Brecht’s political theatre
Up to this point, we’ve looked at some general ways in which theatre can
interact with politics. This has been a piecemeal approach, taking examples
from across the history of theatre in Ancient Greece, Rome, Tudor England,
Soviet-ruled Czechoslovakia, Apartheid South Africa and twenty-first-
century Britain. I’ve said that politics is specific to a time and a place, so
afinal account of politics and theatre won’t be possible. Nonetheless, one
playwright and theatre theorist has had an incomparable influence on the
way we think about politics and theatre: Bertolt Brecht.^34 In developing
his theories, Brecht combined his own political philosophy with an
account of the contribution that the right kind of theatre can make to this
project. To understand Brecht’s political and artistic goals, it will help to
begin with how he characterised his opponents.
Aristotelian drama
When Brecht tried to carve out a theoretical space for his theatrical
practice, he found it helpful to contrast what he was aiming at with
something he termed‘Aristotelian drama’.^35 Aristotle, of course, made a
number of different claims about drama, and there is a question about
whether it’s really Aristotle who is the target of Brecht’s criticisms, or
the naturalistic techniques that were so popular in his time. In any case,
three features of‘Aristotelian’ drama seem salient to Brecht (although
he doesn’t always keep them apart). First, it presents the kind of stories in
which the emotional responses of individual human beings provide the
key moments of the drama, and other features of human life tend to be
omitted or ignored. Thus, a typically‘Aristotelian’piece might have, in
its climactic moment, an agonising and emotional decision for the main
character. Thus, to use an example from a playwright active in Brecht’s
lifetime: should John Proctor (in Arthur Miller’sThe Crucible) lie to save
his life or tell the truth and die? To get more of a sense of what Brecht
might mean here, consider what a Hollywood biopic would do with the
story of a famous political leader. One could easily imagine the complex-
ities of political and social history sacrificed to more‘dramatic’elements: an
inner, personal struggle against adversity; a battle against a childhood
nemesis; a secret love story; a monumental decision. Brecht’s view seems
to be that this is true of much of the theatre of his time: it tends to
ignore or simplify just those things it should be representing (compli-
cated social and political states of affairs), whereas it emphasises just those
things it should play down (personal, emotional struggle). In fact, he
argues, to understand the contemporary world one must look far beyond
such crude relations.^36
178 From the Stage to the World