are ultimately trying to get a certain point across–to explain what hap-
pened, how and why. Sometimes it may help them to act out elements of
the accident; but, as they do so, they might explain what they are doing,
what each thing represents and why. There is, therefore, a three-part
relation: spectators (the newcomers); actors (the eyewitnesses);‘characters’
(i.e. the real victims, who are no longer present). On the street, the distinction
between all three will be evident to all concerned at all times.
When we look back to what Brecht objects to in so-called‘Aristotelian’
drama, we can see that the differences between that and the street scene
are significant for him. In the Aristotelian case, the gap between the
actors and the characters is closed: the actor is the character. What’s more,
the role of empathy is, in a sense, to close the gap between the spectator and
the character: via empathy, the spectator becomes Oedipus. What in the
street scene is a relation between three viewpoints–victim, eyewitness/
actor and newcomer/spectator–has been reduced to one. Brecht’s most
celebrated theatrical concept–the so-called‘alienation effect’–is a gen-
eral label for a series of devices aimed at breaking up this unity between
character, actor and spectator: devices including songs, actors directly
addressing the audience, documentary projections.^46 In this light, it is
better understood as an effect that makes the spectator, actor and character
‘other’or foreign in relation to each other–thus preserving the distance
between them. The actor will‘do all he can to make himself observed
standing between the spectator and the event’.^47 It’s not meant to make
the spectator feel awkward or shocked–or, better, that’s not thefinal
goal; rather, it’s meant to create an‘otherness’in two different directions:
between the actor and the character; between the character and the spectator.
Think, for example, of how the newcomers (i.e. the audience) at the
street scene would respond to the eyewitnesses (i.e. the actors). This dif-
fers from what one might expect of a typical (twentieth-century) audience
member in both the respects identified above:first, the reverential silence
of a typical, twentieth-century spectator would be unlikely and perhaps
inappropriate; one would expect the newcomers to be asking questions,
seeking to understand what was going on. If something didn’t make
sense in the explanation, one would expect them to say so. Second, the
newcomers wouldn’t sit back and get lost in the performance (what
I termed going‘under the spell’in the discussion of theatrical illusion).
They would be attentive, but they wouldn’t lose sight of the point of the
exercise, in a state of dream-like absorption. For Brecht, the‘epic’ele-
ments are clearly meant to undermine (which is not to say eliminate
altogether) the spell, or absorbed illusion.
Epic elements of a performance might also be thought to counteract
empathy. Recall the simplest case of empathy: I see someone hurting and
I feel her pain. If empathy tends to be provoked by thesightof someone
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