From "Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic
This is a collection of the quotes most explicitly relevant to Brecht's scientific conception of theatre.
“Even when a character behaves by contradictions that’s only because nobody can be identically the same at two unidentical moments. Changes in his exterior continually lead to an inner reshuffling. The continuity of the ego is a myth. A man is an atom that perpetually breaks up and forms anew." (p. 15)
“The essential point of the epic theatre is perhaps that it appeals less to the feelings than to the spectator’s reason. Instead of sharing an experience the spectator must come to grips with things. At the same time it would be quite wrong to try and deny emotion to this kind of theatre. It would be much the same thing as trying to deny emotion to modern science.” (p. 23)
"Duty “to raise the theatre to the level of science, and present its repertoire to an audience that in better surroundings is used to seeing all attempts to involve it in illusions rejected.” (p. 29)
“But ever since the days of Bacon, the great pioneer of practical thinking, people have worked to find out how man can improve his condition, and today we know that he cannot do this purely privately. It’s only by banding together and joining forces that he stands a chance. Once I take that into consideration my plays are forced to deal with political matters.” (p. 67-68)
“…the invaluable services that modern knowledge and science, if properly applied, can perform for art and specially for the theatre…” (p. 73)
“The epic theatre …works out scenes where people adopt attitudes of such a sort that the social laws under which they are acting spring into sight…The concern of ht epic theatre is thus eminently practical. Human behavior is show as alterable; man himself as dependent on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable of altering them.” (p. 86)
“...make the incidents represented appear strange to the public.” (p. 91)
“And yet there is already an attempt here to interfere with the course of nature; the capacity to do so leads to questioning; and the future explorer, with his anxiety to make nature’s course intelligible, controllable and down-to-earth, will always start by adopting a standpoint from which it seems mysterious, incomprehensible and beyond control. He will take up the attitude of somebody wondering,w ill apply the A-effect. Nobody can be a mathematician who takes it for granted that ‘two and two makes four’; nor is anybody one who fails to understand it. The man who first looked with astonishment at a swinging lantern and instead of taking it for grandted found it highly remarkable that it should wing, and swing in that particular way rather than any other, was brought close to understanding the phenonmenon by this observation, and so to mastering it. Nor must it simply be exclaimed that the attitude here proposed is all right for science but not for art. Why shouldn’t art try, by its OWN mean of course, to further the great social task of mastering life?” (p. 96)
“Characters and incidents from ordinary life, from our immediate surroundings, being familiar, strike us as more or less natural. Alienating them helps to make them seem remarkable to us. Science has carefully developed a technique of getting irritated with the everyday, ‘self-evident’, universally accepted occurrence, and there is no reason why this infinitely useful attitude should not be taken over by art. It is an attitude which arose in science as a result of the growth in human productive powers. In art the same motive applies.” (p. 140)
"About rational and emotional points of view: “The rejection of empathy is not the result of a rejection of the emotions, nor does it lead to such. The crude aesthetic thesis that emotions can only be stimulated by means of empathy is wrong.” (p. 145)
“And old tradition leads people to treat a critical attitude as a predominantly negative one. Many see the difference between the scientific and artistic attitudes as lying precisely in their attitude to criticism. People cannot conceive of contradiction and detachment as being part of artistic apprecication…To introduce this cirtical attitude into art, the negative element which it doubtless includes must be shown from its positive side: this criticism of the world is active, practical, positive. Criticizing the course of a river means improving it, correcting it. Criticism of society is ultimately revolution; there you have criticism taken to its logical conlusion and playing an active part. A critical attitude of this type is an operative factor of productivity; it is deeply enjoyable as such, and if we commonly use the term ‘arts’ for enterprises that improve poeople’s lives why should art proper remain aloof from arts of this sort?” (p.147)
Concerning Laughton’s Galileo: “The speeches presented certain problems. The American stage shuns speeches except in (maybe because of ) its frightful Shakespearean productions. Speeches just mean a break in the story, and, as commonly delivered, that is what they are.” (p. 167)
“Today one could go so far as to compile an aesthetics of the exact sciences. Galileo spoke of the elegance of certain formulae and the point of an experiment; Einstein suggests that the sense of beauty has a part to play in the making of scientific discoveries; while the atomic physicist R. Oppenheimer praises the scientific attitude, which ‘has its own kind of beauty and seems to suit mankind’s position on earth’.” (p. 180)
“To transform himself from general passive acceptance to a corresponding state of suspicious inquiry he would need to develop that detached eye with which the great Galileo observed a swinging chandelier. He was amazed by this pendulum motion, as if he had not expected it and could not understand its occurring, and this enabled him to come on the rules by which it was governed. Here is the outlook, disconcerting but fruitful, which the theatre must provoke with its representations of human social life. It must amaze its public, and this can be achieved by a technique of alienating the familiar. This technique allows the theatre to make use in its representations of the new social scientific method known as dialectical materialism. In order to unearth society’s laws of motion this method treats social situations as processes, and traces out all their inconsistencies.” (p. 192-193)
“It is only necessary – but absolutely necessary – that there should be something approaching experimental conditions, i.e. that a counter-experiment should now and then be conceivable. Altogether this is a way of treating society as if all its actions were performed as experiments.” (p. 195)
“Some people may feel this to be degrading, because they rank art, once the money side has been settled, as one of the higest things; but mankind’s highest decisions are in fact fought out on earth, not in the heavens; in the ‘external’ world, not inside people’s heads.” (p. 196)
“For art to be ‘unpolitical’ means only to ally itself with the ‘ruling’ group.” (p, 196)
“Whether or no literature presents them as successes, each step forward, every emancipation form nature that is scored in the field of production and leads to a transformation of society, all those explorations in some new direction which mankind has embarked on in order to improve its lot, give us a sense of confidence and triumph and lead us to take pleasure in the possibilities of change in all things/ Galileo expresses this when he says: ‘It is my view that the earth is most noble and wonderful, seeing the great number and variety of changes and generations which incessantly take place on it.’” (p. 202)
“Neher set Galileo in front of projections of maps, documents, and Renaissance works of art.” (p. 203)
“Eisler helped admirably in the knotting of the incidents when in the carnival scene of Galileo he set the masked procession of the guilds to a triumphant and threatening music which showed what a revolutionary twist the lower orders had given to the scholar’s astronomical theories.” (p. 203)
“And here once again let us recall that their task is to entertain the children of the scientific age, and to do so with sensuousness and humour.” (p. 204)
“The theatre of the scientific age is in a position to make dialectics into a source of enjoyment. The unexpectedness of logically progressive or zigzag development, the instability of every circumstance, the joke of contradiction and so forth: all these are ways of enjoying the liveliness of men, things and processes, and they heighten both our capacity for life and our pleasure in it. Every art contributes to the greatest art of all, the art of living.” (p. 277)
“In an age whose science is in a position to change nature to such an extent as to make the world seem almost habitable, man can no longer describe man as a victim, the object of a fixed but unknown environment. It is scarcely possible to conceive of the laws of motion if one looks at them from a tennis ball’s point of view. For it is because we are kept in the dark about the nature of human society [ as opposed to nature in general – that we are now faced (so the scientists concerned assure me), by the complete destructibility of this planet that has barely been made fit to live in.” (p. 275)
“We who are concerned to change human as well as ordinary nature must find means of ‘shedding light on’ the human being at that point where he seems capable of being changed by society’s intervention/ This means a quite new attitude on the part fo the actor, for his art has hitherto been based on the assumption hat people are what they are, and will remain so whatever it may cost society or themselves: ‘indestructibly human’, ‘you can’t change human nature’ and so on. Both emotionally and intellectually he needs to decide his attitude to his scene and his part. The change demanded of the actor is not a cold and mechanical operation: art has nothing cold or mechanical about it, and this change is an artistic one. It cannot take place unless he has real contact with his new audience and a passionate concern for human progress.” (p. 235)
“Even when a character behaves by contradictions that’s only because nobody can be identically the same at two unidentical moments. Changes in his exterior continually lead to an inner reshuffling. The continuity of the ego is a myth. A man is an atom that perpetually breaks up and forms anew." (p. 15)
“The essential point of the epic theatre is perhaps that it appeals less to the feelings than to the spectator’s reason. Instead of sharing an experience the spectator must come to grips with things. At the same time it would be quite wrong to try and deny emotion to this kind of theatre. It would be much the same thing as trying to deny emotion to modern science.” (p. 23)
"Duty “to raise the theatre to the level of science, and present its repertoire to an audience that in better surroundings is used to seeing all attempts to involve it in illusions rejected.” (p. 29)
“But ever since the days of Bacon, the great pioneer of practical thinking, people have worked to find out how man can improve his condition, and today we know that he cannot do this purely privately. It’s only by banding together and joining forces that he stands a chance. Once I take that into consideration my plays are forced to deal with political matters.” (p. 67-68)
“…the invaluable services that modern knowledge and science, if properly applied, can perform for art and specially for the theatre…” (p. 73)
“The epic theatre …works out scenes where people adopt attitudes of such a sort that the social laws under which they are acting spring into sight…The concern of ht epic theatre is thus eminently practical. Human behavior is show as alterable; man himself as dependent on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable of altering them.” (p. 86)
“...make the incidents represented appear strange to the public.” (p. 91)
“And yet there is already an attempt here to interfere with the course of nature; the capacity to do so leads to questioning; and the future explorer, with his anxiety to make nature’s course intelligible, controllable and down-to-earth, will always start by adopting a standpoint from which it seems mysterious, incomprehensible and beyond control. He will take up the attitude of somebody wondering,w ill apply the A-effect. Nobody can be a mathematician who takes it for granted that ‘two and two makes four’; nor is anybody one who fails to understand it. The man who first looked with astonishment at a swinging lantern and instead of taking it for grandted found it highly remarkable that it should wing, and swing in that particular way rather than any other, was brought close to understanding the phenonmenon by this observation, and so to mastering it. Nor must it simply be exclaimed that the attitude here proposed is all right for science but not for art. Why shouldn’t art try, by its OWN mean of course, to further the great social task of mastering life?” (p. 96)
“Characters and incidents from ordinary life, from our immediate surroundings, being familiar, strike us as more or less natural. Alienating them helps to make them seem remarkable to us. Science has carefully developed a technique of getting irritated with the everyday, ‘self-evident’, universally accepted occurrence, and there is no reason why this infinitely useful attitude should not be taken over by art. It is an attitude which arose in science as a result of the growth in human productive powers. In art the same motive applies.” (p. 140)
"About rational and emotional points of view: “The rejection of empathy is not the result of a rejection of the emotions, nor does it lead to such. The crude aesthetic thesis that emotions can only be stimulated by means of empathy is wrong.” (p. 145)
“And old tradition leads people to treat a critical attitude as a predominantly negative one. Many see the difference between the scientific and artistic attitudes as lying precisely in their attitude to criticism. People cannot conceive of contradiction and detachment as being part of artistic apprecication…To introduce this cirtical attitude into art, the negative element which it doubtless includes must be shown from its positive side: this criticism of the world is active, practical, positive. Criticizing the course of a river means improving it, correcting it. Criticism of society is ultimately revolution; there you have criticism taken to its logical conlusion and playing an active part. A critical attitude of this type is an operative factor of productivity; it is deeply enjoyable as such, and if we commonly use the term ‘arts’ for enterprises that improve poeople’s lives why should art proper remain aloof from arts of this sort?” (p.147)
Concerning Laughton’s Galileo: “The speeches presented certain problems. The American stage shuns speeches except in (maybe because of ) its frightful Shakespearean productions. Speeches just mean a break in the story, and, as commonly delivered, that is what they are.” (p. 167)
“Today one could go so far as to compile an aesthetics of the exact sciences. Galileo spoke of the elegance of certain formulae and the point of an experiment; Einstein suggests that the sense of beauty has a part to play in the making of scientific discoveries; while the atomic physicist R. Oppenheimer praises the scientific attitude, which ‘has its own kind of beauty and seems to suit mankind’s position on earth’.” (p. 180)
“To transform himself from general passive acceptance to a corresponding state of suspicious inquiry he would need to develop that detached eye with which the great Galileo observed a swinging chandelier. He was amazed by this pendulum motion, as if he had not expected it and could not understand its occurring, and this enabled him to come on the rules by which it was governed. Here is the outlook, disconcerting but fruitful, which the theatre must provoke with its representations of human social life. It must amaze its public, and this can be achieved by a technique of alienating the familiar. This technique allows the theatre to make use in its representations of the new social scientific method known as dialectical materialism. In order to unearth society’s laws of motion this method treats social situations as processes, and traces out all their inconsistencies.” (p. 192-193)
“It is only necessary – but absolutely necessary – that there should be something approaching experimental conditions, i.e. that a counter-experiment should now and then be conceivable. Altogether this is a way of treating society as if all its actions were performed as experiments.” (p. 195)
“Some people may feel this to be degrading, because they rank art, once the money side has been settled, as one of the higest things; but mankind’s highest decisions are in fact fought out on earth, not in the heavens; in the ‘external’ world, not inside people’s heads.” (p. 196)
“For art to be ‘unpolitical’ means only to ally itself with the ‘ruling’ group.” (p, 196)
“Whether or no literature presents them as successes, each step forward, every emancipation form nature that is scored in the field of production and leads to a transformation of society, all those explorations in some new direction which mankind has embarked on in order to improve its lot, give us a sense of confidence and triumph and lead us to take pleasure in the possibilities of change in all things/ Galileo expresses this when he says: ‘It is my view that the earth is most noble and wonderful, seeing the great number and variety of changes and generations which incessantly take place on it.’” (p. 202)
“Neher set Galileo in front of projections of maps, documents, and Renaissance works of art.” (p. 203)
“Eisler helped admirably in the knotting of the incidents when in the carnival scene of Galileo he set the masked procession of the guilds to a triumphant and threatening music which showed what a revolutionary twist the lower orders had given to the scholar’s astronomical theories.” (p. 203)
“And here once again let us recall that their task is to entertain the children of the scientific age, and to do so with sensuousness and humour.” (p. 204)
“The theatre of the scientific age is in a position to make dialectics into a source of enjoyment. The unexpectedness of logically progressive or zigzag development, the instability of every circumstance, the joke of contradiction and so forth: all these are ways of enjoying the liveliness of men, things and processes, and they heighten both our capacity for life and our pleasure in it. Every art contributes to the greatest art of all, the art of living.” (p. 277)
“In an age whose science is in a position to change nature to such an extent as to make the world seem almost habitable, man can no longer describe man as a victim, the object of a fixed but unknown environment. It is scarcely possible to conceive of the laws of motion if one looks at them from a tennis ball’s point of view. For it is because we are kept in the dark about the nature of human society [ as opposed to nature in general – that we are now faced (so the scientists concerned assure me), by the complete destructibility of this planet that has barely been made fit to live in.” (p. 275)
“We who are concerned to change human as well as ordinary nature must find means of ‘shedding light on’ the human being at that point where he seems capable of being changed by society’s intervention/ This means a quite new attitude on the part fo the actor, for his art has hitherto been based on the assumption hat people are what they are, and will remain so whatever it may cost society or themselves: ‘indestructibly human’, ‘you can’t change human nature’ and so on. Both emotionally and intellectually he needs to decide his attitude to his scene and his part. The change demanded of the actor is not a cold and mechanical operation: art has nothing cold or mechanical about it, and this change is an artistic one. It cannot take place unless he has real contact with his new audience and a passionate concern for human progress.” (p. 235)