Philosophy of the Performing Arts

186 performance as art
inevitability of existing social structures. While Brecht’s writings provide
some support for these readings, it isn’t clear that the overall case for epic
theater requires such dubious hypotheses about the nature of the viewer’s
experience of Aristotelean theater. All the Brechtian needs to argue is that
standard Aristotelean theater fosters an emotional engagement with the char-
acters and an internal interrogative interest in the unfolding of the plot, and
discourages the sort of critical engagement with the dramatic presentation
that requires an external interrogative interest in what is being presented. The
company that seeks to elicit the latter kind of interest therefore has reason to
try to counter the kind of purely internal engagement to which Aristotelean
drama is conducive. But, having defended the general Brechtian argument
in this way, we must acknowledge the weakness of the case for the further
claim that such an internal engagement can be countered only by completely
abandoning the central elements in Aristotelean drama – psychologically rich
characters and a tightly crafted plot – and by the utilization of the kinds of
distanciation techniques proposed by Brecht.
Our interest here, however, is in the dispute between the Aristotelean
and the Brechtian over the proper aims of theater and the kind of response
that the dramatic work should seek to elicit. Should this be a predominantly
emotional response grounded in an internal interrogative interest in the
presented action, or a predominantly critical response grounded in both
an internal and an external interrogative interest in that action? If we view
these as alternative conceptions of the proper aim of theatrical perform-
ance, this presents a problem for Woodruff’s general model. For that model
seems ill-equipped to recognize performances utilizing Brechtian distancia-
tion techniques as theater, let alone as theatrical performances that could be,
as Woodruff admits, “electrifying” (2008, 169). How are we to account for
this if “generally, a play fails when the watchers do not engage emotionally
with the characters and action of the play itself ” (Woodruff 2008, 152).
As noted earlier. Woodruff thinks that his account of theater can accom-
modate epic theater by bringing it under a more general model that distin-
guishes between dramatic performances in terms of how they emotionally
engage the audience. He argues that the success of Brecht’s pieces as theater
depends upon their ability to produce an empathetic response in the audience,
contrary to Brecht’s protestations. First, audiences do feel empathy for char-
acters like Mother Courage, for example, in spite of Brecht’s efforts to the
contrary, and this in part accounts for the success of the play. Second, while
Brecht’s epic theater may not aim to produce empathy with the characters,
it does aim to elicit outrage on the part of the viewer.
The problem with this second claim, however, is that the feelings of out-
rage Brecht seeks to elicit are directed not at the actions presented on stage,
but at real world circumstances upon which the events on stage are taken