Philosophy of the Performing Arts

188 performance as art
emotions in ways that are themselves instructive, so that in arriving at an
appropriate emotional attitude towards what she sees the spectator arrives
at a greater understanding of it as well” (Woodruff 1988, 250). In the case of
Aristotelean drama, our understanding of the characters is in part a matter
of being moved by them in the appropriate ways. In pitying a certain char-
acter, we understand that she is worthy of pity, for example. In the case of
Brechtian theater that aims to elicit a critical response from the spectator,
it is, so Woodruff maintains, our emotional responses to the characters –
responses that may alternate between attraction and repulsion – that lead
us to adopt such an attitude to social realities outside the world of the play
(251–252). This suggests that Woodruff accords to emotional engagement
the role that he denies to thinking in theatrical experience. It is through the
emotions engendered in the watching spectator that she is led to an under-
standing of the characters in the Aristotelean drama, and to an understanding
of the point of the Brechtian play.
But, if this is Woodruff’s view, it is not clear that it can accommodate epic
theater in its Brechtian form. For, even if we reject the idea that a critical
theater must take such a form – must employ the kinds of techniques advo-
cated by Brecht – it surely can take this form, as Brecht’s own productions
testify. And it is difficult to see how a drama that employs devices such as
generic characters and gestic acting can elicit in the spectator the kind of
internally focused emotional responses of which Woodruff speaks.^8 Can we
really be appalled at the characters in such a drama? Woodruff, as noted ear-
lier, thinks that, in spite of Brecht’s best efforts, we can: “In Mother Courage a
mother is driven by mother-love to set profits above her children’s lives and
this at once repels and attracts an audience” (Woodruff 1988, 252). But, to
the extent that Brechtian theater aims to produce indignation at real social
injustices generically related to the events enacted on stage, is this really
mediated by indignation at those events themselves? Or is it more plausible
to assign the mediating role to reflective engagement with those events as
part of our external interrogative interest in the play, as I have suggested?
I have questioned whether Woodruff’s account of the role of emotions
in audience response to theater can accommodate, as theater, dramatic per-
formances employing Brechtian devices. But should we not simply conclude
that Aristotle and Brecht offer us two incompatible views about the nature
of theater? A Brechtian account of the role of the audience in theater, it
might be said, will face a parallel problem to Woodruff’s account: it will
not be able to accommodate as theater the kinds of dramatic performances
directed by Aristoteleans! But this response misses the point of the objec-
tion against Woodruff’s account. Brechtian theater puts to political use the
audience’s external interrogative interest in what is presented. When the
viewer asks why she is being presented with the kinds of generic characters