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Use Of Spass In Epic Theatre By Bertolt Brecht

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Drama task 1 – Draft
Epic theatre literally means a piece of art derived from the ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation so as to create a relationship with the audience by making the audience play a part in the act of critically analyzing the scenes being performed. Bertolt Brecht elaborates and says “The one tribute we can pay the audience is to treat them as thoroughly intelligent…” (Roland, 2010). Epic theatre is able to change the way the society views the problems. This is done through a play and so everything being performed in front of the audience is open and they could see.
Bertolt explored theatre as a forum for political theatre. His perspectives for epic theatre were Marxist and his intention was to present moral problems and reflecting on the social realities. He wanted to do this by hiding the emotions of the character and instead empathizing with the characters and become caught up …show more content…

The audience gets a chance to laugh at the characters involved in the performance and ultimately condemn what they stand for. Use of spass as a technique is an excellent way to break the tension in the play which might make the audience follow the characters on their emotional journey. Bertolt used this type of technique because he realized that while the audience is laughing, they are also thinking and that is the whole point of epic theatre; to make them think. He also thought that comedy was an interesting way to engage with the audience and forcing them think about issues. Epic theatre also involves the use of multimedia to present a message. This is also joined up with spass sometimes because the message being put out could be parodic and so force the audience to laugh. Bertolt believed in using, music, dance, mask, signs, song, film projection is a way to break the monotony in the

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