Episches Theater

Episches Theater (Epic Theatre) is almost exclusively associated with B. Brecht, though the term was used in the 1920s of the early plays of A. Bronnen and of A. Paquet, whose play Fahnen (1924) was produced in Berlin by E. Piscator for his socialist theatre. Piscator's striking technical innovations for stage productions influenced Brecht, as well as the sardonic styles of the great cabaret artists K. Valentin and F. Wedekind.

The epic theatre of Brecht represents a clean break with established dramatic styles. It proceeds in the manner of a narrative or chronicle, avoiding an intertwining and concentrated construction. It aims at the spectator's detachment from the action, which is designed to instruct and, by reducing the emotional involvement of the spectator, to stimulate a critical scrutiny of reality. Though Brecht had in 1935 published an essay, Über die Verwendung der Musik für eine epische Bühne, and had repeatedly discussed his views (e.g. in Der Messingkauf), it was not until 1949 that he published, as Kleines Organon für das Theater, his principal theoretical work on epic theatre. In 1954 he expressed some hesitation about the suitability of the term Episches Theater, but he rejected the alternative Theater des wissenschaftlichen Zeitalters (Nachträge zum Kleinen Organon).

Aspects of epic theatre have been adopted, for different ends, by many dramatists, among them F. Dürrenmatt, T. Dorst, M. Frisch, P. Hacks, W. Hildesheimer, M. Walser, and P. Weiss.