Epic theatre

Brechtian Techniques:
Archetypes & stereotypes
Gestus & V Effect (Adding meaning & Making Strange) 
Placards 
Luxury Balance 
Opposing Tension 
Focus on social classes 
Ensemble (actors on stage at all times) 
Montage (Putting scenes together) 
Breaking down the fourth wall on stage
 
 
ARTAUD
Artaud worked primarily in France in the early part of the century 
(died in 1948).
Whereas Brecht thought problems were in society, Artaud thought 
they were in the subconscious. Thought values had become the 
property of the elite.
Not civilization, but syphilization (his term)
We need a theatre that stirs up feelings by stirring up pain.
Language is a tool of rationalization, we can deal with it.
Theatre should not work through language, but something more 
elemental that gets down deep. Visual and aural explosions, 
surprises, violence.
Action should surround the audience. Large, open spaces. 
Overhead bridges. He liked to use space like factories and 
airplane hangars for his work, ritualistic costumes. Huge puppets, 
instruments, unidentifiable lighting - vibrating, shriveling 
effect, sound - staccato, shrill, like a factory.
We need myths, but new myths.
"The theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively"
The only way to heal is through the Theatre of Cruelty. Forcing 
confrontation to face things buried in subconscious. Actors and 
audience should leave exhausted and transformed.
Certain techniques have gotten into standard acting techniques 
body movement and vocal sounds

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Biography of Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in the 
medieval city of Augsburg, part of the Bavarian section of 
the German Empire. Married in 1897, his father was a 
Catholic and his mother a Protestant. Brecht was their 
first child and he was baptized as Eugen Bertolt Friedrich 
Brecht. His father, Bertolt Friedrich Brecht, worked as 
Chief Clerk in a paper factory and clearly fit the 
definition of “bourgeois.” His mother, Wilhelmine 
Friederike Sophie Brezing, was ill with breast cancer 
most of his young life. He had one brother, Walter, who 
was born in 1900. Throughout his life Brecht was 
supported by his family, especially his father with whom 
he disagreed strongly concerning the bourgeois lifestyle. His father continued to 
provide financial support and a home for much of his life. Only one correspondence 
between them survives: a letter where Brecht begs his father to raise his illegitimate 
children.
Brecht was a sickly child, with a congenital heart condition and a facial tic. As a 
result he was sent to a sanitarium to relax. At age six he attended a Protestant 
elementary school (Volksschule) and at age ten a private school: The Royal Bavarian 
Realgymnasium (Königlich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium). Like most students, he 
was educated in Latin and the humanities, and later exposed to thinkers such as 
Nietzsche. He suffered a heart attack at the age of twelve, but soon recovered and 
continued his education.
While in school he began writing, and ended up co-founding and co-editing a 
school magazine called “The Harvest”. By age sixteen he was writing for a local 
newspaper and had written his first play, 
The Bible
, about a girl who must choose 
whether between living or dying and saving many others. He was later almost 
expelled at age eighteen for disagreeing on whether it was necessary to defend his 
country in time of war. By nineteen he had left school and started doing clerical work 
for the war, prevented from more active duty due to health problems.
In 1917 he resumed his education, this time attending Ludwig Maximilian 
Universitaet in Munich where he matriculated as a medical student. While there he 
attended Artur Kutscher’s seminars on the theater. He despised many of his fellow 
students and took every opportunity to return home. By this time his mother was 
heavily drugged with morphine as a result of her progressing cancer. He started to 
write 
Baal
at this time, a play concerned with suffering caused by excessive sexual 
pleasures.
Brecht’s sex life is fascinating in many ways. He is thought to have had no less 
than three mistresses at any time throughout his adult life. As a child, the family’s 
second servant, Marie Miller, used to hide objects in her undergarments for Brecht 
and his brother to search for. Through Brecht’s poetry we are told that his mother 
used to smell his clothes to determine the extent of his sexual activities. By the age of 
sixteen he began to frequent a brothel as part of consciencious effort to broaden his 
experiences. Between ages sixteen and twenty he simultaneously pursued eight girls, 
including Paula Banholzer, the woman who gave birth to his illegitimate child in 
1919. He is known to have experimented with homosexuality, often inviting literary 
and musically inclined males friends to his room on weekends in order for them to 

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read erotic compositions. His diaries, although vague, make mention of his need for 
both males and females to fulfill his sexual desires.
During World War I Brecht briefly worked as an orderly in an emergency hospital 
before being released from service after openly expressing his lack of conviction for 
the war. He soon found work as a theatre critic for a daily newspaper, “The People’s 
Will,” before moving on to become a dramaturg in Munich.
Paula Banholzer gave birth to his illegitimate child, Frank, when Brecht was only 
twenty-one. At the time Brecht was involved with another woman named Hedda 
Kuhn. His mother passed away soon thereafter in 1920. A year later he took his 
second trip to Berlin and attended the rehearsals of Max Reinhardt and other major 
directors. In 1922 his play