Distancing effect

The alienation effect (V effect) is a literary device and main component of the Epic Theatre by Bertolt Brecht. An act is interrupted by comments or songs so that the audience any illusions destroyed. So he can on the theory that play a critical distance to the visual image.

The alienation effect consists in the core is to let the viewer familiar things appear in a new light and so to make the contradictions of reality visible.

Variants

• The plot is, for example, interrupted by comments. Characters step out of character and go to the public to discuss about what happened.
• There are alternative options for action identified which would have been open to the protagonists in other circumstances. This " is won, that the spectator the people on the stage no longer sees represented as completely immutable, intractable, their fate helplessly delivered It provides:. . This man is so and so, because the circumstances are such and such, and the conditions are but so and so, because man is so and so. he is not the only way to see how he is, but also different, as it could be, and also the conditions are designed differently than they are. " ( Bertolt Brecht)
• Stylized Language: It is spoken partly in verse. Sometimes the individual scenes are also banners prefixed (eg in The Life of Galileo ) in which the action is anticipated. Whose goal is not to draw the attention of the viewer on the course of the play, but on the way in which the action is being promoted.
• The stage design is often sparingly, a few props are used. Instead of period costumes street clothes are often used.
• The actors themselves have to keep a certain distance to their role, so that the viewer can not perceive the protagonists as figures of identification. This unilateral influence of the spectator is avoided, the path or the motives of the protagonist can be seen by the viewer critical.
• The characters often have allegorical character, are "No " - or "everyone" - shapes that are easily interchangeable and follow exemplary behavior. It will hardly excite emotions, the epic theater, she studied only from the outside.
• The viewer is confronted with the contemporary socio-political issues that are often the cause of the actions of the individual figures. The aim of the viewers are "activated", ie will be asked to engage in politics and society.
• The narrative proceeds in curves, so it is not linear or chronological order.
• Other means are also the inclusion of a choir as a commentator (see Aristotelian drama ), the use of signs, songs (or songs ) and new media (projections, slide shows, short film sequences, etc.). And the use of dialects can be understood as a V- effect.

Brecht's idea as a counterpart to the Aristotelian concept dramas

Brecht argued against a then common interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of dramas. His ideas of Aristotle were strongly influenced by doctrines of the late 19th century, such as from an interpretation of catharsis in the sense of empathy or theory of the authority of stage naturalism, against which he rebelled.

In contrast to the identification in a " Aristotelian theater ," which speculates on catharsis in the sense of empathy of performers and spectators, is placed on the effect of the alienation effect in the Epic Theater. Instead of empathy in the figures shown alienation should lead to a discussion of the actor and the spectator with the figures. By altering a distance between the audience and actors played characters is created. Stage design and equipment used as well as the gameplay that goal. The attention of the viewer to be drawn to the sense of the game, for the purpose of a critical examination of the piece ( interpretation rather than identification).

Brecht hoped to be able to cause political and cultural changes by identifying alternative solutions.

He used in his works rarely classical heroes as main characters, but usually characters that appear to the audience ambivalent (eg, Shen Te, a kind-hearted prostitute who takes on the role of an unscrupulous man, or Mother Courage, a worried mother and at the same time opportunistic businesswoman ) with whom you do not identify themselves closer and with whom you therefore can not share the excitement from the outset. This distance is to preserve the objectivity of the spectator.

The Familiar is to be recognized in the alienated, to an active but distant (rational rather than emotional ) involvement of the viewer is required. He should be seen as concerned to draw conclusions for his own life or to intervene in the political and social conditions of his time.

As a guiding text applies the Essay The epic theater of Bertolt Brecht. It Brecht argues that the classical scheme of the drama is as outdated eg Sophocles, since the nature of spectatorship not offering for our reflection, but only for compassion and witnessing. The real object of the theater, he nevertheless believes that the policy of the spectator, the call to think and consequently the active action. The critical- rational component in Brecht's conception should not be evaluated by this is simply identified with numbness. Brecht understood his concept less than teaching method of the theater, but wanted to make accessible the pleasure and the carnivalesque, ambivalent fun of the states in the real world in the first place.

In Brecht's works are mainly the man, his motives examined for action and his thinking, based on the thesis that " social being " the "consciousness" determine ( Preface to the Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx)

Critique of the "anti- Aristotelian " dramaturgy

The theater scholar Hans -Thies According Frankfurt Lehmann Brecht has not taken care of for a revolution of the theater, in that even with him the story has remained the central element of all dramas and productions, and he has, like the other avant-garde artists of his time, sought only for new production strategies. For Lehmann only marks the object of the fable, as a post-dramatic theater, she takes, the decisive turning point in the theater.