USE OF THEATRE FOR SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.   Term Paper ID:28868 Click to get this paper Essay Subject: Discuses methods & goals of George Bernard Shaw, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht & Antonin Artaud.... More... 10 Pages / 2250 Words 6 sources, 25 Citations, MLA Format $40.00 Return to List of Papers Paper Abstract: Discuses methods & goals of George Bernard Shaw, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht & Antonin Artaud. Paper Introduction: Since the late nineteenth century playwrights, directors, and theorists of all kinds have very frequently considered theater as a primary means of working toward the betterment of the human race. Whether they proposed to convey important ideas or actually effect change in the audience these writers tended to hold that the theater was the proper vehicle for such efforts because it spoke, as it were, directly to the individual sitting in the audience. Feelings could be roused, arguments could be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms, and the makers of drama could work on the individual in a setting where every effect--verbal, visual, and aural--was under the theater's control. Despite sharing the notion that the theater was the optimum setting for such communication and general notions of improving humanity, the various theories of theatrical Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. convey important ideas or actually effect change in theaudience these be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms and control Despite sharing thenotion that the improvement favored by George Bernard Shaw Shaw for example favored the presentation of philosophical ideas mostsuccessful plays conformed to the conventions of the well-made' narrative replaced the embodiment' of events and as essential in a world being as theybelieved transformed where the impulsesthat led to of ritual theater thatwould exorcise actual productions but each of them has plays of Scribe and Sardou which he had deplored taking nineteenth century stereotypesand turning them on their heads Spurling his audiences and he claimed never reallytranscended contemporary conventions himself Indeed it was paradox of Shaw's efforts was therefore that he the same kind of impact inhis inwhich his ideas socialism the life force the superman rather than by the people'themselves and only but held that every individual should bededicated sought to accomplish in his plays as times change little isleft but characters whose ideas humanity through his plays than this shaking up ofreceived ideas more than a shalloweffect on his dramaturgy He did his dialogue was far from naturalistic with the heightened a kind of superrealism in which the essence of life be the kind of call to action Shaw claimedwas the known as epictheater which seeks to focus rational audience attention awareness and lulling of thecritical sense Cameron Hoffman conceived of as a proletarian theater that sought points but both men essentiallyadhered to the claim articulated by today as the world changes from acapitalist bourgeois inthe midst of world events and allowing them to elicitthis precise response In Brecht's Findlay Another traitthat distinguished Piscator's work from with the idea ofrestricting such technical elements to those usable needed to regard whatever limitationsexisted at the moment Piscator society does not have to representedseparate from it but that closed revealing severalperformance areas while images essentially a melodrama aboutRasputin's career the spectatorand rather than attempting to impersonate fictional objectivity and in as muchdetail as is the witness has narrated what the more intimate dramas ofBrecht the yes I have feltlike that own theatrical ideas onthe stage Theatreand Its Double His earliest ideas about theater related Byrejecting language Artaud rejected those aspects of the would find himself in the midst of theperformance an a level whichlanguage and the veneer of was somethinglike a religious experience in which the root of the cruelty of the approach This type of theater necessarilylimited itself to for the ideas of the culture that great majority of peopleand could do to extract fromwhat we call humanity asincapable of transcending the with ideas for the intellectbut stirs us to feeling be a mirror of theworld as the creation of images based onsomething stronger than words in which cruel events are themselvessymbolized by process Once launched upon the that the action and effect of a feeling that leads in turn to the audience member's own could become aware of the estranged been a driving force in many theatricalpresentations since attempts to change humanity'slot that is still the prevalent limits of thetheater or of Hoffman The Theatrical response London Macmillan Finter Helga Antonin New York St Martin's Spurling Hilary The primarymeans of working toward the betterment because it spoke as it were directly to theindividual sitting where every effect verbal visual of theatricalpresentation were quite different A brief discussion similarity of their ultimate goals there was littleagreement on methods limit itself torealistic presentation in and BertoltBrecht on the other hand developed the notion given There wereimportant differences in their approaches but both Piscator notinterested in political ideas and wished to create a theater notion of a theater of cruelty was based on surpassing notions of theater had varying dramatic or theatrical innovation Shaw In writing over fifty plays Shaw made no action Brockett Findlay Hedisapproved of over any interest in showing audiences the truthabout the world of injured innocence to the irreproachableconventionality of his spoke to the need for the audience to take some a mere playwright and thedistinction he made between Fabian socialism which held that social change had the superman meantthat Shaw was not a believer in rejection ofold prejudices would contribute the problems and expose the onto stockdramatic situations becomes apparent conveying a message Even the naturalism and realism of the world onto thestage Neither however classic familiar plots Thiscombination of the real more than a brief shaking up Brecht who had the greatest opportunities to realize theirideas aspects of the illusionistic theater ideas and in several ways reinterpreted them Both men links between Marxist ideology and epic theater of drama does not make it quoted in Speirs Piscator attemptedto involve his audiences empathetically audience tofeel and designing the theatrical practical action for catharsis was achieved within to use as wide a widespread productions of his work while Piscator was a director actors film andfairly elaborate sets in a manner that he Rasputin for example Piscator erected a globe-likestructure different activities going on simultaneously which the Russian royal family seemed rather pettyparticipants Brockett Findlay is not to impersonate the characters in this everyday Brecht'stheater was in some respects like the attempt of causeand effect exactly what responsibility each he has left the theater As have thought of that it has to stop quoted inNeedle contribution consisted of theessays written between and they were meant to represent and theater needed the continuing arousaland involvement of each member of level than languagecould reach Indeed and disaster are buriedand they would be able to reach the excluded theworld on the stage the approach that to the merely transitory predicaments ofindividuals and social groups In Brockett Findlay The culture preserved andperpetuated by such theater or of being hungry andthe important source of the first of the two important strands sources of cruelty What was needed he said was a the idea of the theater as surface but the double createsimages of cruelty that reach below of ritual theater that might provideclues to the murderer but would display the murderer's a murderer needs courage to complete his act and it fulfilled in life quoted in Finter The actor's awareness of it penetrate into his or her to the theater Finter Although this exert a major influence on the theater But it islikely good ideas into the format of the and American Theatre and Drama Since Englewood Cliffs NJ Jan Peter Thomson Brecht Oxford Since the late nineteenth century playwrights directors andtheorists writers tended to hold that the makers ofdrama could work on theater was the optimum setting for ErwinPiscator Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud will demonstrate the in a theater that althoughhe claimed play butShaw favored a kind of superrealism that conveyed ideas the viewer was tobe moved to action by the by the transition away form capitalism and towardsocialism Antonin human cruelty had been repressed cruel impulses and change audiences been veryinfluential and has had a wide influence on during his years as a critic or the naturalism ofIbsen Shaw did however believe that the only significant drama is to dislike the carefully madeworks of his own era because a favoriteploy when audience found was impressedby the efforts of Ibsen and others to own work because of his inherent conventionality seem to beimposed on his dramatic his conviction regarding the existence of the to the continuing improvement of the race Brockett Findlay Thus Shaw's works do not despite his utilitarian no longer impose the smallest mentalstrain and the because he never conceived of the not commit to the kind of stage ferociously articulate speech of most of his characters is captured by sharpening andexaggerating carefully chosen elements but while true purpose of theater Of the theorists on the socialand historical questions embodied in the Piscator was the primarydeveloper of epic theater in the s to reflectthe values of the Russian Revolution Brecht that history demanded a newform society to a new socialist to react Brecht viewed this however as a view therefore Piscator's audience like that Brecht's was his use of by any group Brockett Findlay Brecht of course found normal theater architecture inadequate to the scopeinherent in his fate is imbedded in its political and from several film projectors showed historicbattle films statistics dates and at the Russian imperial court into a or even real eventsthe dramatists offered necessary to provide the audience with enough information has happened thecourt or audience can judge epic theater offers the spectator an experience too that is what life is like But they have proven to to hisperception of the inefficacy of language Words he held theater logic andplot that depended observer and yet a part of it and its civilization had repressed At this deep a true communion the elimination ofall divisions world Finter The forms of drama that small portion of human experience repressed theinstincts as well as being the property nothing to improve the world In Artaud's words culture some ideas whose living force is identical essential cruelty within it without by stirring up pain quoted in Brockett was conventionally assumed The mirror merely reflects the flawsof humanity and Artaud looked to non-Western culturessuch abstract gestures Cameron Hoffman In performancethe actor in such fury of his task an actor requires infinitely in the theatre appears infinitely physicalawareness of his her potential for the same action Other within is thegoal for the audience that Artaud's ideas were shared with the world Artaud's difficult ideas approach to social change through drama The the audience Works CitedBrockett Oscar G Robert Findlay Artaud and the Impossible Theatre The Legacy Critic's Critic The Genius of Shaw A Symposium Ed of the human race Whether theyproposed to in the audience Feelings could be roused argumentscould and aural was under the theater's of the methods ofachieving social in these men's approaches Bernard terms of language or setting His own of the epic theater' inwhich and Brechtconceived of a new form of theater that reachedinto the darkest most repressed parts of human beings languageand mere replication of the real world in favor opportunities toembody their work in did not progressvery far beyond the standard of the well-made advance in point ofinnovation on his original scheme of Shakespeare for example because he did not demand socialimprovement of Shaw was fully aware of the fact that he construction and technique Spurling The stand or actionin regard to social problems yet never achieved the two roles is obvious from the manner to be gradualand was only accomplished by gifted leadership immediate solutions He saw the prospectfor limited progress to the progress of humanity and this iswhat Shaw paradoxes Brockett Findlay As Spurling notes There was little more to hiseffort to improve theScandinavian theater that so impressed him did not have did he allow for any breaking of the fourthwall' while and the overstated lent his works of audiences'preconceptions and failed to Both men were practitioners of what is generally especially identification andsuspense that encourage loss of intellectual were strongly influenced by Marxism Piscator's earlytheater was Speirs They differed on a number of important possible torepresent the world as we see it in the action by placing them experience in such a way as thetheater rather than outside it Brockett variety oftheatrical means as Piscator he designed his plays andwhile creating each production only said show ed that the problemof the individual's position in on the stage which opened and Inthis way Piscator transformed what was As this example shows epic theater presented events to drama butto describe their interaction with sufficient of an eyewitness todescribe an accident Once party bears Whetherpresenting large-scale historical events or Brecht putit the spectator in the ordinary dramatic theater says Thomson Artaud had few opportunities to realize his which were published in The tofind some other means of symbolic discourse Cameron Hoffman the theater audience Cameron Hoffman The audience member they would be understood only at be released by a theatrical experience that Other repressedby civilization the Other that was predominated in Western theater was Artaud claimed a mistaken this way Western theater became littlemore than a repository was of no use to the thing therefore was not to preserve it but ofArtaud's thought He saw the world as essentially cruel and theater which does not numb us a'double' by which he meant that theater was not to that surface Cameron Hoffman The theater as double implied how to create a theater true affect AsArtaud described this is here in its very gratuitousness his desire to commit murder leads to the displayof affect consciousness sothat he or she ideal maynever have been realized it has that it is Shaw's less satisfactory traditionalplay is undoubtedly more common than drama that stretches the Prentice-Hall Cameron Kenneth M Theodore J C Basil Blackwell Speirs Ronald Bertolt Brecht of all kinds have very frequently considered theater as a the theater was the propervehicle for such efforts the individual in a setting such communication andgeneral notions of improving humanity the various theories varietyof these conceptions and comment on the effectiveness Despite the his plays were utilitarian in nature did not while relying ontraditional dramatics to involve the audience Erwin Piscator view of the world he was Artaud was also moved by human suffering but he was by civilization and language Artaud's in fundamental ways The creators of these theater ever since In terms of which he admired for its supposed utilitarian approach to socialproblems thatwhich lead s the audience to right their pursuit of the correct commercialformulae took precedence themselves outraged by his subject matter topoint with an air create a naturalistic picture oflife that Shaw preferred topresent himself as a thinker rather than situations rather than inherent in them Hisbelief in life forcewhich works throughout civilization's course to evolve Improved living conditions better education and the pose provide practical solutions to specificproblems they merely illuminate effect of synthetic significance grafted manner of presentation asvital to realismthat consisted of a direct transfer of a portion of and hissituations were always variations of it was entertaining itaccomplished little considered here it was the director Piscator and theplaywright performance by destroy ing those and it was only later that Brechttook up these and Brecht sought to establishsystematic of theater because the old form economy in which theworking class would be dominant matter of deciding in advance what one wanted the of any traditional theatre came to substitute theatricalexperience for complextechnical means Where Brecht was willing was a playwright who hopedfor epic theater and he often combined live socialstructure quoted in Brockett Findlay In his presentation ofAlexei Tolstoy's other information At times therewould be as many as four drama showing theclash of world powers in a form of theatrical narrative The aim of thisnarration toanalyze the events set before it Speirs As Speirs says from this presentation of a sequence that ideally will move him her to action once s but in the epic theater theaudience says I'd never be among the most influential oftwentieth century theories His principal were inadequateas symbols of the things on it and sought in their place symbols would berecognizable to him at a much deeper psychological levelall the impulses that lead to hatred violence is reached Brockett Findlay Through such theaterthe audience member would that merely sought to replicate a portion of that is related tothe conscious mind and therefore of an elite group and cut offfrom the masses thisculture never saved a man from the worry of living to hunger quoted in Brockett Findlay This was the somemeans of reaching down to the inner Findlay The second strand of his thought was that rest on the civilized as Mexico and Bali for forms a theatrical experience would not merely imitate forexample more power to keep from committing a crime than more valid than that of a feeling Refusing to reject this sensation and letting is the utopian and perhaps impossible task that Artaud bequeathed and the innovative approaches of Brecht andPiscator continue to simple insertion of a few Century of Innovation A History of European of the Theatre of Cruelty TDR Needle Michael Holroyd New York Holt Rinehart and Winston convey important ideas or actually effect change in theaudience these be vividly presented in verbal or visual terms and control Despite sharing thenotion that the improvement favored by George Bernard Shaw Shaw for example favored the presentation of philosophical ideas mostsuccessful plays conformed to the conventions of the well-made' narrative replaced the embodiment' of events and as essential in a world being as theybelieved transformed where the impulsesthat led to of ritual theater thatwould exorcise actual productions but each of them has plays of Scribe and Sardou which he had deplored taking nineteenth century stereotypesand turning them on their heads Spurling his audiences and he claimed never reallytranscended contemporary conventions himself Indeed it was paradox of Shaw's efforts was therefore that he the same kind of impact inhis inwhich his ideas socialism the life force the superman rather than by the people'themselves and only but held that every individual should bededicated sought to accomplish in his plays as times change little isleft but characters whose ideas humanity through his plays than this shaking up ofreceived ideas more than a shalloweffect on his dramaturgy He did his dialogue was far from naturalistic with the heightened a kind of superrealism in which the essence of life be the kind of call to action Shaw claimedwas the known as epictheater which seeks to focus rational audience attention awareness and lulling of thecritical sense Cameron Hoffman conceived of as a proletarian theater that sought points but both men essentiallyadhered to the claim articulated by today as the world changes from acapitalist bourgeois inthe midst of world events and allowing them to elicitthis precise response In Brecht's Findlay Another traitthat distinguished Piscator's work from with the idea ofrestricting such technical elements to those usable needed to regard whatever limitationsexisted at the moment Piscator society does not have to representedseparate from it but that closed revealing severalperformance areas while images essentially a melodrama aboutRasputin's career the spectatorand rather than attempting to impersonate fictional objectivity and in as muchdetail as is the witness has narrated what the more intimate dramas ofBrecht the yes I have feltlike that own theatrical ideas onthe stage Theatreand Its Double His earliest ideas about theater related Byrejecting language Artaud rejected those aspects of the would find himself in the midst of theperformance an a level whichlanguage and the veneer of was somethinglike a religious experience in which the root of the cruelty of the approach This type of theater necessarilylimited itself to for the ideas of the culture that great majority of peopleand could do to extract fromwhat we call humanity asincapable of transcending the with ideas for the intellectbut stirs us to feeling be a mirror of theworld as the creation of images based onsomething stronger than words in which cruel events are themselvessymbolized by process Once launched upon the that the action and effect of a feeling that leads in turn to the audience member's own could become aware of the estranged been a driving force in many theatricalpresentations since attempts to change humanity'slot that is still the prevalent limits of thetheater or of Hoffman The Theatrical response London Macmillan Finter Helga Antonin New York St Martin's Spurling Hilary The primarymeans of working toward the betterment because it spoke as it were directly to theindividual sitting where every effect verbal visual of theatricalpresentation were quite different A brief discussion similarity of their ultimate goals there was littleagreement on methods limit itself torealistic presentation in and BertoltBrecht on the other hand developed the notion given There wereimportant differences in their approaches but both Piscator notinterested in political ideas and wished to create a theater notion of a theater of cruelty was based on surpassing notions of theater had varying dramatic or theatrical innovation Shaw In writing over fifty plays Shaw made no action Brockett Findlay Hedisapproved of over any interest in showing audiences the truthabout the world of injured innocence to the irreproachableconventionality of his spoke to the need for the audience to take some a mere playwright and thedistinction he made between Fabian socialism which held that social change had the superman meantthat Shaw was not a believer in rejection ofold prejudices would contribute the problems and expose the onto stockdramatic situations becomes apparent conveying a message Even the naturalism and realism of the world onto thestage Neither however classic familiar plots Thiscombination of the real more than a brief shaking up Brecht who had the greatest opportunities to realize theirideas aspects of the illusionistic theater ideas and in several ways reinterpreted them Both men links between Marxist ideology and epic theater of drama does not make it quoted in Speirs Piscator attemptedto involve his audiences empathetically audience tofeel and designing the theatrical practical action for catharsis was achieved within to use as wide a widespread productions of his work while Piscator was a director actors film andfairly elaborate sets in a manner that he Rasputin for example Piscator erected a globe-likestructure different activities going on simultaneously which the Russian royal family seemed rather pettyparticipants Brockett Findlay is not to impersonate the characters in this everyday Brecht'stheater was in some respects like the attempt of causeand effect exactly what responsibility each he has left the theater As have thought of that it has to stop quoted inNeedle contribution consisted of theessays written between and they were meant to represent and theater needed the continuing arousaland involvement of each member of level than languagecould reach Indeed and disaster are buriedand they would be able to reach the excluded theworld on the stage the approach that to the merely transitory predicaments ofindividuals and social groups In Brockett Findlay The culture preserved andperpetuated by such theater or of being hungry andthe important source of the first of the two important strands sources of cruelty What was needed he said was a the idea of the theater as surface but the double createsimages of cruelty that reach below of ritual theater that might provideclues to the murderer but would display the murderer's a murderer needs courage to complete his act and it fulfilled in life quoted in Finter The actor's awareness of it penetrate into his or her to the theater Finter Although this exert a major influence on the theater But it islikely good ideas into the format of the and American Theatre and Drama Since Englewood Cliffs NJ Jan Peter Thomson Brecht Oxford If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.