Brecht’s Theatre: An Overview of Epic Theatre in The Threepenny Opera, Opera, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Setzuan, and Man and Man Equals Man
Joshua Lellis
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Bertolt Brecht is perhaps the most important figure in twentieth-century theatre other than Stanislavski. Brecht revolutionized a variety of theatrical aspects: text, design, acting, directing, dramaturgy and theory. The best way to examine Brecht’s influence on modern theatre is to study his plays and note how his views on theatre, and, more importantly, on the world as a whole, manifest themselves through his work. Brecht wanted a revolutionary theatre—a theatre that would appeal to an audience’s intellect rather than pander to an audience’s emotions. He wanted an audience to think about the human condition and situation rather than to have an emotional catharsis. Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany, on February 10, 1898 (Willett, p. 17). Brecht’s early plays, such as Baal , were expressionistic experiments which were episodic in structure and dealt mostly with mood and texture rather than plot. He worked closely with Erwin Piscator, the original mastermind behind “epic theatre”, which is a term now firmly associated with Brecht. The epic theatre involved the use of projections, film segments, and placards which told the story of the play (Willett, 109). Throughout his life, Brecht fleshed out and expanded on these scenic ideas and acting techniques. Brecht approached realistic dramatic theatre forms as obsolete and considered the epic theatre to be the theatre of the future. Whereas the traditional dramatic theatre focuses on characters’ psyches, experiences, and conflicts with plots that build toward inevitable emotional climaxes, the epic theatre is narrative, has flexible characters whose actions vary depending on their circumstances, and promotes rational and intellectual thought over feeling. ( Brecht on Theatre, p. 37). Brecht argued that the “’Gesamtkunstwerk’ (or ‘integrated work of art’)” (37) was a horrendous idea since it is “intended to produce
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hypnosis” (38). The creation of a Stanislavskian “slice of life” onstage would be the antithesis of Brecht’s goals. In 1939, Brecht fled Nazi Germany the night after the Reichstag fire and went into exile in Scandinavia. In 1941 Brecht trekked across Russia and settled in Los Angeles. He was questioned by the House Committee of Unamerican Activities in 1947, and returned to Berlin, where he set up the Berliner Ensemble, the group that would bring international fame to his theories. It is integral to the examination of Brecht’s development as a playwright to look at a cross-section of Brecht’s work: Man Equals Man (1926), which is more expressionistic than his later works, The Threepenny Opera (1928) which focuses on the corruptness of capitalist society and brought his initial fame, and The Good Woman of Setzuan (1940), which is an excellent example of his more complex, later work. Man Equals Man is one of Brecht’s early works. The play is set in India after the first World War, though Queen Victoria is mentioned during the play as being the monarch on the throne. (Brecht’s historical anachronisms are intentional and elemental to the epic theatre concept of alienation.) Four British soldiers rob an Indian temple. One of them, Jeraiah, is left behind during the escape. Afraid of getting caught, the three soldiers threaten an Irish porter, Galy Gay, and force him to pose as Jeraiah. They give Galy Jeraiah’s papers and Galy is gradually reconstituted into the perfect soldier: he loses his own identity, delivers his own eulogy, and turns away Jeraiah toward the end of the play with his own papers. The play climaxes with Galy’s solo destruction of a fortress, which indicates his attaining the status of the perfect soldier. He transforms from a simple man, or for Brecht’s purposes an Everyman, into the ideal soldier.
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The Threepenny Opera is the work that brought Brecht his initial fame. In circa 1900 London, a small-time crook, Mr. Peachum, who runs a business outfitting beggars, is outraged that his daughter has married the criminal Macheath, or Mack the Knife. Peachum, eager for revenge, attempts to get Macheath arrested, but Mack flees. Macheath is in cahoots with Tiger Brown, the police chief, who has destroyed Macheath’s criminal record. Mrs. Peachum, however, is determined to have Macheath arrested. Macheath flees to a brothel, where he is betrayed and arrested. He is then freed by an ex-lover, recaptured again, and about to be hung when the Queen pardons him. Macheath is forgiven of his assaults, murders, and robberies, given a noble position, and allotted ten thousand pounds per annum by the government. In The Good Woman of Setzuan, three gods have descended to earth in order to justify their existence by finding one good person. They spend the night at a poor prostitute’s home, Shen Te, and give her money the next morning. With her new wealth, she buys a tobacco shop, and, almost instantly, discovers that people want money from her. She is constantly bombarded with requests for money and food, and since she is a good person she is unable to turn people away. She creates an alter-ego, her cousin, Shui Ta, in order to run the shop as a businessman. Shui Ta is a cruel individual and she finds that she has to be him more and more in order to survive. Shen Te is pregnant by Yang Sun, her lover, though she has accepted money from another man, Shu Fu, and has set up a tobacco factory. Yang Sun is appointed as manager of the factory, and Shui Ta appears more and more to aid Shen Te until she no longer appears. Yang Sun accuses Shui Ta of murdering Shen Te and Shui Ta is put on trial. The three gods, weary from trying to find
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other good people, return to act as judges. They cannot reconcile that Shen Te has to act cruelly in order to survive, and the play ends with Shen Te screaming out in vain for help. Brecht is very concerned in these three plays about the human condition. Brecht’s characters are painted with wide brushstrokes, intended to be recognizable to an audience instantaneously. At the same time, however, Brecht’s characters are distinct and are not necessarily stock characters. Brecht is interested in how individuals implement their beliefs. He loves to compare what they say with what they do. Emotions are not as important as ideology and action. Brecht does not care what drives Macheath to crime and womanizing. Brecht is fascinated with Macheath the character as the archetype capitalist and how Macheath is able to exploit people without fear of punishment for the injustice, or in the play’s terms, perform murder and theft without any conscience. Brecht’s interest lays in Macheath’s position as a hero and how society rewards what should be condemned. An infamous murderer about to be executed, he is pardoned by the arrival of a mounted messenger who states: BROWN: …On the occasion of her Coronation, our Gracious Queen commands that one Captain Macheath shall at once be released. (All cheer .) At the same time he is raised to the permanent ranks of the nobility. (Cheers.) The castle at Marmarel and a pension of ten thousand pounds a year are his as long as he shall live… MACHEATH: A rescue! A rescue! I was sure of it. Where the need is greatest, there will God’s help be nearest. (The Threepenny Opera, Act Three, Scene Three, p. 95) If this behavior is rewarded, or even glorified, Brecht seems to ask, what does this say about our society? It turns everything topsy-turvy if evil is rewarded. In Brecht’s characterization of Macheath as the ultimate capitalist, Mack considers his desire and will to be “good” instead of depraved. He is the pinnacle expression of selfishness that manifests itself through the capitalist system.
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Shen Te is in a similar situation: she is revered as a wonderful example for all to follow, but at the same time she must be ruthless in order to survive. People take advantage of her generosity—an entire family of eight moves into her shop almost immediately after she buys it. As the First God says, “no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.” (Good Woman of Setzuan, 1a, p.23). She needs an alter-ego of ruthlessness in order to survive. Brecht is interested in the duality of the character and of the dialectic that is created: “How can one be good when society forces one to be bad?” He writes in the play’s epilogue: Could one change people? Can the world be changed? Would new gods do the trick? Will atheism? Moral rearmament? Materialism? It is for you to find a way my friends, To help good men arrive at happy ends. You write the happy ending to the play! There must, there must, there’s got to be a way! (Good Woman of Setzuan, epilogue, p. 113) The question Brecht brings up throughout his work and the question which he wants the audience to ask themselves is: “How do you reconcile your ideology with the need for quotidian action?” Brecht encourages the audience to examine themselves and their society and to modify what they find wrong. If Macheath and Shen Te are well-fleshed out characters, then Galy Ga y is the other extreme. Man Equals Man is ultimately about socialization and how society, represented by the soldiers, manipulates an individual to act how they want him or her to act. Brecht writes in an interlude: Herr Bertolt Brecht maintains man equals man —A view that has been around since time began. But then Herr Brecht points out how far one can Manoeuvre and manipulate that man. Tonight you are going to see a man reassembled like a car
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Leaving all his individual components just as the y are. ( Man Equals Man, Interlude, p.38) Ultimately people are fallible in Brecht’s view of the world. People are easily swayed to believe: JESSE: The world is dreadful. Men cannot be relied on. POLLY: The vilest and weakest thing alive is man. JESSE: …This man whom we took under our wing…is like a leaky oil can. Yes and no are the same to him, he says one thing today and another tomorrow. ( Man Equals Man, 10, p. 64) The next important theme which runs through all of Brecht’s work is the evil of capitalism. Capitalism is viewed negatively by Brecht as degrading the human condition and human nature. Capitalism is the cause of injustice, poverty, and the differences between the classes. This proposition is especially interesting when one looks at Threepenny Opera, and specifically Peachum’s character. Peachum makes his living by outfitting beggars, allotting them a specific area of London in which to beg, and then taking “fifty percent of the weekly takings. Including outfit, seventy per cent” (The Threepenny Opera, Act One, Scene One, p. 8). Peachum is the most despicable of capitalists, exploiting the poorest of the poor for his gain. Peachum uses the standard goodness of people to prey on their sympathies: PEACHUM: These are the five basic types o f misery best adapted to touching the human heart. The sight of them induces that unnatural state of mind in which a man is actually willing to give money away. Outfit A: Victim of the Progress of Modern Traffic. The Cheerful Cripple… Outfit B: Victim of the Art of War. The Troublesome Twitcher… Outfit C: Victim of the Industrial Boom. The Pitiable Blind, or the High School of the Art of Begging… Outfit E: Young man who’s seen better days, preferably one who “never thought he would come down to this.” (The Threepenny Opera, Act One, Scene One, p. 10)
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Peachum exploits both his workers and his fellow citizens’ sympathy, all in the interest of profit. Peachum states that he figured out “how to extract a few pence from your [the beggars’] poverty…: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it.” (The Threepenny Opera, Act Three, Scene One, p. 72). Peachum is vividly aware of the plight of the poor, and he expresses quite beautifully, as a mouthpiece of Brecht: PEACHUM: …You’ve forgotten the monstrous number of the poor. If they were to stand there in front of the Abbey, it wouldn’t be a very cheerful sight. They don’t look very nice… You say the police will make short work of us poor people. But you don’t believe it yourself. What will it look like if six hundred poor cripples have to be knocked down with your truncheons because of the Coronation? It will look bad. Enough to make one sick. (The Threepenny Opera, Act Three, Scene One, p. 76) Brecht follows through with this bit of dramatic irony, since P eachum is using the beggars for his own financial gain. Brecht’s point, however, is made: if the rich and the bourgeoisie were exposed to the poor, they would be motivated to act. If people are knowledgeable, they would utilize the information. This notion is what drives Brecht’s theatre: that people can be changed and that theatre can be didactic. There are two devices in Brecht’s structure of his plays that are of the utmost importance in understanding his drama: the use of the narrative placards and the use of songs. Of the three plays, narrative placards are only used in The Threepenny Opera. The placards are displayed at the beginning of a scene in order to tell the audience exactly what is going to happen in that scene. In doing this, the audience loses the tension and excitement of discovering what will happen next in the play. For example, in Act Two, Scene Two, of The Threepenny Opera, the following narrative is shown: “THE CORONATION BELLS HAVE NOT YET RUNG OUT AND MACKIE THE KNIFE IS
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ALREADY AMONG HIS WHORES AT WAPPING. THE GIRLS BETRAY HIM.” (The Threepenny Opera, Act Two, Scene Two, p. 49). Brecht believes that “thinking about the flow of the play is more important than thinking from within the flow of the play” (The Threepenny Opera, Notes, p. 99). The other important element in the structure of Brecht’s plays are songs, which are used throughout the plays generally in one of two ways: to drive the action forward or to stop the action completely. Usually the purpose of the song is the latter, though sometimes the song can be relevant to the play. An example of the song being relevant is in Good Woman of Setzuan, when Shen Te sings the Song of Defenselessness, expressing her conflicting nature between wanting to be good and help people and the need to use people to survive: Oh, why don’t the gods do the buying and selling Injustice forbidding, starvation dispelling Give bread to each city and joy to each dwelling? Oh, why don’t the gods do the buying and selling? She puts on SHUI TA’s mask and sings in his voice. You can only help one of your luckless brothers By trampling down a dozen others. (The Good Woman of Setzuan, 4a, p. 53) It is also an interesting indictment of the religious communities of the world. Religion comes into the same conflict that Shen Te comes into when capitalism is brought into the picture. The desire to help people is there, but it is difficult to follow through on that will. Brecht also brings up the notion that one can “only help one of your luckless brothers / By trampling down a dozen others” (The Good Woman of Setzuan, 4a, p. 53), the idea that capitalism is built on top of average workers. The individual at the top must have hurt some people in order to attain a position from which she may help others. It is a complex issue, even the point of the play, summed up in a concise six-line verse.
Lellis - 10 The Threepenny Opera also has relevant and irrelevant songs. For example, the Second Threepenny-Finale is extremely relevant to the action of the play. Both Macheath and Peachum prosper on the misfortune of others, which is revealed in Ginny Jenny’s singing, “What does a man live by? By resolutely / Ill-treating, beating, cheating, eating some other bloke! / A man can only live by absolutely / Forgetting he’s a man like other folk!” (The Threepenny Opera, Act Two, Scene Three, p. 67-68). The Second Finale is a harsh and moving song which succinctly sums up the central argument of that play. However, irrelevant songs also exist in the two p lays, mainly in order to pull the audience away from the action. If an audience begins to empathize too much with the characters, then it is more likely that the audience members will not be spurred on to political action. Therefore, Brecht put some quite meaningless songs into his plays in order to have the audience do a double-take of sorts. An excellent example would be the Song of the Eighth Elephant, in The Good Woman of Setzuan. It is a song which is sung by the workers at the tobacco factory, just as the action of the play is being driven closer and closer to a climax. It disrupts the action of the play. Brecht believed that an actor has “a change of function” (The Threepenny Opera, Notes, p. 106) when he or she begins to sing onstage. He deems that there is nothing “more detestable than when an actor gives the impression of not having noticed that he has left the ground of plain speech and is already singing.” (The Threepenny Opera, Notes, p. 106). Brecht also disrupted the action of his plays by having them occur in an episodic manner. The Good Woman of Setzuan, Man Equals Man, and The Threepenny Opera all take place over a relatively long period of time—though not as long as other Brecht plays which span the scope of years. His plays are episodic over long periods of time in order
Lellis - 11 to not allow an audience to empathize with a character. If an audience member was watching a show, they would think about the character’s situation over the period of time, rather than the psychology behind the character’s action. The language in Brecht plays is important to how the plays affect an audience. In the three plays, language is stylized to fit the time and place, to fit the magical arena of the theatre in which the episodes are taking place. Brecht set a great deal of his plays in time periods different than his own (a technique known as historification), in order to help distance an audience from their own historical circumstances. The Threepenny Opera is set in turn-of-the-century London, Man Equals Man in 1920s India, and Good Woman of Setzuan in an imaginary city in China sometime in the early twentieth century. The language is stylized to the particular time and place. For instance, in Man Equals Man, the language is stilted toward a proper, stiff colonial speech which adds to the comedic effect of the show: WIFE: … And then there are those soldiers who are the worst people in the world and who are said to be swarming at the station like bees. They are sure to be hanging around in numbers at the market place and you must be thankful if they don’t break in and murder people. What’s more they are dangerous for a man on his own because they always go around in fours… GALY GAY: They would not want to harm a simple porter from the harbour. WIFE: One can never tell. GALY GAY: Then put the water on for the fish, for I am beginning to get an appetite and I guess I shall be back in ten minutes. ( Man Equals Man, 1, p. 3) By not having the language try to emulate real speech, Brecht prevents the audience from empathizing with the characters. Brecht avoids trying to chronicle life and speech in a manner that would be consistent with realistic playwrights. Galy’s response is awkward and forced, and it forces an actor performing this section to make certain decisions about the character. It lends itself toward a general, almost cartoon-like interpretation.
Lellis - 12 Brecht’s characters can speak beautifully and poetically, and yet at the same time stilted. For example, in The Good Woman of Setzuan, the gods and Wong, the water seller, interact in elevated formal dialogue: WONG: … She’s in great trouble from following the rule abo ut loving thy neighbor. Perhaps she’s too good for this world! FIRST GOD: Nonsense! You are eaten up by lice and doubts! WONG: Forgive me, illustrious one, I only meant you might intervene… FIRST GOD: The gods help those that help themselves. WONG: What if we can’t help ourselves, illustrious ones? Slight pause. SECOND GOD: Try, anyway! Suffering ennobles! (The Good Woman of Setzuan, 6a, p. 74) There is a lyrical flow at work in the script that is not natural in everyday dialogue. A conversation between gods and humans must be heightened in some fashion in order for it to be accepted by the audience. Wong must call the gods “illustrious ones” to indicate their elevated status onstage. The language allows them to be viewed as higher powers worthy of being the final judges of how one should live. The language in The Threepenny Opera uses a stilted gangster-esque vocabulary, though it is sometimes elegant and quite lyrical. The language is used to “display the usefulness of bourgeois virtues and the intimate connection between emotion and crookedness” (The Threepenny Opera, Notes, p. 104). The language is an attempt to show the corruptness of the ruling class: by having gangsters talk in an aristocratic manner, Brecht puts the image onstage of the corrupt capitalist. In his “Notes toThe Threepenny Opera”, Brecht clearly lays out that there are three levels of speech at work in his play: “plain speech, heightened speech, and singing” (The Threepenny Opera, Notes, p. 106). These three levels manifest themselves in the language and the word
Lellis - 13 choice for songs, in the elegiac interludes between Tiger Brown and Macheath, and in the plain, straightforward speech of characters such as Peachum. Brecht’s development as a playwright and a theatrical theorist is clearly illustrated in these three plays. Brecht’s work develops from simple to complex and from vague to specific. Man Equals Man contains some early experiments with the epic theatre form. For example, the speech that breaks up the action before Galy Gay is transformed into the soldier foreshadows the interludes which disrupt The Good Woman of Setzuan. Though relatively simplistic in structure, Man Equals Man is an attempt to understand human nature and to change society through the play’s absurd comedy. The Threepenny Opera is Brecht’s first fully thought through attempt at epic theatre and contains all of the elements which would be the signature of his later work: songs, placards, interludes, and an episodic nature. It, like Man Equals Man, sets up a ridiculous situation and asks the audience how this situation can be tolerated, i.e. how can one accept a world in which people are treated as properties or commodities? For instance, Galy Gay is broken down and “reassembled like a car” ( Man Equals Man, Interlude, p. 38). While Man Equals Man focuses on the socialization of one particular individual, The Threepenny Opera examines the elevation of the criminal/capitalist to the status of nobility. The question is much more interestingly fought out, both for playwright and for the audience, in The Good Woman of Setzuan, which is Brecht at the height of his work. He asks the ultimate question in that play of “How does one be good in a world in which one has to be bad in order to survive?” No answer can really be given to that question, and the audience is left to decide for themselves how to strive forward.
Lellis - 14 Brecht developed over the years from someone who approached a particular depiction of the world simplistically and vaguely, such as in Man Equals Man, where any individual is just as corruptible as anyone else, or any individual can be manipulated or molded as much as anyone else, to someone who provided far more specific situations and a much more complex view of the world, as seen in The Good Woman of Setzuan, in which a good-natured individual may strive for wholesomeness, but at the same time contradict their ideology through their action. Brecht labored over the question in the show and does not come to any definitive stance as to how to act. He subtly shows his own dilemma, perhaps his own thought process, through a scene with Wong and the gods: THIRD GOD: … [W]hat do you suggest, my de ar Wong? WONG: Maybe a little relaxation of the rules, Benevo lent One, in view of the bad times. THIRD GOD: As for instance? WONG: Well, um, good-will, for instance, might do instead of love? THIRD GOD: I’m afraid that would create new p roblems. WONG: Or, instead of justice, good sportsmanship? THIRD GOD: That would only mean more work. WONG: Instead of honor, outward propriety? THIRD GOD: Still more work! No, no! The rules will have to stand… (The Good Woman of Setzuan, 7a, p. 85-86) Ultimately, the intelligent playwright Brecht does not succumb to the lure of being a moral theorist; he comes to no ultimate conclusion on how to act in the world. He sees the injustice and the corruption of the capitalist system, but there is no real alternative to that system, nor any way to opt out of the system. At the end of The Good Woman of Setzuan, he states his problem in the epilogue, “Would new gods do the trick? Will atheism? / Moral rearmament? Materialism?” (The Good Woman of Setzuan, epilogue, p. 113). Brecht as a playwright cannot take a stand saying, “This is the correct
Lellis - 15 way to live”, because he is aware of the complexity of the question. No slogan or aphorism will unlock the key to a “good life”. It is a philosophical question that is complicated by new situations and difficulties at every step in the process: Shen Te gets money, she must be evil to be good; Galy Gay wishes to help the soldiers, he loses his personality; Macheath is morally reprehensible, he is made into an idol. There can be no quick and easy solution. Brecht understands the imperatives, traditions, and the contradictions of society, and it is in examining those contradictions that makes the plays so interesting. In the end, the audience is left with the same question that Brecht started with: “How do you be good in a bad world? How does society force people to fit into a defined mold? Why do we promote gangsters as heroes?” The epic theatre provides an audience with an experience they cannot achieve in realistic, Stanislavskian theatre. The epic audience is forced to think about these questions and justifiably so; they are excellent questions to be asked, even if an answer may not exist.
Lellis - 16 Bibliography
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Edited and Trans. by Willett, John. Hill and Wang: New York, 1977. Brecht, Bertolt. Man Equals Man and the Elephant Calf . Trans. by Brecht, Bertolt and Nellhaus, Gerhard. Arcade: New York, 2000. Brecht, Bertolt. The Threepenny Opera. Trans. by Bentley, Eric and Vesey, Desmond. Grove Press: New York, 1960. Brecht, Bertolt. Two Plays by Bertolt Brecht: The Good Woman of Setzuan and the Caucasian Chalk Circle. Trans. by Bentley, Eric. Meridian: New York, 1983. Willett, John. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht . Metheun: London, 1988.
