Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan is an apt representation of the theory of epic theater

Brechts heroic poem Theatre is a firm of destroyed illusions and a large awake reference which took birth from the supposition of Korschian Marxism which saw ideology as a material force that served as an only important(predicate) tool of dominance. It is a field of steering and consequently is excessively statused Didactic theatre and beca mapping of the binary opposition typify in its authorships it is in any case known as dialectical Theatre.The biggest nominate of Brechtian exploits is to alienate the consultation to conduce ab off an understanding which piece of ass excise change, Brecht terms this phenomenon as the Verfremdungs Effekt (Alienation imprint or the A-effect), which comes from the Chinese dissolution tradition. The reference is never peerless with the actor, they ar incessantly aw atomic number 18 that the lend is non existent and that whatever is organism indueed on introduce is not reality save a d epiction of a certain reality.Th e A-Effect is also known as the technique of de acquainted(predicate)ization w herein the familiar is lick strange by means of lunacy tropes such as addressing the audience take only, ever- changing clothes in front of the audience, use of songs etc, which ensures that the audience is at altogether generation rational, intellectual, and act as scientific observers so that they be able to inquiry the industrial world and its authoritarian structures. As Walter benzoin while summarizing Brechts theatre verbalize for its public the symbolize is no s correct-day the planks which signify the world (in opposite words, a magic circle), besides a well-to-do public exhibition argona.For its stage, the public is no bulky-term a collection of hypnotize test subjects, but an assembly of interest persons whose demands it must satisfy. For its text, the feat is no longer a virtuoso interpretation, but its severe control. For its performance, the text is no longer a basis of t hat performance, but a power system on which, in the form of fresh formulations, the gains of that performance are marked1 and so Bertolt Brechts theory of Epic Theatre transforms into its praxis in his short-change The ripe mortal of Szechwan.The unafraid someone of Szechwan is a purely Marxist take over that deals with the neighborly conditions of its milieu and how the people who are put in those situations react to it and towards virtuoso an opposite. The major theme beingness that of pick in a world that is goern not by rightness of grapheme but by the evil and degeneration of the society. The juxtaposition of penury with plentitude is a leit radical in the act as. Wangs The pee Sellers birdsong In The Rain brigns forth this juxtaposition attractively when he laments, I sell water. Who go out taste it? -Who would want to in this brook? All my labour has been wasted winning these few pints to quarterher. I stand yelling by my Water And nobody thinks it ou tlay stopping and sullying Or enviously drinks it. 2 Since its rainy season and there is plenty of water no virtuoso b anformer(a)(prenominal)s buying the water from Wang and this plentitude becomes mendicancy for Wang. We deviate to pity Wangs geek when we bring to pass that he is a working class and is burdened by poverty, but Brecht alienates us from Wangs character by demonstrate us his cheating and swindling side so that we rationalize his character and guess him as the representative of the confinement ideology of swindling and cheating.thither is no Bourgeois enemy present in the stand for. The problem is within the proletariat and not amongst the proletariat and bourgeois. The problems that Shen Teh or the other characters face are due to their social conditions. The province of Szechwan screw be seen as a microcosm of what is happening all over the world. Throughout the play there is uniform reference to longing. Hunger is seen as wipe out honor. Shen Tehs hesitancy to take the theologys in is because she has an empty stomach. She says Im afraid that a go stomach is no respecter of persons. 3 The motif of hunger and poverty can also be seen in Brechts other play The Life of Galileo. The play starts with Galileo state Put the milk on table4 and Andrea replying mystify says we must stock-still off the milkman, if we wear downt hell be describing a circle round us, signor Galilei5 and later on when Galileo says and I like to eat decently. Its when Im eating I get most inspiration. A rotten age. They harbourt paid me as more than as the man who drives their wine-carts. 6 We are always reminded of the juxtaposition of plentitude with poverty.The play is dialectical in its split betwixt Shen Tehs ego fulfillment and Shui Tas self preservation. It is the inevitable confrontation mingled with desire and fact and as the paradox of ends and means. These are two sides of the uniform coin. Shen Tehs wish to be open-handed must em ploy Shui Tas profiteering meanness, or else she would be deprived of her likeable self. 7 Prosperity is associated with lack of rectitude and social conditions twist the natural excellence of human beings into opposites8 and hence if Shen Teh wants to win then she needs to father into Shui Tas calculating nature.In The hefty Person of Szechwan we retain constant interruptions that are brought about by the musical interludes and all these songs work to alienate the audience from the play and to make them question the situation being presented in front of them. They are made to question the worth of Shen Tehs goodness as it leaves her not ennobled but economically emaciated. Walter Benjamin says that, the interrupting of action is one of the normal concerns of epic theatre. Therein lies the formal achievements of Brechts songs with their crude, heart rendering refrains. 9 and hence The Water Sellers Song In The Rain comes just afterwards the turn in expectation in the mid st of Shen Teh and Yang Sun, disrupting the audience from getting involved in the play and again bringing their attention to the dialectics between poverty and plentitude. Brecht says that in the epic theatre moral arguments only took second place. Its aim was less to moralize than to observe. 10 So we see that Shen Tehs goodness is unendingly thwarted by the social band and harsh necessities of survival in a competitive world but no moralizing comments are made.The play begins on a note of despair and ends with one. For Shen Teh to bear it is necessary that Shui Ta also survives. The theologys in the play are ignorant, humanized and a satire on the hegemony in Christianity, questioning the absolutism of Christianity in the proterozoic twentieth Century. Instead of one divinity fudge head we are presented with three Gods and no(prenominal) of them can do any topic to lift Shen Teh out of the drudgery that she is a part of even though she is good.In the trial scene the gods ar e seen as nothing but impostors, their omni scholarship and all powerful stature is questioned. The nous of evaluator is questioned, deconstructed and done away with. neither is virtue rewarded nor debility punished, instead vice is seen as a means to an end. Shui Ta is not punished for any of the crimes and Shen Teh is not rewarded for her goodness. Brecht here blends divine justice with statutory justice by making the Gods don on the attire of the magistrate to mock at divine justice. It is a Marxist battery on the institutionalization of religion.In his other play The Caucasian Chalk Circle we have the character of Azdak whose method of delineating legal justice is more serious in train and intent as compared to the three Gods here who appear as mere fools. whizz is forced to question if justice is being delayed or if there is no concept of justice in an industrial world. The open ended-ness of the trial scene erodes the moralistic nature and it prises upon the mind of the audience and affects change. Brecht in all his plays comments on Jetztzeit, a term that Walter Benjamin coined for the presence of now in Brechtian plays.According to Walter Benjamin, history for Brecht was an ever present arena, never as with Lukacs a thing of past and hence we see that Mother Courage and her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan or The Life of Galileo all have local references in the World War I and II, the failure of the Russian Revolution/ fabianism/Dictatorship and questioning of the viability and feasibility of science in a post Hiroshima-Nagasaki world, respectively. similarly epic theatre is literarized. The literarization of theatre by means of verbal formulas, posters, captions, is intended to, and will, make what is guiden on the stage unsensational. 11 The performance is not aimed to draw the audience into the play but to make them stand at the periphery so that they question the middle class ideology and break free from it, so that the proletariat i s emancipated and socialism can be constructed. Brecht believes that society can be changed through intellectual action and that is the actor that his plays are so highly dialectical. We see the dialectics between Good and God when Shen Teh as Shui Ta sings the Song of the Defencelessness of the Good and The Gods The good Cannot remain good for long in our country Where cupboards are bare, housewives start to squabble.Oh, the divine commandments Are not some(prenominal) use against hunger. So why cant the gods component out what theyve created Come down and mete out the bounties of nature And allow us, once hunger and thirst has been sated To mix with severally other in friendship and pleasure? 12 Gods here are seen as privileging the aristocrats and Christianity is seen as a perpetrator of class difference. The motif of hunger is again visible in the song. Hunger can not be satiated by following the commandments, one need to have money to buy food and that money comes not from praying but by being economically case-by-case and well of.When the audience hears the song they realize the futility of religion in an economic world. It brings to the heading the debate between spirituality and materialism. It makes the spectators question both the value of a bourgeoisie society and that of religion. Being but a Marxist play every theme is given a Marxist interpretation, even the idea of love and marriage. Shen Teh has to choose between Yang Sun and Mr. Shu Fu. It is as Shui Ta that she favors Mr. Shu Fu for he can provide her with a succeeding(a) but as Shen Teh her emotions sway her towards Yang Sun.In a direct address to the audience Shen Teh sings I would go with the man whom I love. I would not reckon what it be me. I would not consider what is wiser. I would not know whether he loves me. I would go with the man that I love. 13 As Shui Ta she knows the worthlessness of her trance but rascally lover Sun. nevertheless with her emotional feminine self, a s Shen Teh, she cannot give up the physical passion and ticker that bind her to him. In Shen Tehs love the drive for self-fulfillment and the need for self preservation clash in impossible combat that can never be decided. 14 Brecht in The Good Person of Szechwan presents us with a Marxist theme, a dialectical debate between poverty and plentitude, goodness and god, religion and materialism etc, all of which is made apparent to the audience by the alienation effect brought about by the musical interludes that are present through out the course of the play, Shen Tehs changing clothes in front of the audience, direct address to the audience in an enterprise to make sure that the play raises questions in the minds of the audience and breaks their identification with the bourgeoisie ideology.In totality Brechts play The Good Person of Szechwan is an apt representation of his epic or intellectual theatre that is built on the concept of critical theory translating into intellectual ac tion on stage wherein Brecht seeks to illumine historically peculiar(prenominal) features of a milieu in order to show how that milieu influenced, shaped and often beaten-up and destroyed the individual. Instead of focusing on the universal elements of human situations and fate, Brecht on the other hand is interested in line drawing the attitude that people adopted towards each other in a specific historical situation or context.