EPIC+theatre!

__Epic Theatre__

//Videos on Brecht & Epic Theatre...// →Epic theatre Ensemble Overview with David Strathairn  [|Epic Theatre - Like a banana!] →→ [|Mother Courage and Her Children - Dramaturgy] → [|Re-enactment of "A Conversation with Bertolt Brecht" from Brecht on Theatre] //Information + Pictures about Brecht & Epic Theatre...// **Epic theatre** (German : // episches Theater // ) was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners many of the concepts and practices involved in Brechtian epic theatre had been around for years, even centuries, Brecht unified them, developed the style, and popularized it. Brecht later preferred the term " dialectical theatre ." 

__The Epic Actor__
Epic Actors serve as narrators and demonstrators. They retell events and in doing so demonstrate actions and events that assist in the audience's understanding the situation. Brecht wanted his actors to always remember that they are an actor portraying another's emotions, feelings and experiences

__The Epic Play__
The Epic Play will follow a story familiar to the audience. The story is often in the form of a fable, or it will show historical events. Brecht's intention in using known material was to make it unsensational: by taking away any attraction-grabbing ‘wrapping' that an original story may have, Brecht was stripping away a disguise that dramatic theatre often uses.

__The Alienation Effect__
Perhaps the best known technique of Brecht's epic theatre is the Alienation Effect: to make the familiar strange. Although the term ‘alienate' may conjure up images of separating one thing from another by building a wall, this is not the case. The A-effect takes "…the human social incidents to be portrayed and label[s] them as something striking, something that calls for explanation, is not to be taken for granted…" (Willet 125) The purpose is that the audience be put in a situation where they can reflect critically in a social context

__ The Epic Audience __
"The one tribute we can pay the audience is to treat it as thoroughly intelligent. It is utterly wrong to treat people as simpletons when they are grown up at seventeen. I appeal to the reason."(Willet, 14) The Relaxed Audience is how Brecht referred to the audience he wished the epic theatre to attract. Brecht often spoke of what he termed a ‘smoker's theatre', where audience members would puff on cigars, much like they would at a boxing match, whilst watching a performance. The relaxed audience are interested in what they are watching; they are there to be entertained, and to think

__The Epic Stage__
Brecht envisaged the Epic Stage as a place for discussion. The audience is presented with a topic of social or political relevance and an opinion or message on said topic. The epic stage provides its audience with questions, possible solutions and actively encourages them to think, determine and act. Brecht had no desire to hide any of the elements of theatrical production. Lighting, music, scenery, costume changes, acting style, projections and any other elements he called upon were in full view of the audience; a reminder that they are in a theatre, and what they are watching is not real.

__Examples __ Several modern playwrights have continued to write in the epic genre, including Howard Brenton and David Edgar (whose //Destiny// (1976) is a modern classic in this style). There have been interesting combinations of epic and naturalistic styles in the work of Arthur Miller (//Death of a Salesman,// 1949) and Caryl Churchill (//Top Girls,// 1982).