epic theatre

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epic theatre, a revolutionary form of drama developed by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht from the late 1920s under the influence of Erwin Piscator. It involved rejecting the Aristotelian models of dramatic unity in favour of a detached narrative (hence ‘epic’) presentation in a succession of loosely related episodes interspersed with songs and commentary by a chorus or narrator. As a Marxist, Brecht turned against the bourgeois tradition of theatre in which the audience identifies emotionally with psychologically rounded characters in a well‐made play; he aimed instead for an alienation effect which would keep the audience coolly reflective and critical, partly by setting his plays in remote times and places, and also by stressing the contrived nature of the drama. The best examples of this drama are Brecht's plays The Threepenny Opera (1928), Mother Courage (1941), and The Good Woman of Setzuan (1943).