Philosophy of the Performing Arts

performance ii: audience and embodiment 185
figure most commonly associated with this kind of challenge is the German
playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht.^6 Brecht’s “epic” conception of drama
conceives both the aim and the proper methodology of theater differently
from the Aristotelean view. The aim of theater, Brecht argues, should be to
critically engage the audience in an attempt to understand the point of the
play, and its bearing on the world outside the theater. The question that the
viewer should ask herself is not merely “Why did that happen?” or “What
is going to happen next?” but also “What is this play for?” To put this in the
terms introduced in Chapter 6, the Brechtian audience is intended to take
both an internal and an external interrogative interest in what is being pre-
sented, with the predominant focus upon the external interest.
What is distinctive about Brecht’s conception of epic theater, however,
is his account of how this critical aim of dramatic performance is to be
achieved. Brecht proposes that, in order to elicit the desired response, we
replace the individualist conception of characters, as psychologically rich
individuals, with a generic conception, where characters are presented as
psychologically thin representatives of their classes or socio-economic roles.
This prevents the spectator from emotionally identifying with the characters,
and forces her to relate the presented events to the world outside the theater
where real individuals occupy the kinds of roles represented by the charac-
ters. In order to bring the viewer to interrogate the play externally as well
as internally, Brecht urges performers to stress the representational nature
of what the viewer is looking at. This involves various kinds of “distancia-
tion” techniques, such as direct address by the actors to the audience, the
use of songs, “gestic acting” which accentuates bodily movements in a quasi-
mechanical way, and the projection of a film backdrop as a commentary on
the action. All of these techniques remind the viewer that she is watching a
theatrical performance that has been organized with some point in mind.
Brecht also argues that a play should resist narrative closure. This can be
done by making the represented events more open-ended and by avoiding
the tight plotting entailed by the Aristotelean requirement that events in the
drama be related to one another in a probable or necessary fashion.
As Woodruff correctly maintains, it is important to separate Brecht’s
claims about the proper aims of theater from his concrete proposals as to how
those aims should be achieved. Critics have argued that we do not need to
reject the narrative structure of Aristotelean theater in order to use dramatic
art for critical purposes.^7 They argue that Brecht’s conception of epic theater
rests on a number of questionable claims about the effects of traditional dra-
matic narratives on the audience. For example, Brecht is ascribed the view
that such narratives numb the critical faculties of spectators by putting them
under the illusion that they are watching actual events, and that the tight
narrative structure of Aristotelean theater conveys to viewers a sense of the