The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre

"The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" is a theoretical work by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. It was composed in 1930 as a set of notes to accompany his opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In it, he outlines his ideas for a "refunctioning" of the theatre, his principle of the 'separation of the elements" (conceived in opposition to Wagner's principle of the "integrated work of art"), and the "shifts of accent" involved in the move from traditional "dramatic" theatre to his own "epic" theatre. It also contains one of the earliest formulations of "Gestus".

Brecht thought, the "old" forms of European theatre based on Aristotle, which, in the face of changing contemporary circumstances were inadequate to represent social reality. Therefore, he came up with the concept of “epic theatre”. This direction of theatre was inspired by Brecht’s Marxist political beliefs. It was something of a political platform for his ideologies. Epic theatre is the assimilation of education through entertainment and is the antithesis of Stanislavsky’s Realism and also Expressionism. Brecht believed that, unlike epic theatre, Expressionism and Realism were incapable of exposing human nature and so had no educational value. He conjectured that his form of theatre was capable of provoking a change in society. Brecht’s intention was to encourage the audience to ponder, with critical detachment, the moral dilemmas presented before them.

Life of Galileo by Brecht is a play pregnant with all the stipulations of an epic theatre. The goal is one of estrangement or Verfremdung with an emphasis on reason and objectivity rather than emotion. Brecht provokes the audience not only into thinking about the play but into reforming society by challenging common (dominant) ideologies. The V-effekt (verfremdung effek) in the play is produced by employing various techniques.

The Life of Galileo has been fabricated as a montage of independent incidents. It moves from scene to scene by curves and jumps which keep the audience detached and make them capable to judge that whether the things are happening in a right way. There is a sudden shift of scenes. Galileo reaches Florentine in scene 4 where he explains his discovery which is in complete contrast to Ptolemaic system of Aristotle and argues with mathematician and philosopher. The sudden shift of scene is observed in scene 5 where Virginia is sent home from the convent because city is stricken with plague. The shift serves the aim to focus on the human relationships. The individual episodes are loosely connected, all contributing, however, to the play's main theme. Instead, the scenes are united by means of the repetition of the main characters, settings and motifs. While Aristotelian theatre aimed at the identification of the spectator with the character and at emotional involvement, Brecht believed that, in order for the audience to be critical and intellectually involved in the play, distance was needed, the audience needed to be alienated. His new, epic theatre was not to be "culinary", or, in other words, for easy consumption, but to appeal to reason.

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