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On The Experimental Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

Bertolt Brecht
Translated by
Carl Richard Mueller
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Extract

For at least two generations now the serious-minded European theatre has existed in an era of experimentation. The diverse experiments have not as yet produced any unequivocal, clearly discernible results, but the era is by no means at an end. It is my opinion that the experiments followed two separate courses, which, though they occasionally intersected, can, when separated, be individually pursued. These two courses of development are distinguished from one another by means of their individual functions: entertainment and instruction, that is to say, the theatre organized experiments which were to increase its powers of entertaining, and experiments which were to increase its powers of instruction.

In a world as fast-moving and dynamic as ours the enticements of entertainment are quick to wear out. We must always be prepared to meet the desire for progressive public stupefaction with new effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tulane Drama Review , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , September 1961 , pp. 2 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 The Tulane Drama Review

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References

Notes

1 The important theatres are naturally prominent for the share they had in the experiments along this line. Chekhov had his Stanislavski, Ibsen his Brahm, et cetera. However, the initiative along the line of increasing the powers of instruction proceeded next most significantly from the drama itself.

2 We need not here enter into a painstaking critique of the technocratic point of view of the highly educated. Normally that which is of use to society will proceed completely from the masses, and the few inventive intellects are very helpless where the sphere of economics is concerned. We are satisfied here with the fact that Einstein confirms the ignorance concerning coöperative interests, directly and indirectly.