit in theatre-
he felt that theatre must teach even as it entertains. This infotainment was the
essence of Brechtian Epic theatre. (Arjun Ghosh)
In the following sections, we will study the practices specifically adopted by
Brecht in his formulation of Epic theatre to achieve the objectives that he felt
theatre must-have.

2.4 BRECHT AND THE

VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT
Brecht used the technique of the Verfremdungseffekt to realize the objectives
of Epic Theatre. Loosely translated as the Alienation effect and popularly
known so as well, the Verfremdungseffekt means distancing. It is also
shortened as the V effect. The purpose of the V effect was to ensure that the
audience while being entertained were also receptive to and critically
engaged with the education/instructions that the play offered. Brecht wanted
the audience to be constantly reminded that they were watching a play.
Furthermore, he wanted the audience to consider the meaning and messages
(political, social, or moral) that emerged from the play- thus his frequent use
of the parable form ( a wide-ranging moral play). To create the V effect,
Brecht used the following tools.

i) Plot narration took place by a narrator who would tell the audience what
was going to happen. By doing so, the aim was to ensure that the
audience, prepared about the outcome, did not get too emotionally
involved in the action.
ii) The actor would comment on the character he was playing midway
through a scene of action and then return to enacting the character, thus
moving from first person to third person and back to the first-person
narrative. This would remind the audience about the construction of the
92 character and the performative aspect of the play.
iii) The stage directions were spoken aloud by the actor (this was done Politics, Social
Change and Stage
mostly in rehearsals) to help the actor maintain a distance from the
character being enacted. Also, the audience too could pay more objective
attention to the actions of the character.
iv) Directly addressing the audience, the actors would break the invisible
fourth wall that existed between the performer and the spectator. In this
way, all illusion of the play as ‘reality’ would be stripped away. It would
become apparent that what was being watched was a fictional and
dramatic representation of reality.
v) Use of props like placards in the form of a card or a banner on stage
which would be held up by an actor and contain some additional
information about the character, would prompt the audience to clinically
question many of the reasons behind the characters’ behavior and
actions.
vi) Multiple roles playing by the same actor and each role with its
specifications of voice, movement, gesture, body language, etc, led to the
audience being able to see the construction of each character; thus the
audience would be more than ever aware that they were watching a ‘
play’ of events. Similarly, a single character would be split between
actors with different actors thus getting the opportunity to enact a
character. This would drive home the fact that the character was merely
representational.
vii) A very important aspect of the Brechtian V effect was the use of
minimalistic props that were often quite realistic. And sometimes a prop
would double up into different things and needed to be imagined
symbolically, therefore. This enhanced theatricality.
viii) Lighting too would be kept simple with an emphasis on the bright white
light to spread clarity about the truth.
ix) Song and dance were very integral to Brechtian drama; often the music
jarred the nerves of the audience and in this way, the distance between
the actors and the audience grew.
x) Influenced deeply by Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin, in
which Eisenstein makes use of montage (short self-contained sequential
scenes whose juxtapositioning highlighted the important issues of the
play), Brecht borrowed this in his plays to further the V effect.

2.5 BRECHT AND THE STREET SCENE AS A MODEL

FOR EPIC THEATRE
Brecht has written about how one can use the situation of an accident on a
street corner as a model for the kind of acting skills required by actors in epic
theatre, the role of the audience, and the objectives of such theatre(you can
read the translation by John Willet). In a nutshell, let us see how Brecht used
the street corner accident to train his actors.
93
Bertolt Brecht: The The participants were to see themselves as witnesses to a street corner
Good Woman of
Szechuan accident; some actual witnesses to it and some had merely heard of it. There
is disagreement among them about what happened and who was responsible.
To prove their point, the participants demonstrated the actions of the victim/
driver depending upon their perception of what they saw and who they
thought was to blame. Thus, Brecht used this situation as a case study for his
actors. He asserted that the actor need not be an artist; his basic requirement
was to serve the purpose of a demonstrator. In case he could not replicate the
actions or movements of whoever he was imitating, all he needed to do was
to explain the same to the onlookers so that the point did not go missing. The
demonstrator was not expected to be too perfect as the bystanders would then
be so immersed in his transformation into the ‘character’ he was playing.

Brecht felt that just as a witness to an accident is more interested in getting

his viewpoint across to the onlookers and not concerned about arousing any
emotions in them, so too the actor in a play must focus on ‘demonstrating’
the social message (attitude of the driver /pedestrian; possible causes for this
attitude; need to fix responsibility in society, etc). In an accident at a street
corner, the witnesses are not bothered about the entire life and personality of
those involved in the accident; the focus is on the moment of the accident and
on that aspect that has led to the accident. Similarly in theatre, Brecht
expected the ‘actor’ and the ‘audience’ to perceive the ‘character’ in terms of
the role of the character in a certain social situation; at the end of the
‘performance’, the objective was to get the audience to form an opinion.

2.6 BRECHT: SPASS AND GESTUS

The use of the street corner as a model, with the actors as demonstrators, the
enactment of the situation as the demonstration, and the audience as the
bystanders, may make one think that perhaps such theatre was rather dull.
But this was not the case. While undoubtedly the primary goal of Brechtian
theatre was the message that the play sought to promote, Brecht made use of
‘Spass’ or fun which was a comic way of making people think about serious
issues. Whenever the emotional tension seemed high, Brecht would break it
with some kind of comic relief that made the issue at hand less traumatic but
not less significant. The audience would question why they laughed and thus
engage with the issue more critically. Standup comedy, slapstick, a comic
song, etc were some of the means used by Brecht. (The last of these
elements, songs, were an essential part of Brecht’s plays and were used by
him to comment on the actions, attitudes, and behavior of individuals in a
capitalist society- forcing the audience to think of ways to reform the world
and make it a better place to live in).

The kind of action that was thus required in a Brechtian play was ‘Gestus’ or
action that is both the gist of and gestures towards social meaning. Each actor
in a Brechtian play was supposed to consciously project that aspect of the
personality that was relevant to or elucidated or put into perspective the
94
social issue taken up in the play. Through the collective composition on the Politics, Social
Change and Stage
stage, the authorial viewpoint would be loud and clear.

2.7 DID BRECHT SUCCEED?

Given the way that Brecht deviated from the standard practices of theatre, it
is often debated that perhaps Brecht’s influence was not substantial. This is
not true. Not only did Brecht force theatre-goers in his day and age to think
about their social roles, to question existing practices of society, and to
strategize on how to make the world free from all that ailed it, but his method
of staging a play also impacted all parts of the world be it South America,
Eastern Europe or even, India. His use of an uncluttered stage with limited
props paved the way for what later came to be called the ‘poor theatre’ or
theatre for the oppressed whose major proponent was Augusto Boal. His use
of information with subtle entertainment led to a new way of looking upon
theatre as a means to ‘infotainment’. Brecht’s theatre was theatre struggling
to bring order and reintegration in a disordered, nervous, and torn world.

In the next Unit, we will study one such success story of Brecht’s through a
close examination of The Good Person of Szechwan.

2.8 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. What do the different technological inventions in the period 1850-1940
indicate? Were they a blessing or a curse?
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2. Mention two important features of World War I and World War II.
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3. What did Nietzsche promote?
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Bertolt Brecht: The 4. What were the three basic principles of Freud’s Psycho analysis as per
Good Woman of
Szechuan Drakakis?
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5. What was the purpose of the world view held by Karl Marx? What did
he propose?
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6. What were some elements of Piscator’s theatre?
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7. How did Charlie Chaplin influence Brecht?
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8. What kind of social change was envisaged by writers like Brecht?
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96
9. What is the Brechtian Epic Theatre? Briefly explain at least three Politics, Social
Change and Stage
important elements
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10. What do you understand by Verfremsdungeffekt?
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11. How Brecht did used the street corner accident as a model to train his
actors?
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12. What is Spass and what is Gestus?
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2.9 REFERENCES
1. [Link]
transcripts-and-maps/second-phase-industrial-revolution-1850-1940
2. [Link]
implications-europe-today The Impact of the First World War and Its
Implications for Europe Today 8 July 2014 by Fraser Cameron
3. Friedrich Bessette Nietzsche. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel
website. Available from: [Link]
nietzsche-9423452 [Accessed 15 Oct 2013]
[Link]
97
Bertolt Brecht: The 4. Psychoanalytic Theory used in English Literature: A Descriptive Study
Good Woman of
Szechuan by Md Mahroof Hossain, Global Journal of Human Science :G
Linguistics and Education, Vol 17, Issue 1.0, Year 2017
5. [Link]
english-literature/
6. Bertolt Brecht, Politics and Comedy by Marc Silberman, Social
Research, Vol 79, No.1, Politics and Comedy (Spring 2012), John
Hopkins University Press
([Link]
nts)
7. Charlie Chaplin's Films and American Culture Patterns Author(s): Harry
A. Grace Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Jun.,
1952, Vol. 10, No. 4, Special Issue on Psychology and the Arts (Jun.,
1952), pp. 353-363 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American
Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: [Link]
8. Brecht, Chaplin and the Comic Inheritance of Marxism, Paul Flaig. In
Brecht/Marxism/Ethics: The Brecht Yearbook35 edited by Dorothee
Ostmeier and FriedemannWeidauer, 39-58. Storrs, CT: International
Brecht Society
[Link]
eritance_of_Marxism
9. Brecht, interruptions and epic theatre by Robert Gordon
([Link]
and-epic-theatre)
10. Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Modern European Drama by Arjun
Ghosh in Modern European Drama Ibsen to Beckett ed by Swati Pal,
Pencraft International , New Delhi, 2012. ISBN:978-81-909416-9-3
11. Epic Theatre and Becht
[Link]
12. [Link]

98
UNIT 3 THEMES AND Themes and
Characterization

CHARACTERIZATION

Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Title and Multiple Translations of the Play
3.3 Parable, Performance, Social Change
3.4 To be Good and Survive in a Capitalist Society
3.5 Shen Teh’s Dilemma vs Shui Ta’s Agency
3.6 The Three Gods
3.7 Friends, Lovers and Dependents
3.8 Marriage, Dreams, Unemployment, Poverty, Hunger
3.9 Let Us Sum Up
3.10 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, we shall examine the themes explored in the play and how
Brecht represents characters to elucidate his core concerns regarding the
functioning of society. Epic Theatre focuses on the narrative and not on the
plot. Brecht’s plays are situation-centric, rather than character-centric. Let us
explore the themes and characterization of The Good Person of Szechwan to
understand the key features of Epic Theatre.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) viewed theatre as a platform to analyze,
interrogate and critique oppressive, anti-people modes of thought and
structures of exploitation as prevalent in society. He foregrounded the
material, socio-economic, dialectical rubric of our social relations. He drew
the attention of the spectators to a series of contradictions, a recognition of
opposites in the nature, attitudes, opinions, perceptions of our social being.
Such a dramatic vision sought to present a more complex, layered view of
history and social relations. His theatre presented characters not as flat or
round, tragic or comic, fixed and unchanging but rather as evolving,
questioning, reflecting a situation that concerned their ways of living.
Characters were conceived and represented in dialectical terms to reflect the
primary contradiction that regulated our lives in the material world. The
narrative mode of drama, in Brechtian theatre, displaced the construct of a
well-crafted plot, focusing instead, on an episodic structure presented as a
montage. Songs, commentaries, use of placards offered a critical, distancing 99
Bertolt Brecht: The element to let the spectator relate to the performance as a non-illusionistic
Good Woman of
Szechuan representation. The actor was more a demonstrator of the situation that
merited a discussion and debate, not a histrionic actor who got into the skin
of the character. The spectator was expected not to empathize with the
characters, but to critically engage with the issues raised in the play.

The play evolved not as a linear narrative moving towards a finale but
mimicked a curvy, jumpy movement that reflected a process, an argument
rather than claim to show reality as unalterable, deterministic, and rigid.
Brecht’s conception of history as a dynamic, dialectical process led him to
focus on social attitudes that get expressed in our words or action, rather than
on histrionic gesticulation of the actors. Brecht’s Epic Theatre gave
importance to the didactic and entertaining aspects of theatre. Spectators were
treated as enquiring, critical social beings, not passive, unthinking, mushy
audiences who looked for a cathartic closure. Brecht worked towards
defamiliarizing or estranging his spectators from the dramatic process
unfolding on the stage. In the play under consideration, the locale of
Szechwan distances the spectators enabling them to critically examine the
dialectic of individual dream and community good in an unequal society. The
play deliberately refrains from offering a neat ending, a closure to the
dilemmas faced by Shen The and pushes the spectators to debate the issues,
use rational arguments rather than emotive ones to assess the choices
available to individuals in a society that reflects a concentration of resources
in a few hands, depriving the majority of access to equal opportunities. The
spectator in Epic Theatre is not allowed to be complacent. Brecht’s
deployment of estrangement/alienation/defamiliarization empowers the
spectator to rationally study the dramatic process and reframe the projected
reality towards a better social vision.

Let us examine The Good Person of Szechwan as a non-Aristotelian /non-

dramatic theatre and attempt to understand the key features of Brechtian/Epic
theatre as outlined above. (SEE Box 1)

3.2 TITLE AND MULTIPLE TRANSLATIONS

OF THE PLAY
Brecht wrote some of his best-known plays like The Life of Galileo (1938),
Mother Courage and her Children (1939), The Good Person of Szechwan
(1940) under the shadow of the rising of fascism and Hitler’s expansive
power over Germany. He had shifted to Europe by 1938, residing in Demark,
Sweden, Finland before moving to the U.S.A. He revised this play in 1941
and was keen to see it being performed in the U.S., referred to as the
authorized version. A shorter version was completed in 1943, termed the
Santa Monica version but never got translated for staging in America.

Eric Bentley translated the play as The Good Woman of Setzuan in 1947 for
college productions but the play could be performed at New York by a
100
professional troupe, a few months after the playwright’s death in 1956, under Themes and
Characterization
Bentley’s direction. An Austrian production in 1946 and a West German one
in 1952 are the only ones that took place during Brecht’s lifetime.

John Willet’s translation (1962) is an important intervention as it looks at

multiple translations, Brecht’s Notes, Journal entries on the play and corrects
the title to reflect its original German meaning of Mensche as a person, not
necessarily indicative of the character’s gender. Der guteMensche von
Setzuan, translated as The Good Person of Szechwan by Willett is the
accepted and appropriate rendition in English in the contemporary theatre
circuit.

3.3 PARABLE, PERFORMANCE, SOCIAL

CHANGE
Brecht used the parable form in The Good Person of Szechwan and The
Caucasian Chalk Circle and the two plays are often clubbed together in
critical discourse. These two plays have been performed more often in many
countries than many of his other plays, in particular, at the university theatre
circles. The Chalk Circle has been often performed without its Prologue and
the Good Person without its Epilogue. Such performances undermine the
political reading of the plays, reducing Epic Theatre to its outward charms.
Brecht, however, focussed upon the didactic and aesthetic aspects of theatre,
fusing instruction and entertainment as central to theatrical performances.

The locale in both the plays brings in an element of defamiliarization to

enable a critical distancing to the spectator to enquire, reason, analyze and
debate about the issues raised in the plays. This distancing is not intended to
sentimentalize the characters or to turn the plays into exotic spectacles, quaint
and pretty tales. The parable form is integral to the epic structure in terms of
narrating a story to delight and teach, to render the experience remote enough
to enable a critical inquiry instead of pigeonholing it as a tale of the orient or
the Caucasus/southern Russia.

Brecht had studied Chinese philosophical and theatre traditions and was
struck by the acting style, use of songs, music in their performances. He uses
Szechwan to suggest a distant space but not an oriental Othering of such a
space. The concerns faced by Shen The and her friends are ethical, economic,
interpersonal, and political ones, equally applicable to spectators in all
societies where hunger, poverty, social inequality, and economic unjustness
prevail. The play wants the spectators to look at the functioning of society,
the role of the State, the unjustness of making the individual follow abstract
ideals of ethical conduct in a culture that makes survival impossible without
resorting to harshness towards others. The play posits religious
commandments as obsolete, demanding, and unrealistic. It raises the query of
whether the individual should try to change the beliefs and societal
injunctions or remain oppressed and helpless. If an individual chooses to find
101
Bertolt Brecht: The personal fulfilment by helping one’s community, the social, religious,
Good Woman of
Szechuan economic rubric impede such a choice. In such a context, should the world be
changed or should the status quo be continued?

The parable of Shen Te and Shui Ta brings out the dialectical co-relation
between a good person Shen The who can survive only by donning the
persona of a Not-Good Shui Ta. The binary of Good and Evil is set aside by
Brecht to posit the Good and Not-Good as dialectical opposites inherent in
the individual, precipitated by the social matrix.

3.4 TO BE GOOD AND SURVIVE IN A

CAPITALIST SOCIETY
The central concern foregrounded in the play is a dialectical one. An inherent
contradiction that cannot find an easy resolution or accommodate with
complacency. The play argues that human nature is geared towards doing
good to others but is restrained from an equally organic urge to survive and
protect oneself. If material circumstances grant an assured mode of surviving
with dignity, individuals will sustain each other, help one another to grow,
prosper and fulfill aspirations and dreams. When social and economic
structures remain exploitative, the individual finds it challenging to stay
Good and is forced to adopt the non-Good (labeled evil) to survive and meet
one’s necessities. The resulting conflict amongst individual, community,
family, the state has to be examined critically to explore possibilities of
amiable and profitable co-habitation. When resources are concentrated in a
few hands, the demands for help and succor by the many need to be viewed
as a legitimate demand, not a cry for freebies. The play draws our attention to
this truth repeatedly and this as its central theme.

In the Good Person of Szechwan, Brecht presents Shen as a good person who
wants to help, nurture as many as possible but finds that whatever she does is
inadequate. The demands and number of persons needing succor keep
growing and she finds her resources too scarce and fast depleting. If she
chooses to sustain others, she stands deprived of herself. How does one
resolve this? Is this merely an ethical dilemma? Does it reflect greed and
selfishness on the part of those who need help? Can goodness survive in an
unequal society?

Shen The is a prostitute in the play but is found to be the only good person
who offers shelter to the three Gods on a visit to her city in search of a good
person. Brecht posits Goodness in the context of conventional social attitude
towards prostitution on the one hand and the divinity, omniscience of the
gods, on the other. He exposes social perception on both counts as hollow,
unfounded, and untrue. The gods are not omniscient and are as paranoid
about being seen or associated with a prostitute as anyone from a patriarchal
society. They are clueless about the material constraints that push a woman to
sell herself as goods. Shen The is not just the romanticized bad woman with a
102
good heart but a single woman unable to fend for herself in an expensive, Themes and
Characterization
unequal social structure. She is constrained to commodify herself, but she is
the only resident in Szechwan who chooses to forgo an appointment with a
client to accommodate the homeless, in this instance, the three gods.

However, this puts her in a tight spot as she has lost an opportunity to earn
enough to pay her rent. “I have had no luck lately, and if I can’t find the rent
by tomorrow, they’ll throw me out.” (Willett:1985, Scene1:8) She tells the
Gods that she would like to obey the commandments, but she is unable to
manage, under the given circumstances. “I sell myself to live”, she states the
brutal fact and reminds us that so many others are forced to do the same as
well. In other words, the play is not focussing on a character’s trajectory but a
situation affecting a huge section of people in society. Epic Theatre presents a
picture of the world, not valorizing the personal experiences of an
exceptional individual. The Aristotelian notion of a noble hero with a tragic
flaw does not figure in Epic Theatre. The play centers around a problem that
affects a specific society, an entire community that is finding it hard to cope
with an unequal distribution/ownership of wealth.

“How can I be good when everything is so expensive?”, asks Shen Teh in the
very first scene, and this question is examined, reiterated throughout the play.
(1985:11) The gods dismiss her question as unrelated to their domain,
positing economic and religious concerns as mutually exclusive. But the play
does not place them as unrelated issues and questions the validity of a
religious structure that imposes rigid commandments, labels human action as
good and evil but does not reckon with the difficulties, dilemmas, and
helplessness of the faithful who are oppressed by an unjust, unequal social
order. The play demonstrates how individuals are unable to remain good on
account of hunger, poverty, unemployment, and limited resources.

Shen Teh opens a shop with the thousand silver dollars that the gods pay her
for their stay at her house. She hopes to “be able to do a great deal of good.”
(1985: Scene 1,12) Brecht nudges the spectator to notice the anomaly of
owning a tobacconist’s business and doing good. The dialectical aspect of
life’s opportunities needs to be reckoned with constantly to steer away from
sentimental celebration or censure of human action. Shen The can be a
prostitute and be a good person, can own a tobacco shop, and do good to her
neighbours. But is that going to be sufficient? Would she be able to provide
rice and shelter to her friends, neighbours, old acquaintances who flock to her
in the hour of their need? Can she feed the hungry and house the homeless?

The play problematizes the notion of Goodby excluding it from the ethical or
theological domain and locating it as a humane attribute that could be
exercised under empowering social and economic conditions. The rich barber
assaults the poor water seller but hands over an unsigned cheque to Shen Teh
to enable her to feed the poor and continue her “good” work (Scene 4 and
Scene 7). The spectator has to engage with the possibilities held forth on the
one hand and critique the high-handedness, the unjustness of assault against 103
Bertolt Brecht: The poor workers from the unorganized sector by the wealthy. By disengaging the
Good Woman of
Szechuan notion of goodness from abstract implications, Brecht posits it as a humane
mechanism to reflect solidarity with one’s community and reach out to the
vulnerable amongst them.

The situation moves towards complexity as Shen Teh is unable to save her
business or help the ever-growing numbers of the destitute who flock to her
for succor. Mrs. Shin, a family of eight and many others who depend upon
her, claim old obligations to be redeemed or simply clamour for a slice of the
pie of good fortune that has fallen on Shen Teh’s way. Shen Teh invents a
fictitious cousin, Shui Ta to tackle the situation. Interestingly, the idea of a
rough, ruthless, efficient, pragmatic cousin as a foil to the pliable, helpful,
soft-spoken, good-hearted Shen The reflects the dialectical principle most
effectively. The split, the cross-dressing, the gender bind of sharp-headed
male and soft-hearted females are indicative of the contradictions that come
to the forefront in a social culture where inequality and unjust allocation of
resources become the norm. If Shen Teh has to continue being good to
others, she needs to preserve her resources and protect her interests. In a
society that has normalized inequality (including gender inequality), Shen
Teh finds a coping mechanism by marshalling her dialectical Other to rescue
herself and help her rescue the helpless.

This play makes the spectator study the situation at hand, look at Shen Teh's
disguise as her strategy to address the issue. It invites the spectator to suggest
alternative strategies if any (See Epilogue).

Do we see the gender difference as problematic? The German word Mensch

in the title suggests an individual of either sex. Does that make it possible to
present the protagonist as a male and make him dress up as a female cousin
who lands up to manage the business more efficiently? Do you visualize such
a possibility in an unequal/capitalist society? Do the resources—economic,
social, and political power –rest with women or with men more? Do
Patriarchy and capitalism collide with each other to marginalize the poor and
the women? Does an economically empowered woman (Shen Teh) still need
a male counterpart (Shui Ta) to deal with the toughies in her life? Let us also
remember that Brecht does not want us to see this problem only in gendered
terms but to engage with the effort to reconcile the economic and humane
concerns in a social context. But…does he succeed fully?

3.5 SHEN TEH’S DILEMMA VS SHUI TA’S

AGENCY
Through a series of Scenes, the play shows multiple situations wherein Shen
Teh presents herself as Shui Ta to bail herself out of dilemmas, messy/
tangled relationships, wean away from parasitic dependents who act
recklessly, jeopardizing Shen Teh’s business interest and personal welfare. In
each such situation, as Shui Ta, she displays a pragmatic attitude, survival
104
skills, and business acumen. She does not hesitate to act to protect her Themes and
Characterization
interest even if it conflicts with the trust placed in her by helpful neighbours.
While the other characters marvel at Shui Ta’s macho ruthlessness or long for
Shen Teh’s gentle concern, the spectator is fully aware of the contrary,
opposing attitudes, gestic acting as present in a single person. This helps in
reckoning with the dialectical nature of the construct of personhood. The
Scenes lay out the coping mechanism of an individual, a good person who
has to survive and retain one’s goodness in a society torn apart by poverty,
hunger, and unemployment of skilled workers and aspirational young men
and women. The actor enacting the role of Shen Teh/Shui Ta would reflect
not only a visual, sartorial difference but more importantly an attitudinal
difference towards the given situation.

The gestures in the plays of Brecht indicate the attitudes of a person in one’s
social interaction, affirming one’s social status. Shui Ta acts brusque, comes
down heavily on those dependent on Shen Teh’s goodwill but wins their
admiration and co-operation as well. The moral dilemmas of Shen Teh get
resolved by the agency of Shui Ta, underlying successful and the not
successful strategies in an unjust, unequal social matrix. The narrative does
not label the success and the non-success of a decision/choice as a good or an
evil one. It locates the problem in the social rubric while foregrounding the
individual’s coping strategies to survive and retain one’s humane,
empathetic, helpful nature.

When a horde of homeless descend upon her shop to stay and share the
goodies as it were, Shen Teh realizes the stark truth:

They are poor.

They have no friends.
They need someone.
How can they be refused? (1985: Scene 1,13)

But when they create a ruckus, bringing her shop down by helping
themselves to the goods, as Shui Ta she takes them to task and throws them
out. Yet the awareness that “toughness and duplicity will serve only against
one’s inferiors” permeates the consciousness of Shui Ta, underlining how the
Self is trapped by contrary impulses and compulsions.

Shui Ta bargains hard with the carpenter, calls up the police to hand over the
young Boy who brings home stolen cakes, and does not hesitate to use up an
old couple’s stocks placed with Shen Teh on trust as there was no written
document to support the transaction. (Scene 2, 5) Does this indicate Shui Ta’s
agency? Does his chilling ruthlessness appeal to us as it does to the Sister-in-
law, the Unemployed man, Mrs. Yang? Do we look at Shen Teh as a foolish,
gullible woman who does not know how to protect her self-interest? Is it
unethical to take care of oneself? The notion of Good cannot remain
entangled in abstract, vague, impractical association with the charity,
105
Bertolt Brecht: The selflessness, or irrational self-harm. Brecht’s theatre weaves in a rational
Good Woman of
Szechuan inquiry, scientific temper and a questioning mind to observe, analyze,
critique an individual’s place in a social space.

The conflicting impulses and the ability to make the right choice are best
illustrated in the play in the context of Shen Teh’s love for Yang Sun, an
aspiring airman rescued by her on a rainy day from his morbid plan to hang
himself at a park. Shen Teh understands his passion for flying and believes,
“One of us at least shall be able to fly above all this wretchedness; one at
least shall rise above us all!” (1985: Scene 4,47) Shen Teh is in love with Sun
but if she had to fulfill her lover’s dream, she would have to either agree to a
marriage with Shu Fu, the rich hairdresser or pass on the 200 silver dollars
given to her as a loan by the old couple to Sun! Yang Sun requires 500 silver
dollars to buy up his job as an airman and that too after getting an honest
airman (with a family) dismissed from service on trumped-up charges. The
complexities, rather the impossibilities of a clean, good life as simply not
available in a social structure that thrives on class disparity, disproportionate
assets amongst its citizens, are narrated in the Scenes. A total non-
involvement by the state, regarding the problems of the starving poor, the
skilled /educated, unskilled/able-bodied, unemployed youth is the prevailing
reality. The old and the maimed too are shown to do hard labour to fill their
belly. The old Grandpa, the out-of-work Carpenter Lin To, or the injured
Wang have no choice but to prod on, succumb to drinking or tobacco
addiction, or let their children salvage food from the garbage bin. The
strategies of Shui Ta seem efficient even if ruthless. However, the difference
between the exploiter and the survivor is reduced to a thin line, a grey,
discomfiting area.

In the Song of the Defencelessness of the Good and The Gods, ShenTeh/Shui
Ta laments thus:

Oh, the divine commandments

Are not much use against hunger.
………….
To win one’s mid-day meal
One needs the toughness which elsewhere builds empires.
Except twelve others be trampled down
The unfortunate cannot be helped. (1985:48)

If Shen Teh/Shui Ta uses up the barber’s buildings to generate employment

for the poor dependents, she has to virtually turn herself into a harsh master,
making them over-work and deal with opium/tobacco, a product that carries
problematic implications for the society at large. Slogging hard to save her
unborn child from scavenging the streets, she turns into a hard taskmaster.
She is reduced to employing others’ young children at her factory even as she
dreams of a better future for her child. Surely, something is wrong with such
106 a social order. Do we change the social structure or blame the individuals?
Do we seek to humanize the system or castigate the poor or the unemployed Themes and
Characterization
for demanding jobs and ration?

Critically examine the issues raised in this play in the context of the condition
of the migrant labourers, unskilled domestic workers, street-side vendors
during the Lockdown in 2020/21 in Indian cities. The globe-trotting elite had
spread the contagion initially but the poor suffered the most and lost their
livelihood. Hundreds of school-going children had to switch over to doing
odd jobs to fend for their families, give up schooling that had switched to an
online mode. The adult earning members of families of the urban poor had
succumbed to covid and infants, kids, teens had been rendered orphaned and
houseless. How do we cling to erstwhile notions of good, evil, charity,
community care under the present circumstances without radically re-
fashioning them? Can distribution of food packets for a few days or weeks to
the poor during a pandemic redress their loss and deprivation? Can an
individual or small group of volunteers satisfactorily address the
overwhelming situation? Do we see the necessity of an overhaul, a radical re-
thinking by Institutions? Do we need to re-order our social spaces, re-vision
the functioning of our economy, and render the state more interactive with its
citizens? The Parable of Shen Teh/Shui Ta raises similar concerns and issues.
Shen Teh rightly observes during her trial before the gods that “Something is
wrong with this world of yours.” (1985: Scene10,105) The play poses a
pertinent question to the spectators, “Should men be better? Should the world
be changed?” (1985: Epilogue,109)

3.6 THE THREE GODS

The Prologue of the play introduces the three Gods to us, wandering the
streets of Szechwan city, looking for shelter. In a city teeming with the poor
and the hungry, the only three figures who look “well-nourished “are easily
recognized by the water-seller Wang to be the Gods. They look delicate,
comfort-loving beings out on a mission to find at least one GOOD PERSON,
if not more, who could follow their commandments. The Gods are
represented in anthropomorphic terms. They seem to be a slothful, self-
indulgent, self-righteous, and elitist group. They are ignorant about the
suffering multitude. When told about the city being plagued alternately by
famines and floods, they are not alarmed and continue to talk in abstractions.
Their insistence upon finding a host who is “good” indicates how clueless
they are about the living conditions of the people. Wang is unable to find a
single citizen willing to host them for the night. It is not because people are
irreligious but they are too poor and fighting hard to survive that they cannot
afford to provide hospitality to guests, divine or otherwise.

The three gods are not omniscient. What is worse, they cannot even perceive
the reality staring stark at them! They leave money for their lodgings at Shen
Teh’s home but discreetly warn her not to let it be known, lest it should be
“misunderstood” (as Shen The is a prostitute). Their moral squeamishness is
107
Bertolt Brecht: The provoking, to say the least. The Gods claim they have no understanding of
Good Woman of
Szechuan economic matters and are clueless about the nitty-gritty of running a
business. No wonder, their monetary compensation turns out to be utterly
inadequate to meet the requirements of Shen Teh or towards the execution of
her vision to be “good “.

They take updates regarding Shen Teh’s goodness from Wang, now and then.
They respond to the challenges faced by her by mouthing platitudes: “..a
prudent gardener can work wonders with his little patch.”(1985:39) They are
rigid and unwilling to alter, tweak their commandments, and insist that “The
letter of the law has first to be fulfilled; then its spirit.” They also warn that
“that cousin must never again enter her door.” (1985:39) Indeed! They are
outdated, stupid, and elitist escapists without an awareness of the ground
reality. Brecht presents the gods as a superstructure that has become
redundant and obsolete. The question is posed to the spectators in the
Epilogue:

Should the world be changed?

Or just the gods? Or ought there to be none? (1985:109)

The gods refuse to “intervene”, pointing out that “Suffering ennobles”. They
are “but observers” and wish to keep out of trouble. One of them is nursing a
black eye following his intervention in a street quarrel! However, in Epic
Theatre, intervention is posited as a much-needed, humane, positive act. The
spectator is called upon to intervene in the debate raised in the play and take
the action forward in the real world. Refusal to intervene amounts to abject
passivity associated with the audience of Dramatic/Aristotelian theatre. The
gods in this play, the play argues, need to be shown the door and an alternate
ideological structure need to be put in place.

In Scene 10 where Shui Ta is put on trial for the murder of Shen Teh, the
gods present themselves as the magistrates but display no notion of justice or
compassion. They steadfastly cling to their pet notion that their
commandments require to be followed, that Shen The can “endure much” and
“everything is as it should be”. (1985:106-7). While Shen Teh cries out,
“Illustrious Ones! Do not go Away! I need you terribly!”(107-08), the gods
float away “Homeward to our nothingness” on a pink cloud! (108). The Gods
exit, leaving behind goodness in an impeded state. It is time to create a just
world, instead of seeking to justify the outdated divine commandments.

3.7 FRIENDS, LOVERS AND DEPENDENTS

Shen Teh’s most loyal friend is the poor water-seller, Wang. He is the one
who appreciates Shen Teh’s goodness, her hardships, and her generosity of
spirit. He acts as a Sutradhar, who introduces the condition of the Province,
its residents, interact with the gods intermittently, provides them updates
regarding how Shen Teh is coping with their commandments. He pleads
108 with them, on her behalf, to reduce the burden of the commandments, files a
complaint to locate Shen The, and questions Shui Ta about her whereabouts. Themes and
Characterization
He applauds Shen Teh for the title she has won, The Angel of the Slums.
However, he understands that such valorizing does not allow his friend to
live a fulfilling personal life. The two of them bond so well as friends that on
a rainy day when Wang gets no customers, Shen Teh persists in buying a
glass of water from him to appreciate his labour. She shares with him her
intimate secret of being pregnant, a fact that even her lover Yang Sun is
unaware of. Brecht offers these glimpses through minor moments in the play
as he is not interested in representing this bond in a realistic model. He
highlights one particular episode to draw our attention to class conflict,
notions of justice, and self-protection in the context of an apathetic society.

In Scene 4, Wang gets assaulted by Shu Fu and his hand swells up and
leaves him maimed. Although the incident took place in the presence of Mrs.
Shin and the family of eight, none comes forward to testify and help Wang
get compensation from the barber. Shen Teh offers to testify although it
might bring in the charge of perjury against her as she was not present at the
time of the incident. She rages aloud:

What sort of a town is that, what sort of humans are you?

When injustice takes place in a town there must be an uproar (1985:45)

Wang reciprocates her concern for justice by leading the search operation to
locate Shen Teh and haul up Shui Ta before the magistrates. He thereby
precipitates a crucial debate concerning the need to change the world and
ensure happiness for good people instead of dumping them into a state of
ennobling suffering.

Mrs. Shin who demands a greater share of Shen Teh’s generosity and resents
others who knock at her door for help is shown to help Shen Teh during her
pregnancy, help her keep the secret, and assist her as a trusted friend
experienced attendant. Here again, Brecht does not subscribe to
psychological realism but narrates moments and situations in an episodic
structure to initiate debate or a rational inquiry into the state of social
relations. The solidarity amongst the poor-- Wang, Mrs. Shin, the
Unemployed man, and Shen Teh merits our attention. The narrative as well
as the representation of characters is deliberately jumpy, non-linear, and
situation-centric.
The family of eight lands up at Shen Teh's shop on the very first night and
acts irresponsibly, helping themselves to wine and cigars, demanding food as
a matter of right, unconcerned about their benefactor’s welfare. Brecht
represents them to mirror a parasitical dependence on the better-positioned in
society which could thwart the humane initiatives of the latter for the former.
Their representation helps in avoiding the sentimental treatment of the
homeless and adds a dash of soft humour, in particular, in the grandpa’s
quaint chivalry towards ShenTeh.
The old couple, a carpet-dealer and his wife from whom Shen Teh buys a
shawl for herself offers her 200 dollars; Mrs. Mi Tzu demands six months’
109
Bertolt Brecht: The rent in advance; Mrs. Yang who pleads with Shen Teh to help her son realize
Good Woman of
Szechuan his dream, add to our understanding of the compulsions, aspirations and the
dilemmas of people living in a consumerist society with limited and unequal
opportunities. The Policeman highlights the complicity of the state in
aligning with the wealthy and the powerful and ignoring the needs of the
poor.

Characterization in Epic Theatre does not provide a realistic, psychologically

credible representation of characters. The actor demonstrates a situation in
which a character is posited to foreground issues and concerns which impact
people in a particular social structure. The peculiarities of a consumerist,
capitalist society that commodifies persons and ideals like love, goodness,
friendship et al are dramatized through the interaction amongst characters
drawn from different strata of such a society. They are neither cardboard
figures nor imaginatively portrayed tragic characters with hamartia. Human
impulses, aspirations, attitudes embedded in a dialectical, materialist world
are captured in performative space to initiate a rational probing of human
potential and social restraints. An actor demonstrates the character’s
participation in a given situation, to help us analyze the causes, examine the
gestures/attitude of the character in addressing the issue at hand. The actor
makes it amply clear that s/he is performing a role. The difference between
the action and the performance is conveyed to the spectator. The spectator, in
turn, is not expected to be purged of emotions or view the performance to
gain a cathartic experience but to observe and comment upon it.
Characterization in The Good Person of Szechwan has to be located in such a
context to appreciate the aesthetic of dialectics in Brecht’s theatre.

3.8 MARRIAGE, DREAMS, UNEMPLOYMENT,

POVERTY, HUNGER
The play encapsulates the chief features of Epic Theatre in narrativizing, in
an episodic structure, issues about the well-being of a society, of individuals
in a social space and culture. Epic Theatre has a didactic purpose and
functions with a pedagogic module in dramatic mode. The hungry, the
unemployed, and the houseless have their share of dreams. Are they entitled
to dream a better future for themselves? Should they accept their cursed state
as divinely ordained and suffer it silently? Do we hold them as law-breakers,
the riff-raff who cause a nuisance by demanding food and jobs? The Sister-
in-law eggs on the Boy to steal the choicest variety of cakes and rolls, not a
plain loaf of bread from the baker’s shop. Do we see it as subversive or as
ludicrous? Can poverty and hunger be perceived as individual narratives or
do we learn to locate them as reflecting an unjust, inhumane social order that
systematizes it and keeps a few empowered and many excluded from a
dignified living? A performance/reading of The Good Person of Szechwan
should alert us to examine these paradigms.

110
Love and Marriage in a consumerist, capitalist society stand implicated in the Themes and
Characterization
prevailing culture of commodification. Shen Teh’s love for Sun fills her with
happiness. Her professional profile as a prostitute commodifies her body but
she encounters pleasure, sexual and emotional for the first time. However,
she soon learns the conflicting pressures of fulfilling her lover’s dream to fly
and her commitment to pay back the old couple the money she owes. Sun
illustrates how his dream to become an airman and get a well-paying job can
be realized only by bribing his way and displacing another able worker. In
such a ruthless social structure, that dehumanized labour, turns one against
another, emotions like love or institutions like marriage are traded for
mercantile ambition. Love, in such a context, lands the woman in pregnancy,
accompanied by the apprehension of single parenting and protecting the child
from hunger and poverty. The fiasco of a wedding, the paraphernalia of
wining, and celebratory toast in Scene 6 are significant not for its anti-climax
but for engendering a critical awareness that ‘Where there’s merit there’s
money’ sounds untrue in such a world as that of Shen and Sun.

3.9 LET US SUM UP

The world is unfit to live in: Change the world

The Good Person of Szechwan implicates the social structure, the

superstructure (The Gods, Marriage as an institution) as complicit in the
suffering of people. Individuals can work towards improving their lot only in
a limited way. The prevailing structure has to be re-structured. The world
needs to be changed if it is the world that is uninhabitable. An old Chinese
poem, quoted by Shui Ta in Scene 2 aptly sums up the argument for a change
of a social, economic structure as individual action is rendered limited and
inadequate:

That so many of the poor should suffer from cold what can we do to prevent?
To bring warmth to a single body is not much use.
I wish I had a big rug ten thousand feet long,
Which at one time could cover up every inch of the city. (1985:23-24)
BOX 1
Dramatic Theatre Epic Theatre
Plot Narrative
Implicates the spectator in a stage Turns the spectator into an observer
situation and wears down his capacity but arouses his capacity for action
for action
Provides him with sensations Forces him to take decisions
Experience Picture of the world
The spectator is involved in He is made to face something
something
Suggestion Argument
111
Bertolt Brecht: The Instinctive feelings are preserved Brought to the point of recognition
Good Woman of
Szechuan The spectator is in the thick of it, The spectator stands outside, studies
shares the experience
The human being is taken for granted The human being is the object of the
inquiry
He is unalterable He is alterable and able to alter
Eyes on the finish Eyes on the course
One scene makes another Each scene for itself
Growth Montage
Linear development In curves
Evolutionary determinism Jumps
Man as a fixed point Man as a process
Thought determines being Social being determines thought
Feeling Reason
Source: John Willet(ed.). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. New York,
Hill, and Wang:1966,37.

3.10 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the strategy of introducing a cousin to resolve the problems
faced by Shen Teh. How does it illustrate the dialectical aspect of human
predicament?
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
2. Examine the key features of Epic Theatre as deployed in the play.
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
3. Do you agree that the world needs to be changed if it becomes unfit to
live in?
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………….

112
UNIT 4 STRUCTURE AND STYLE OF THE Structure and Style
of the Play

PLAY

Structure

4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Scenes: An Overview
4.3 Interludes
4.4 Songs
4.5 Masks, Costume, Change of Locale
4.6 Epilogue
4.7 Let Us Sum Up
4.8 Glossary
4.9 Check Your Progress: Possible Questions

4.0 OBJECTIVES
In this section, we shall examine how Epic Theatre functions differently from
Dramatic Theatre in terms of style, structure, and performative aspects in the
context of our reading of The Good Person of Szechwan.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
The play amply illustrates the core features of Epic Theatre. You might like
to refresh your memory regarding the salient features by looking up Box 1 in
the previous Unit. The Good Person of Szechwan presents a critical view of
how a capitalist society dehumanizes people, commodifies persons and our
cherished values. Core Institutions of society like family, marriage, the
police, state machinery, or workplace work in nexus with authoritarian,
impersonal, and patriarchal paradigms and mindsets.
The play represents highlights of such a social standpoint through an
interplay of Scenes and Interludes. The division of a play into Acts is
dispensed within Epic Theatre as such a structure imposes an artificial
neatness, parallels, and an enforced symmetry to the play world. It gives rise
to sensational, climactic twists and turns at the end of each Act culminating
in a closure at the end of the play. The Good Person of Szechwan, mirrors the
open-endedness, the ongoing debates, disagreements, and the process of
arriving rather than a static point of a destined outcome: an experience
similar to our lives as social beings. The structure of this play is such that it
shows us the course of the narrative, not its outcome. The movement is
jumpy and unpredictable, giving ample scope for the spectator to observe,
comment, and intervene in performance time and real-world space.
113
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of 4.2 SCENES: AN OVERVIEW
Szechuan
We are familiar with the structure of a play, are we not? We witness the plot
and action of a play unfold in Acts and Scene divisions that precipitate a
predictable cycle of exposition, climax, anti-climax characterized by spilling
of a hitherto withheld secret and culminating in a dénouement, often through
a deus ex machina. In The Good Person of Szechwan, the play reflects a
course of action in an episodic structure. It is mounted like a montage,
without a scheme of a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it puts together
different moments faced by members of a neighborhood under a particular
cultural rubric: economic, ethical, social, and ideological. The play courses
through Scenes and Interludes incorporates Songs to comment upon the
situation at hand or how it is managed by the persons. The play also defies
closure and remains open-ended, inviting the audience to pitch in with their
suggestions, strategies, and possible solutions to the crisis resulting from the
characters’ responses to the situation. It also suggests that a radical altering of
the prevailing matrix is more pertinent than cosmetic tweaking or looking for
personal lapses amongst the characters.

In the play, a total of 10 Scenes present to us various points of a given

situation to demonstrate how it is tough to survive in an unjust society. Shen
Teh confesses before the gods/magistrates that “To be good while yet
surviving/Split me like lightening into two people” (1965: Scene 10,105).
The play demonstrates this truth in all ten Scenes. The Interludes offer a
reflection on her situation/strategy deployed in the interaction between Wang
and the gods. An empathetic commentary by Wang and an apathetic
understanding by the gods offer a dialectical analysis of the situation faced by
Shen Te/Shui Ta.

Each Scene is conceived as an episode, hence the structure of the play is

episodic. The narrative in the scenes offers a non-linear, jumpy course
undermining the notion of the development of a constructed plot. Scenes and
Interludes alternate but without a well-designed pattern. The Interludes
follow either after two scenes in a row or after a single scene. There are 7
Interludes and 10 Scenes in all, with captions/heading to each one of them.
This reminds us of the performance of epics over 10 nights, for instance
during the Dussera. When we watch a Ramlila performance in North India
or episodes from the Mahabharatha in a traditional theatre like the
Terukoothu in South India, we are aware of the narrative. The title of the
episode to be staged is announced beforehand. The audience, therefore, can
observe, participate, comment on the narrative. The actors are viewed as
performing a role, demonstrating the dilemmas, responses of the epic
characters depicted in the day’s episode. Brecht’s Epic Theatre reflects
similar modes of representation. It is a theatre that documents. It does not
seek to create an illusion of reality. It uses placards, titles, maps, masks,
songs to interrupt the performance, to draw our attention to comments,
114 interpretations on the dramatic situation.
Scene 1, A Small Tobacconist shows the contrary impulses/ forces at work. Structure and Style
of the Play
Shen Teh has opened a tobacconist’s shop with the money received from the
gods. She cheerfully takes in persons landing up at her shop for help and
succor. Soon she finds the number of such seekers overwhelming. To be
Lady Bountiful or to be able to say No—that’s the question! How to remain
good towards all when one’s resources are limited? This question is raised in
the very first scene and demands a considered stand from us. The idea of a
cousin who would demand a reckoning of accounts is suggested by some of
those who have found shelter at her place to keep many such others from
infringing upon their share at Shen Teh’s place! How is the bill presented by
the carpenter for the shelves put up at the shop to be paid? Shen Teh has
exhausted the 1000 silver dollars and has no other resource to fall back upon.
The constant knocking at her door by those who are hungry and homeless is a
stark image of an unequal society. Brecht presents the core issues and themes
of the play in the very first Scene, without frills, without an elaborate build-
up:

Cries from outside: Open up! (1985:20)

Scene 2, The Tobacconist’s, shows the entry of Shui Ta who ably and smartly
manages to settle the carpenter’s bill. Her dependents appreciate Shui Ta’s
efficiency and cleverness but realize that Shen Teh “could never bring herself
to say such things.” Shui Ta observes that the “poverty in this city is too
much for any individual to correct.” (1985:23) Decent persons stand ruined,
the scene demonstrates. Shui Ta can bring some order in the house, evict the
raucous, align with the policeman, receive protection for the shop. Interesting
suggestions of drafting matrimonial advertisement for Shen Teh, to find a
husband to pay the rent for six months in advance. Ha-ha! Is this a viable
option? As a prostitute, Shen Teh had to monetize her body. Does she marry
now to avert a financial crunch?

Scene 3, Evening in a Park, offers a radically different perspective on the

issue. Can she find love? Can she escape from an “arranged” suitor? How
does love operate in a consumerist society? If women are constrained to sell
themselves to survive in this society, and men are unemployed, how do we
reckon with values and ideals which humanize us? Can love and marriage be
romanticized? Does our material need more primary than other categories of
needs? Does prioritizing one set of needs fair to human beings or our society?

Shen Teh meets Yang Sun at a park, prevents him from committing suicide,
appreciates his dream to fly and be an airman at the postal department. She
remarks, “to give up hope, is to give up kindness.” (1985:35) When she buys
water from Wang despite the rains pouring down crystal-clear water, she
shows how to value human labour, how to be caring towards each other.
Love has many hues and dimensions, after all.

Scene 4 with a ubiquitous title like Square in front of Shen Teh’s Shop hardly
gives us an inkling of what we witness in this scene. A physical assault on
115
Bertolt Brecht: The Wang by Mr. Shu Fu seems unprovoked. No reason is given except that the
Good Woman of
Szechuan rich barber does not relish Wang selling water near his shop. By
underplaying the cause and effect paradigm, Brecht wants us to focus on the
issue of justice, compensation for the poor, the compulsions and
compunctions of the poor regarding giving testimony in favour of the injured
to the police /courts. Shen Teh reminds us that “When an injustice takes place
in a town there must be an uproar” (1985:45). She promises Wang that she
would testify, never mind if she had not witnessed the assault. Mr. Shu Fu
falls in love with her and promises aid. Shen Teh buys herself a shawl and is
euphoric about her love for Sun, completely forgetting that she owes six
months’ rent. Scene 4 presents numerous contrary impulses, acts, attitudes in
characters across the social spectrum. The principle of dialectical materialism
that offers a window to our understanding of the issues under the lens is most
effectively represented in this scene. The square in the open street allows a
montage view of interaction amongst different sets of characters
simultaneously. A panoramic view of society is presented to us.

Scene 5, The Tobacconist shows how the system turns one worker against
another, resulting in alienated labour. The unjustness of the system propels an
aspiring worker to bribe his way, displace an honest worker to gain a job for
himself. This indicates that contraries do not always result in progress,
especially if the situation is systemic. The only way to fulfill Sun’s dream,
Shen The feels, is to sell her shop but she does not get a good price and is
unable to put aside the amount she owes to the old couple. She chooses love
over a marriage of convenience but the scene does not let us forget the harsh
truth that a marriage with Shu Fu would let Shen Teh survive, do good to
others while love does not love for long but thrives in a toxic mode.

Scene 6, Private Room in a Cheap Suburban Restaurant, shows the hard trial
in terms of being good to others and being good to oneself. The wry humour
in the scene over the guzzling of wine by the guests ends in a flop show as
the wedding does not take place. The Yangs wait for Shui Ta to arrive and
settle the 300 dollars to help Sun get the job while Shen Teh makes the
difficult choice of standing by the defenceless—the old couple, the poor who
wait at her door for a bowl of rice. The play has brought to the fore how
staying good in an unequal, unjust society drains the individual. The world
needs to be altered as individuals are unable to realize their potential under
the prevailing system.

Scene 7, Yard behind Shen Teh’s Shop shows how her pregnancy alerts Shen
Teh to work towards creating a better universe for her unborn child. She
accepts Shu Fu’s blank cheque, uses his buildings to set up a factory to sort
tobacco, and employs those dependent on her charity. The notion of good is
vigorously re-configured as a non-theological one, as not an act of bourgeois
charity but an organic human impulse that promotes the well-being of the
community. The scene shows the state of stark poverty as kids of the
unemployed scour for food from garbage bins. But Shen Teh has to mask
116
herself as Shui Ta and the world looks at one as good and the other as bad! Structure and Style
of the Play
Brecht pushes the dialectic to the forefront for a rational inquiry and debate.

Scene 8, Shui Ta’s Tobacco Factory, and Scene 9, Shen Teh’s Shop take the
issue of dialectical principle further ahead. The titles, the gestus deployed and
the resentment of the workers towards the harshness at the factory bring out
the impossibility of reconciling the aspirations associated with Shen’s shop
with the dehumanizing labour of Shui’s factory. Shen Teh is reported missing
by the townsfolk.

Scene10, Courtroom foregrounds the split, not as a person but a socially

enjoined one.

To be good while yet surviving

Split me like lightning into two people (1985: Scene 10,105).

Her appeal to the gods/magistrates cuts no ice and she is left to address the
issue by her means BUT remain GOOD.

The play appeals to the spectators in the Epilogue to engage with the
problem and work out an answer, finding a solution to help good people to a
happy end (1985:109).

4.3 INTERLUDES
A crucial dramatic concept that informed the Set-design, Script, Structure,
and performance pertained to a defamiliarizing of these aspects to the
spectators to enable them to observe, comment, and debate the issues/
situation represented on stage. In the section on Scenes, we noticed that each
Scene had a title that prepared the audience in terms of what they shall view
and remain distanced enough from the performance to view it with a critical
detachment. The titles could be descriptive or offer a comment, reminding us
that we are watching a narrative being performed, not an unfolding of a
tightly constructed plot. The Interludes extend this purpose by interrupting
the narrative by offering a comment, filling up gaps, or providing an analysis
of the situation. The Interludes, thus, estrange us from the narrative to
facilitate a review, a critical, rational inquiry. The German term,
Verfremdungseffekt, was initially translated as A-effect/Alienation effect by
Eric Bentley. But a more correct translation would be the Estrangement
effect. It creates a critical distancing between the spectator and the
performance, in place of emotional involvement between the two as noticed
in Dramatic/Illusionistic theatre. The spectator, therefore, studies what s/he
views critically and offers an alternative strategy to resolve the crisis. The
estrangement effect does not allow the spectator to identify emotionally with
the actor’s experience but rationally examine what the actor has demonstrated
concerning the character’s situation.

In all the Interludes, Wang interacts with the gods who seek an update on
Shen Teh’s progress, whether she is following the commandments or not, 117
Bertolt Brecht: The whether she continues to be good. The meetings take place, at times in a
Good Woman of
Szechuan dream or under a bridge or a culvert where Wang has a place to sleep. The
locale lets us view the issue of homelessness from yet another disconcerting
angle. After handing over a thousand silver dollars, the gods believe Shen
Teh can freely follow the impulses of her gentle heart…we can put a stop to
the rumour which says that the good have found our earth impossible to live
on (1985: Interlude Under a Bridge, 22). The Interludes expose the gods’
ignorance about the sordid living conditions in the world. They believe that
the commandments have to be strictly adhered to and confess that I know
nothing of business, I admit... What has business to do with an upright and
honorable life? (1985: Interlude Wang’s sleeping -place under a Culvert,39-
40) In the third Interlude, in front of the curtain Brecht deploys masks,
costumes, songs and shows the actor Shen Teh transforming into Shui Ta
before the spectator’s eyes. This is a brilliant instance of the V –an effect that
ably defamiliarizes the scene to let the spectator notice the performativity of
cross-dressing in non-naturalistic terms. Cross-dressing is not an act of
entertainment here but a strategy to tackle the ruthlessness of social spaces by
the defenceless. The Song of the Defencelessness of The Good and The Gods
outrightly tell us that the divine commandments /Are not much use against
hunger and that the gods are powerless (1985:48).

The next Interlude too shows Shen Teh in front of a curtain. She is in her
wedding clothes and wonders if she could be strong enough to call out the
goodness in him (1985:60). In Interlude 5, we are back to Wang’s Sleeping
Place and the gods appear to him in a dream. The dream further
defamiliarizes and helps us to study the performance in a non-naturalistic
context. The parable shared here on the advantages of uselessness is another
important feature of Epic Theatre. The Interlude acts as a commentary here to
help us appreciate how the good ones are put on a harsh trial the most and
how unfortunate, unfair it is to do so. The gods opine that we are but
observers. (1985:71) The play reiterates the unjustness of the social order and
how it impedes good people to help others. In the sixth Interlude, Wang’s
Sleeping Place, in a dream, Wang pleads with the gods to relent a little and
reduce the precepts imposed upon good persons. This interlude posits
important alternative ideals that are humane and more pertinent to our social
rubric/social role. Goodwill, fairness, and decency in place of abstractions
like love, justice, the honour would be pragmatic, manageable and much
needed in a secular space. Goodness has long been linked to godliness,
thereby valorizing such an individual and incapacitating her/him from
working towards a collaborative praxis.

The last Interlude, before Scene 10 is another dream sequence at Wang’s

Sleeping -Place in which gods appear exhausted and look physically altered
as well. Maimed and injured, their state alerts us to the need for a change in
our received superstructure, our dogmas, and unquestioned precepts.
Testifying to an appalling reality of hunger, poverty, and war, the gods
118 nonetheless, cling to the notion that one good person can redeem the world
that is certainly in a terrible mess! They concede that The world is unfit to Structure and Style
of the Play
live in, you have got to admit it! (1985:99). They realize that in their struggle
to survive and barely fulfill their basic needs, human beings find the divine
commandments “fatal”.

This Interlude paves the way for the Epilogue that underscores the need to
change the gods and alter the world for the benefit of humanity.

4.4 SONGS
Music in Epic Theatre is an important device of Estrangement. It is a V
Effect that defamiliarizes the dramatic situation, presents the Song as a
commentary, not as an emotional release through poetry and music. The
Songs are recited by the actors themselves as part of the performance, it is
not a background score. The musicians are visible to the audience. Songs are
used as an interruptive strategy. Like Pause in modern theatre, Songs jolt the
audience out of complacency, engaging them with the performance in a
critical, reflexive way. The songs combine spoken rhythms, not as dialogue
but as utterances, like those of a hawker pedalling his ware to draw attention
to his professional purpose, not to entertain his customers. The Songs in the
play draw our attention to the dialectic of action, impulse, and social
gestures. They lay the case before us to scrutinize, offer an alternative
suggestion, make us think; envision strategies to counter the impasse.

See Box 2 for a quick reference. Page numbers are to the 1965 translation of
the play by John Willett, Methuen: 1985.

BOX 2

Reference Title of the Sung by Comment

Song
Scene1:19 The Song of The Intelligence, conscientious
the Smoke Grandfather, conduct, and youthful
the Niece & aspiration get bogged down by
the hunger and lack of
Unemployed opportunities
Man
Scene 3:36- The Water Wang and Resources and needs are
37 Seller’s Song Shen Teh posited in a dialectical
in The Rain framework. Rain ruins the
labour of a water seller. An
airman without an aircraft is an
unfortunate fact of life but is
embedded in corruption,
rampant unemployment, and a
denial of the right to dream
beyond one’s means. Shen Teh
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Bertolt Brecht: The buys water from Wang to offer
Good Woman of
Szechuan it to a despairing Sun. The
song documents appreciation
of labour and aspirational
vision.
Interlude 3: Song of The Shen Teh & Do we not need “a ruthless
48 Defencelessn Shui Ta invasion”, the empire-building
ess of the “toughness” to defend the
Good and Good as well? The gods seem
The Gods powerless to come to the
rescue of the Good and their
commandments cannot feed the
hungry. How do the Good
resolve this?
Scene 6: The Song of Yang Sun “When the moon is green
68-69 the Green cheese/ The poor shall inherit
Cheese the earth.” That would be an
impossibility, after all. What
the Scriptures promise, cannot
be realized in the material
world. But a new world has to
be created, Utopia is a vision to
be realized, evolved, not meant
to be only fantasized.
Scene 8: Song of the Workers’ Fairy tales/myths often present
87-88 Eighth Chorus 7 as an auspicious number and
Elephant 4 & 8 as evil. The song plays
around with this notion to
argue that the eighth elephant
benefits the most as it is smart
enough to co-opt with the
authorities and earn its
comfort. The seven
elephants(workers) slog hard,
while the eighth one basks in
its rewards from the boss for
“telling” on those seven. This
is a comment on Sun as a
supervisor in the factory.
Notice that the actor playing
Sun sings along with the
workers. A good illustration of
how estrangement and gestures
work in Epic Theatre.

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4.5 MASKS, COSTUME, CHANGE OF LOCALE Structure and Style
of the Play

Masks are deployed to break the illusionistic impact associated with

Dramatic theatre. Masks foreground the performativity of the representation,
that it is not a realistic presentation but a stylized one. This serves the
purpose of enabling the spectator to view the performance as a well-rehearsed
demonstration that seeks to intervene socially, to explain. The imitative
representation of illusionistic/Naturalist theatre is substituted by commentary
in Epic Theatre. Masks, Costumes, or even references to the location are
deployed in such a context.
The references to trousers or Shawl comment on the divided self of Shui Ta /
Shen Teh. Apart from the gendered reference, they also indicate the split, an
undermining of organic wholeness of a Good individual, the impossibility of
staying alive and helping others cope with the overwhelming reality of
poverty, hunger, unemployment, corruption, and institutional complacence.
The dialectic principle inherent in our social self is reflected in the pair of
trousers on a clothesline and a shawl tucked away in a bundle under the bed.
When Shen Teh enters, carrying Shui Ta’s mask and costume, the audience is
observing it as a social strategy, as gestures that are deployed to defuse the
crisis of following the divine commandments in a dehumanizing social
structure. The audience is studying it as an argument, not viewing it as a
stage prop. Shen Teh sings the Song of the Defencelessness of the Good and
The Gods to share her realization that the gods are powerless to help the
good. As Shui Ta, she extends the argument that divine commandments
cannot redress hunger and we need to be tough which is likely to help a few
by destroying many as in a war or investing in energy similar to the one that
is required to build an empire. In other words, goodness cannot remain a
bookish abstraction but has to be socially subversive.
The references to Szechwan, the bridge or a culvert as a sleeping den, the
square outside the shop, the street, or the restaurant (specified as one in a
cheap suburb) affect defamiliarization of social spaces as known to us. Such
a process renders the spectator to stand outside the performance to study it
and not be transported to consuming it as a voyeur.

4.6 EPILOGUE
The Epilogue in The Good Person of Szechwan posits the play as a
performance that requires to be taken up in the real world, to the domain of
debate, discussion, suggestion, and action to address the issues and questions
raised in the enactment. It is an open-ended play and places the spectator as a
critical observer and does not stay a complacent, passive consumer of art.
The Epilogue interplays art and life as inter-related, reflective, and
interrogative of each other, not mutually exclusive. It is yet another device of
V Effect/ the estranging/defamiliarizing process that helps look at theatre in
its performative aspect within and beyond the performance space. 121
Bertolt Brecht: The The epilogue could be spoken by Shen Teh or Wang or by Sun or as a
Good Woman of
Szechuan collective choric commentary, spoken by multiple characters. Notice that the
curtain does NOT come down and the actor presents himself to address the
audience directly. This reflects the break, the estrangement that makes the
spectator a non-consumer, a non-voyeur but a participant and critical
commentator. Epic theatre is a collaborative, participatory theatre and calls
upon the audience to not stay passive but turn into interventionists:

But what would you suggest?

What is your answer?
Nothing’s been arranged.
Should men be better?
Should the world be changed?
Or just the gods? Or Ought there to be none? (1965:109)
There must be happy endings, must, must, must! (in the real world)

The Epilogue is symmetrical to the Prologue which is a long one (unlike

conventional Prologues in Dramatic theatre). It introduces the situation,
historicizes it by locating it in the past in a world where Gods are on a visit.
The Parable mode of narrative, the presence of gods (who are not
omniscient!), in a distant province of Szechwan where the only good person
happens to be a prostitute are interruptions in dramatic discourse that
underline the aspects of theatricality. The spectator watches the performance
as a performance, not as a slice of life. The Prologue sets the pace to let the
spectator observe, question, respond with a shake of the head to suggest an
alternative mechanism to negotiate the problem at hand. How about the gods
sharing the sleeping space of Wang, under a bridge?! Why should Shen Teh
dismiss her client and lodge the gods at her house? The notion of Good is
represented in such a way that we are encouraged to evolve a different
consensus around it. This process continues in the Interludes, Songs, in the
splitting of the self sartorially and like functioning to reach a point of
subversive action on the part of the spectators as envisaged in the Epilogue.

4.7 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have looked at the structure and style as reflective of the key
features of Epic Theatre. We also looked at the deployment of Songs and
some of the performative elements to initiate a discussion and critical inquiry
on the themes and issues represented in the play. Epic Theatre has influenced
political theatre in all parts of the world, including India.

4.8 GLOSSARY
Dialectical materialism: To view processes—social, political, historical
events as arising out of conflicting forces, contradictions in the material
world/being.
122
Gestus: Different from the gesture. It was an expression of an attitude (gist), Structure and Style
of the Play
in a social dimension. It is a technique to represent social attitude, not an
emotional state.

Historicizing: A concept used by Brecht to deploy distancing, by positing the

dramatic Setting in a distant past, locale, or event. This facilitates a critical
inquiry of the past and a better understanding of the present rubric.

Verfremdung / Verfremdungseffekt: The effect of estrangement/

defamiliarization as a process of aesthetic interventions. It enables the
spectator to break out of complacency, view the appalling condition as
strange/ unnatural/unacceptable, and work towards altering it for the better.

4.09 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the purpose and effect of the use of Songs in Epic Theatre in the
context of The Good Person of Szechwan.
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
2. Comment on any two aspects of the structure as reflected in the play.
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
3. Critically examine the questions and concerns raised in the Epilogue.
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………

123
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of
Szechuan

124
 Structure and Style
of the Play

Block

3
SAMUEL BECKETT: WAITING FOR
GODOT
Block Introduction
UNIT 1
Waiting for Godot: An Avant-Garde Play
UNIT 2
Theatre of the Absurd
UNIT 3
Waiting for Godot: Themes and Characterization
UNIT 4
Waiting for Godot: Structure and Style of the Play

125
Bertolt Brecht: The
Good Woman of BLOCK INTRODUCTION
Szechuan
Block 3 is dedicated to SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989)

Through the four units that we have identifies for your study, you will come
to know and understand one major playwright of the Modern European
Drama. Beckett was the pioneer of ‘Theatre of Absurd’ in European Drama.
Considering the time when this play was written, Beckett was well-aware of
the nihilistic feeling that underlined the modern society. In his most famous
literary work ‘Waiting for Godot’ (1948), Beckett experimented
with absurdist humour that became a new trend in modern drama. The play
defines the monotony and boredom of life and a constant waiting for
something better to happen.

After world wars, people in the western world were living in constant fear of
death. Beckett showcased this feeling of pessimism in his play with a touch
of humour that made the play an absurd, mix of tragedy and comedy. The
play is full of nonsensical dialogues, abrupt shifts in mood, distinct stage
setup and more.

In a similar way, Beckett’s other works reflect a tragic-comedy

interpretation of modern life, alienation from tradition and questioning of
historical as well as religious narratives.

Though references will be made to the larger body of his works, you will
have in-depth study of one of his iconic plays Waiting for Godot. You may
consult other sources mentioned in the text for a wider understanding of the
text. Have a good time reading the Block.

126