Bertolt Brecht

This is an overview of how I use Epic Theatre to develop critical theory skills for management, organization theory, and leadership courses.

The term Epic Theater, used by Brecht for the first time in 1926, did not originate with him, although it is generally applied to his work today. It was already in the air in 1924 when Brecht moved from Munich to Berlin and was first used in connection with revolutionary experiments by director Erwin Piscator. Many playwrights and composers produced plays and musical compositions in the 1920s which have been since been labeled epic (Stravinisky, Pirandello, Claudel), and others have followed in their footsteps (Wilder, Miller, Becket).[1]

Brecht (‘Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” in Willett, 1957: 71) distinguishes between the Dramatic and the Epic Spectator. If we assume people grow up in the dramatic aesthetic, then the task of critical management studies is to defamiliarize it with epic theatre. There is a dialectic relation between two spectators:

Dramatic and Epic theatre have different constructions that were defined by Aristotle (350 BCE), “whose laws” says Brecht, “were dealt with by two different branches of aesthetics” (Willett, 1957: 70). The dramatic aesthetic is the strong centralization of the story and a momentum that draws the six poetic elements (plot, character, theme, dialog, rhythm, and spectacle) into common relationship.

[2] The epic aesthetic, by contrast, “can take a pair of scissors and cut it into individual pieces, which remain fully capable of life” (p. 70). For centuries, theatre on the single stage was thought to be dramatic spectacle, while festivals and carnivals were presented on multiple and simultaneous sites was something done outside the theatre building. However, Brecht’s innovation in staging (as well as contemporaries Piscator, Stravinisky, Pirandello, & Claudel) brought the epic on stage, and revealed that the relationship of dramatic and epic spectator is not a duality; it is dialectic, there are dramatic aspects to epic pieces and epic aspects in drama. [3] Epic theatre invites the spectator to take a critical and intelligent role; the actors and the script purposely do not invite an empathetic viewing. “He detested the "Aristotelian" drama and its attempts to lure the spectator into a kind of trance-like state, a total identification with the hero to the point of complete self-oblivion, resulting in feelings of terror and pity and, ultimately, an emotional catharsis.” [4]

There is something more going on, which is the subject of this essay, enacting critical theory in theatre. I envision theatrical performance that can influence the thinking of managers engaged in learning corporate behavior in the Business College. I do this by doing some Epic theatre in each class, and asking students to construct their own epic performances.

The business of corporate theatre is to entertain people and to distract them with hypnotic illusions, while selling them more goods and services. Critical dramaturgy defamiliarizes the familiar theatrics of McDonaldization, Disneyfication, Las Vegasization, and Enronization (see Boje, 2002, Theatrics of Capitalism). Here, I will expand the example of McDonalds, whose theater seems simple to understand, until we defamiliarize it with the A-effect.

Defamiliarize – Take a “common recurrent universally-practiced operation and try to draw attention to it by illumination its peculiarity” (Brecht p. 145 in Willett). I want to make the familiar in McDonalds appear strange and remarkable. And that familiar is theatrical McDonalds is dramatic theatre, happily marketing illusions, around the globe. Not only visuals of Ronald, but even the smells and tastes are illusions, chemical substitutes for real food, and other illusions to prevent spectators from seeing the world of horrors in the slaughterhouses and sweatshops just beneath the stage. "We have undercover footage of a McDonalds supplier in India slitting the throats of goats and then tossing the animals in a pile to bleed to death," said PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich.1 "Seventeen year old women are forced to work 9 to 10 hours a day, seven days a week, earning as little as six cents an hour in the Keyhinge factory in Vietnam making the popular giveaway promotional toys, many of which are Disney characters, for McDonald's Happy Meals".2 McDonalds is a modern day sweatshop where teens and elder work for minimum wage while fat cats feed on the surplus value.

The story of McDonaldization ought to be the “object of all our attention” for a defamiliarization (Brecht p. 213 #5 in Willett). Instead the spectators passively accept fantasy. For example, the Good Vs Evil where the Disney characters come out to play at McDonalds restaurant self-deconstructs the facade. When we defamiliarize McDonalds we scrape off the surface illusions, and we see the situations as processes and are able to trace the inconsistencies (p. 193 # 45). We see the rules, material process, and many devices of illusion by which McDonalds is accomplished. We free McDonalds from the spectator’s grasp, and from generations of social conditioning, socialization, and marketing.

Brecht answers the question of how to defamiliarize the theatre of everyday life, with his term, “A-effect.”

A-Effect – The “A-effect” is the alienation-effect needed for spectators to break out of empathy with characters and storyline. Purge the stage of everything fictional in order to thwart “the audience’s tendency to plunge into such illusions” (Brecht p. 136 in Willett). The spectator cannot find the illusion of “spontaneous, transitory, authentic, unrehearsed event” in the epic performance (p. 141). The spectator is invited out of the passive role designed for them in dramatic theatre, and take on a critical and suspicious role. It is accomplished in epic theatre by doing everything dramaturgically imaginable to keep the spectator from taking flight in the suspension of disbelief. Spectators are socialized to be seduced by hypnotic advertising suggests. For McDonalds we can ask an “A-effect” question: ‘Have you ever really carefully looked at McDonalds?’ Of course not, because we are socialized to take McDonalds for granted, don’t we? It is part of our familiar. ‘Have you ever really carefully looked at what happens to waste packaging from McDonalds?’ Of course not, McDonalds is a leader in waste-reduction (and Green Marketing). And, “have you ever really carefully looked at McDonalds’ theatre?’ I looked at McDonalds in Las Cruces (on University Avenue) and they fly a spectacularly large American flag above the golden arches. Each McDonalds is a mini-drama, a spectacle of Americana so familiar who notices? The McDonalds spectators (customers) are in a trance. Try this exercise - In terms of defamiliarizing the familiar about McD, perhaps you could get the price of Big Mac in your city, and relate it to the Big Mac Index (see video) to set the Epic Theatre of Big Mac on a world stage (see Big Mac Index web page).

(L to R) Larry Light, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer; Ronald McDonald, Chief Happiness Officer; Juergen Knauss, CEO of Heye & Partner, the Munich, Germany advertising agency that developed the creative approach; and Charlie Bell, McDonald’s President and COO.

I have been imagining a Brecht play, done with bit of Boal improv. I picture a stage with 3 levels, and getting the spectators to take image theatre (silent) roles on each level. Upper level is McDonalds University and the HQ. Middle level is the McDonalds restaurant, with customer area, counter, and back of counter. Lower level is a slaughterhouse and a toy factory in China, (or Vietnam) with children making Happy Meal Toys.

I experimented with the improv on McDonaldization at Academy and it worked quite well. Within 20 minutes, I had multiple groups acting various scenes of oppression.

I would like to see if we can flash some images in the background, and set up some McDonalds chorus events. In this the several of us would move stage left, close to the audience, and recite some kind of poem/chorus about McDonalds exploitation.

The A-effect is both ways not to let him or her slip into a trance, and ways to awaken them (p.193 # 45 in Willett). If "there's a little McD in everyone," I would like to awaken from that trance. In the A-effect we invite the spectator to transform their consciousness from passive acceptance of illusion to an attitude of suspicious and critical inquiry. What devices can induce the A-effect in Epic McDonalds theatre?

These and other devices of epic theatre keep the audience from self-identifying with the heroism and romantic images of McDonalds. The epic theatre rendition of McDonalds does not present ready-to-hand solutions; creating solutions is left as the task of the spectator, leaving the theatre, with a defamiliarized and alienated encounter. Approaching the audience from stage-left, a McDonalds employee breaks out into a chorus of "McDonalds Waiter" Parody by wdh (Source). This is sung from the perspective of a McDonalds worker who begins to sort of re-think his life.

I’m a McDonalds waiter
And I come to serve you food
I am happy to cater
To whatever is your mood
Today’s special is the Big Mac
You’ll feel it in your farts
Since you have no shame, your fat is blamed
On the food you eat here every day of the year
You claim that we clog your heart

I’m a McDonalds waiter
And our food we always fry
Too bad I did not know at first
People who eat here die
Ah, at night they come to haunt me
Their ghosts come every day
For the food they ate ruined their date
They ask "What the heck? You made our lives a wreck!
And we will make you pay!"

I’m a McDonalds waiter
I Serve millions round the world
I get Big Macs for pals and kids
And salads for the girls
There are so many faces
And then so many names
Ah, but that’s just swell, except the bad smell
"Cuz the line takes awhile, it goes on for miles
But the orders are the same

I’m a McDonalds waiter
I guess this is my song
I work here every week or two
Serving all day long
Well, the food’s getting expensive
And longer go the lines
Some want extra cheese, so they pay more fees
And I only stay cuz there's bills to pay
Then go somewhere else to dine

I’m a McDonalds waiter
Our drive-thru’s really slow
Our fries have set a record
You can get them to go
Ah, our meat’s hard to bite in
Can’t even cut it with a knife
As, this parody’s long so I’ll wrap up the song
I sure hope it’s a hit I think that the words fit
Now let’s sing the first verse twice:

Brecht wrote a letter, “Shouldn’t we abolish aesthetics?” (in Willett, 1957: 20-22). I think he means, abolish the dramatic aesthetics that imprison the spectator, by developing the epic. In the capitalism since Shakespeare, comes a need for a new epic aesthetics of theatre. Brecht used devices such as having actors break the frame of the story, by approaching the spectators to engage them in reflective dialog, projecting dialog on the back wall, having actors hold up signs critical of their character, etc. to keep the audience from falling into a dramatic aesthetic trap of empathy (i.e. de-personifying & de-mystifying systemic motive forces of hegemony & oppression). In empathetic viewing, the spectator takes a voyeuristic ride, identifies with the hero, and accepts the dramatic viewpoint as a source of entertainment. All the important critical forces, of interest to management and organization, remain hegemonic. Hegemony is defined as taken-for-granted and unseen forces of power; something that the dramatic spectacle perpetuates. Epic theatre makes hegemonic power visible, so that its dynamics can be understood, and change (resituation) can by initiated by the spectator. An epic story is constructed of discrete episodes rearranged, and characters reimagined less empathetically, to allow the storyteller’s ideas of hegemonic domination and exploitation to find expression (paraphrase of p. 278 in Appendices to the Short Organum, in Willett 1957).

An epic theatre actor is not completely transformed into the character he is portraying; he "must invest what he has to show with a definite gist of showing" (Bertolt Brecht, "Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces the Alienation Effect," Brecht on Theatre, p. 136 in Willett).

To depersonify and demystify the environmental and systemic (hegemonic) forces of economy, introducing epic theatre into management and organization is a contemporary pedagogic device. The value of epic theatre is to de-center the central character’s taken-for-granted point of view on the systemic forces, using an aesthetic that opens up a multiplicity of voices (views points) and presenting the hegemonic forces in ways that does not cop out to idealism, or present simple or mystical solutions to complex problems; this is what most management and organizational texts do. Dramatic theatre can, on occasion, present hegemonic managerial and organizational situations, but generally, it is only the hero’s point of view and the hero’s circumstance, which the spectators empathetically identify with in ways that camouflage the systemic forces. In management and organization, this is called “managerialism,” viewing the system from one viewpoint, the manager, acting as agent for owners; other views such as workers, community, and ecology are ignored. Further, the heroic viewpoint, presented as dramatic example to the spectator, is oftentimes white, male, and ultra conservative. There is more going on here than de-centering the heroic character and the managerialist telling of a story.

Today [1931] when human character must be understood as the 'totality of all social conditions' the epic form is the only one that can comprehend all the processes which could serve the drama as materials for a fully representative picture of the world." (p. 35 in Brecht, "Anmerkungen zur Dreigroschenoper, Schriften zum Theatre, also quoted in Esslin, Brecht: the Man and His Work, p. 129).

In epic theatre, the stage, not the characters, tell the story (Para, in Willett p. 71). How can a stage tell a story? The 4^th wall is penetrated, and the narrator begins to tell the epic story, along with various technical devices, such as moving stages, film and statistic projections, and narrative interruptions. By using big screens to project documents, confirming or contradicting, what characters were saying, and asking the actors to play their role in more detached way, the spectators could take a less character-empathetic stance, and enter a more critical and reflexive relationship to the hegemonic forces. As Brecht explains:

The spectator was no longer in any way allowed to submit to an experience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of simply empathy with the characters in a play (In Willett, p. 71).

These are hegemonic forces, in contemporary times that are not linear; they are emergent processes. To comprehend the new nonlinear, complexity areas of subject matter require new dramatic and theatrical form. “Petroleum resists the five-act form; today’s catastrophes do not progress in a straight line but in cyclical crises; the ‘heroes change with the different phases…” (p. 7. in Introduction by Frederic Grab, to Brecht’s “Saint Joan of the Stockyards” translated by Frank Jones – This is a quote from Brecht on Theatre p. 30).

The danger of dramatic aesthetic is that the spectator leaves the theatre believing that life is unchangeable. “What is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling” (Brecht p. 71 in Willett). And in exposing the systemic forces as unnatural, the spectator becomes aware of the root causes and effects that drive and restrain the current situation. Once the causes and effects are brought into critical awareness, then the spectator becomes accountable for changing that situation in their own life space; “Oil, inflation, war, social struggles, the family, religion, wheat, the meat market, all become subjects for theatrical representation” (Brecht p. 71 in Willett). These affect lower social strata, in the spectacle, as unchangeable, natural forces, but for an elite strata, behind the stage, all is changeable.

But there are also strata ‘waiting their turn’ who are discontented with conditions, have a vast interest in the practical side of learning, want at all costs to find out where they stand, and know that they are lost without learning; these are the best and keenest learners (Brecht, p. 72 in Willett).

There are practical learners in the business classroom, but since they are passive spectators, contented with the learning in managerialist texts, they are not revolutionary learners; they aspire to act a character role within the grand spectacle of late postmodern capitalism.

Brecht makes a move which is both critical and postmodern; the ‘fourth wall’ is no longer missing and becomes interpenetrated with dialog between actors and spectators. The ‘fourth wall’ is a reference to the proscenium arch (separating actors and spectators). In epic theatre, a fictional character shows critical awareness of the both medium in which they "exist" and the spectators watching (or reading) that medium. Interrupting the flow of the onstage action with bits of chorus, music, choreography, and simultaneous events happening on stage also helps to focus the spectators’ reflective aesthetic on systemic forces and to penetrate the fourth wall. In this way, spectators can reflect upon the ways their life is theatrically mediated.

Brecht did not abide the passive spectator, and sought to awaken them from the deep sleep of ideology, illusions of idealism the theatrics of spectacle so powerfully induces. In a critical postmodern move, Breach made spectators aware of the proscenium arch, separating actors and their characters, actors and spectators, and the fictive performance from the forces of the political economy. In this way spectators could critically reflect on the artificiality and pervasiveness of theatre in their own lives. For example, Can anyone get into a McD animal house? According to McD ,

Epic theatre accentuates ‘practical consequences’ not only through detached acting and reflective interruptions to the story, but by refusing to offer a solution or closure. In management and organization texts, oftentimes, cases are presented to demonstrate one solution only, and a contingent fit to a managerialist concept, variable, or lesson. Having been brought into critical awareness of systemic forces, the practical consequence, for the spectator, is to initiate change in their own social, political, and economic milieu.

Brecht believes this (A-effect) “process of alienation… is necessary to all understanding” (. 71). It is this process of alienating the spectator from a dramatic experience, which promotes a critical read. “The essential point of the epic theatre” writes Brecht (in Willett, 1957: p. 23) “is perhaps that it appeals less to the feelings than to the spectator’s reason… Instead of sharing experience, the spectator must come to grips with things.” Rather than empathy, the spectator in Epic is cast to be an intellectual and scientific observer. This is quite different than winning the audience to the spectacle, where the performance is an opportunity for spectators to experience new emotional sensations. Brecht wants the spectators to be faced with moral decisions, not take a sentimental ride; “Spectator and actor ought not to approach one another [in empathy or erotic] but to move apart” (p. 26, in Willett, additions mine).

Brecht said in “Conversation with Bert Brecht” (in Willett, 1957: 14) that “I’m not writing for the scum who want to have cockles of their hearts warmed.” “Q: Who do you write for?” “A: For the sort of people who just come for fun and don’t hesitate to keep their hats on in the theatre” (p. 14). Meaning he appeals to reason and to the intelligence of the spectators. “I give the incidents baldly so that the audience can think for itself. That’s why I need a quick-witted audience that knows how to observe, and gets its enjoyment from setting its reason to work” (p. 14). He does not give a theatrical explanation along with setting down the performance of what happened. He leaves the interpretation up to the spectators. The actor does not play to the audience’s hearts.

A pedagogy that does not present one authoritative reading to management and organization can appear chaotic. Including multiple voices, demystifying hegemonic forces, and inviting spectators to be self-reflective and to become agents of change in their own life can also be seen as chaotic pedagogy. To this Brecht replied, “At any rate, I am not so discouragingly chaotic as people think” (p. 14 in Willett). It can be argued, that Epic theatre is a Marxist project, and as such, a critical and authoritative reading, when applied to management and organization studies. Yet, I think that Brecht’s pedagogic devices, set up a counter-point to another authoritative, yet uncritical reading, that of managerialism. For example, Brecht says, “The bourgeois theatre’s performances always aim at smoothing over contradictions, at creating false harmony, at idealization” (p. 277 Appendices to the Short Organum, in Willett 1957). This is, I believe, an apt descriptions of decades of managers raised on the false harmony and idealism of the (Tom Peters) excellence movement.

Brecht was very threatening to the American government. The FBI files (1943-1956) say about Brecht, for example, “Subject is an author of revolutionary poetry and drama” writes the field agent on p. 21 of part 1. Brecht testified before the House Committee on Unamerican Activities on October 30^th 1947 (part 4). Brecht testified that he is not now nor has he ever been a member of the communist party, in this or any other country. A field agent reports that Brecht’s writings in 1939 advocated the overthrow of capitalism (part 4, p. 8). Brecht testified (Oct 30, 1947) that his play Saint Joan of the Stockyards was banned in Germany in 1932, a play the FBI believed, “concerned the revolutionary overthrow of the American government” (part 4, p. 8).

In management education, reimagined as Epic theatre, a lack of closure, a non-simple ending, and structure that is non-linear and complex, and action that is simultaneous can be an effective pedagogy. An aspect of Brechtian dialectic is the opposition of ideology and social practice. Epic theatre production bridges the gap, not in offering solutions or answers, but in being what Louis Althusser calls “the process of becoming, the production of a new consciousness in the audience-incomplete like all consciousnesses yet propelled by its very incompleteness, that acquired distance, that inexhaustible work of criticism in action; the play is indeed the making of a new play-goer, an actor who begins when the play ends, who begins only to give it a conclusion in real life” (p. 16, as quoted by Bernard Dort, “Epic Form in Brecht’s Theatre,” trans. Ostergren, Yal; Theatre, 2, Summer 1968, 32, and as cited in introduction by Greb to Saint Joan of the Stockyards).

There is an unfinished project. Just before his death, Brecht had been talking of a “Dialectics in the Theatre,” a model that he saw as a successor to Epic Theatre; “Narrating a story on the stage was really at the same time a ‘dialecticizing’ of the events” (p. 281-282 “Dialectics in the Theatre: An editorial note” in Willett 1957). In “Appendices to the Short Organum” (p. 276-281 in Willett) Brecht says “If we now discard the concept of EPIC THEATRE we are not discarding that progress towards conscious experience which it still makes possible” (p. 276). Unfortunately, Brecht passed away before he fully developed his post-epic, dialectic theory of theatre. There are clues for us to build upon. Brecht dialectic aesthetics is not presented as a coherent treatise. There are bits and pieces scattered across his prolific writing.

And Brecht does not exile dramatic from the epic. The two are in dialectic, even in Epic theatre. For example, (in Appendices to the Short Organum, in Willett 1957: 278), Brecht explains that “two hostile processes” “fuse in the actor’s work; his performance is not just composed of a bit of the one and a bit of the other.” The two dialectic forces are demonstration and experience (empathy).

Brecht’s dialectic, I believe is to confront the spectator with a contradiction of the knowledge they have from experience and from books with what rearrangements the actors “seize and maintain in their performance” (p. 278). He continues (p. 279 Appendices to the Short Organum, in Willett 1957) “The story then unreels in a contradictory manner; the individual scenes retain their own meaning; they yield (and stimulate) a wealth of ideas; and their sum, the story, unfolds authentically without any cheap all-pervading idealization (one word leading to another) or directing of subordinate, purely functional component parts to an ending in which everything is resolved” (p. 279).

FBI Files (1943-1956). Freedom of Information Act, FBI files released on surveillance on Brecht, (369 pages). http://foia.fbi.gov/brecht.htm The files are in four parts and so referenced in this text.

Willett, John (1957). Brecht on Theatre: The development of an aesthetic. NY: Hill and Wang.

[1] Bertolt Brecht and the THE EPIC THEATER, Oregon State University - http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ger341/brechtet.htm

[2] Photo source http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc15.htm

[3] Brecht subscribes to Lenin’s definition of dialectic as a “union of opposites” (p. 279 in Appendices to the Short Organum, in Willett 1957).

[4] http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc15.htm

[5] Source of photo http://research.haifa.ac.il/%7Etheatre/pr98a.html