Fabel

Fabel is a critical term and a dramaturgical technique pioneered by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht.

Fabel should not be confused with 'fable', which is a form of short narrative (hence the retention of the original German spelling in its adoption into English usage). Elizabeth Wright argues that it is "a term of art which cannot be adequately translated".

As a critical term, fabel refers to an analysis of the plot of a play. This includes three interrelated but distinct aspects: firstly, an analysis of the events portrayed in the story. In an epic production, this analysis would focus on the social interactions between the characters and the causality of their behaviour from a historical materialist perspective; the fabel summarizes "the moral of the story not in a merely ethical sense, but also in a socio-political one". For example, in relation to Brecht's play Man Equals Man (1926), Wright argues that "[t]he fabel of this play centres on the transformation of an individual through his insertion into a collective."

Secondly, a fabel analyzes the plot from a formal and semiotic perspective. This includes the play's dramatic structure and its formal shaping of the events portrayed. It also includes an analysis of the semiotic fabric of the play, recognizing that it "does not simply correspond to actual events in the collective life of human beings, but consists of invented happenings [and that t]he stage figures are not simple representations of living persons, but invented and shaped in response to ideas."

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