Epic theatre

Drums in the Night
opened in Munich at the 
Kammerspiele and later at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin; he received the 
prestigious Kleist prize for young dramatists as result. Brecht also entered into his 
first committed relationship, his marriage with the opera singer Marianne Zoff at the 
age of twenty-four. Their daughter Hanne was born the following year. In spite of 
marriage, Brecht had extra-marital affairs and spent very little time with his wife or 
daughter. In 1923 his two plays 
Jungle of Cities
and 
Baal
were performed.
After moving to Berlin in 1924 he met a communist Viennese actress, Helen 
Weigel. His wife Marianne moved in with her parents after the birth of Hanne, and 
soon she stopped responding to Brecht’s letters. At this time he began actively 
pursuing Helen Weigel. At age twenty-six Brecht fathered his second illegitimate 
child when Wiegel gave birth to their son, Stefan. Brecht also met Elisabeth 
Hauptmann with whom he began to collaborate. Two years later Brecht divorced 
Marianne Zoff and in 1929 he married Helen Wiegel at the age of thirty-one.
Helen Wiegel gave birth to their second child, Barbara, in 1930. During this time 
Brecht was by no means monogamous. He was obsessed with the idea of 
abandonment, and as a result he abhorred ending relationships. The women in his life 
were important for his writing career, and modern feminist detractors often try to 
claim that his mistresses in fact wrote much of what he takes credit for. Although not 
true, women such as Elisabeth Hauptmann did write significant parts of 
The Three 
Penny Opera
. Other mistresses included Margarete Steffin, who helped him write 
The Good Woman of Sezuan
and 
Mother Courage and Her Children
, Hella Wuolijoki 
who allowed him to transform her comedy 
The Sawdust Princess
into 
Herr Puntila 
and His Man Matti
, and Ruth Berlau who bore a short-lived third illegitimate child in 
1944. His wife Helen Wiegel was tolerant of his affairs and even warned other men 
to stay away from his mistresses on account of it upsetting him.
Brecht’s writings show a profound influence from many diverse sources during this 
time and the remaining years of his life. He studied Chinese, Japanese, and Indian 
theatre, focused heavily on Shakespeare and other Elizabethans, and adopted 
elements of Greek tragedy. He found inspiration in other German playwrights, 
notably Büchner and Wedekind, and also enjoyed the Bavarian folk play. Brecht had 
a phenomenol ability to take elements from these seemingly incompatible sources, 
combine them, and convert them into his own works. His plays during this period 
include 
St. Joan of the Slaughterhouse
, 
The Exception and the Rule
, 
The Good 
Woman of Sezuan
, 
Mother Courage and Her Children
, 
Galileo
, 
Herr Puntila and His 
Man Matti
, and 
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
.
In 1933 Brecht took his family and fled to Zurich after the burning of the 
Reichstag, later moving to Denmark. Brecht’s German citizenship was revoked in 
1935 by the Nazis while he was still there. In 1939 he moved to Stockholm as a result 
of growing Nazi pressure on Denmark, and in 1940 fled to Finland as a result of the 
advance of the Nazi troops. In 1941 he traveled via Moscow and Vladivostok to San 

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Pedro (the harbor of Los Angeles). He was able to collaborate on his writings with 
many other German exiles in Los Angeles, including Thomas Mann. In October of 
1947, during the McCarthy years, Brecht was called to appear before the House 
Committee for Un-American Activities in order to investigate the “subversion” of 
Hollywood. Although not an official member of America’s communist party, Brecht 
left the United States for Switzerland the next day. He soon reunited with Helen 
Wiegel and they travelled to East Berlin in 1948 and set up the Berliner Ensemble 
with full support from the communist regime. In 1950, Brecht and Wiegel were 
granted Austrian citizenship.
Brecht experimented with dada and expressionism in his early plays, but soon 
developed a unique style suited his own vision. He detested the “Aristotelian” drama 
and the manner in which it made the audience identify with the hero to the point of 
self-oblivion. The resulting feelings of terror and pity he felt led to an emotional 
catharsis that prevented the audience from thinking. Determined to destroy the 
theatrical illusion, Brecht was able to make his dreams realities when he took over 
the Berliner Ensemble.
The Berliner Ensemble came to represent what is today called “epic theater”. Epic 
theater breaks with the Aristotelian concepts of a linear story line, a suspension of 
disbelief, and progressive character development. In their place, epic theater uses 
episodic plot structure, contains little cause and effect between scenes, and has 
cumulative character development. The goal is one of estrangement, or 
“Verfremdung”, with an emphasis on reason and objectivity rather than emotion, or a 
type of critical detachment. This form of theater forces the audience to distance itself 
from the stage and contemplate on the action taking place. To accomplish this, Brecht 
focused on cruel action, harsh and realistic scenes, and a linear plot with no climax 
and denouement. By making each scene complete within itself Brecht sought to 
prevent illusion. A Brecht play is meant to provoke the audience into not only 
thinking about the play, but into reforming society by challenging common 
ideologies. Following in the footsteps of Pirandello, he blurs the distinction between 
life and theatre so that the audience is left with an ending that requires social action.
Brecht received the National Prize, first class, in 1951. In 1954 he won the 
international Lenin Peace Prize. Brecht died of a heart attack on August 14, 1956 
while working on a response to Samual Beckett’s