Download Brecht's Techniques & Critical Pedagogy: Bridging Learning Environments and more Study notes Theatre in PDF only on Docsity!
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments^1 Muharrem Demirdiş Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey Abstract This study examines Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical techniques in terms of critical pedagogy and their potential application by critical educators to overcome neoliberalization, neoconservatization, and authoritarization in learning environments. Brecht creates his 'learning plays' in a peculiar form that can be called ‘Brechtian dialectics’. Brecht aims to remove the distinction between audience and actors in learning plays and not to teach any doctrine, but to enable them to develop dialectical thinking. In these plays, Brecht deals with current issues, confronting thesis and antithesis, but purposely avoids reaching a final synthesis to maintain dialectical thinking process. Through epic-dialectical theatre, Brecht points out that the illusionist aspect of Aristotelian theatre makes audience passive, therefore he attempts to involve audience in the play with an effective and critical perspective. Brecht realizes this through defamiliarization technique and the effects of historicization and gestus.
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments This study examines Brechtian dialectics as a way of developing dialectical thinking practice and asserts that the authoritarian relationship between teachers and students can be eliminated in a similar vein to the transformation of the relationship between audience and actors in learning plays. The study explores defamiliarization technique as a tool to move away from the existing hegemony, and historicization effect as a way of underlining that history is a process and can be changed by subjects. The study also presents the ways how the gestus effect can be used to create multicultural democratic schools and develop class consciousness. Additionally, the study points out the similarities between Brechtian theatrical techniques and Freireian pedagogical concepts. Keywords: Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical techniques, critical pedagogy, Bertolt Brecht, Paulo Freire Introduction Capitalism has entered into a process of restoration following the crisis in the 1970s. This process has directly affected the field of education as well as other public spheres. Education has been commodified and privatized, schools have been handed over to markets and companies, and conservative and non- scientific practices have increased within schools. Curricula have been reconstructed in accordance with the demands of markets or companies and neoconservatives. In education, neoconservative and neoliberal practices have come to the fore, and authoritarian personalities^2 (Adorno, 1950) have been reproduced through authoritization. Inequalities based on class, gender, ethnicity, and culture have increased. To promote for the continuity of (new) hegemony^3 , students and teachers have been encouraged to adapt to the
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments Bertolt Brecht, his learning plays, and critical pedagogy Bertolt Brecht wrote his learning plays between the years 1926 and 1933. These plays written for pedagogical purpose are The Measures Taken, Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, Lindbergh’s Flight (Brecht then changed the title of the play as Ocean Flight since Lindbergh felt sympathy for National Socialism), He Said Yes / He Said No, Horatians and Curiatians, The Exception and the Rule, and The Good Person of Szechwan^6. The most significant feature of learning plays is the dissolution of the division between audience and actors; audience can intervene in the plays (Jameson, 199 8) - a process which was more radically continued by Boal (Vittoria, 2019). In these plays, Brecht turned all participants into ‘learners’ for the development of a collective and critical consciousness. In the plays, the decisions related to all processes were taken together with ‘learners’ and the plays were rewritten in accordance with the suggestions coming from ‘learners’ (Brecht, 2009; 2013). Bertolt Brecht used dialectical method while writing and staging his plays (Jameson, 1998). In learning plays, Brecht seeks answers to the question of ‘how it must be taught’ rather than ‘what must be taught’. In these plays, dialectical principles become visible both in the way of staging and in the texts themselves. In the plays, oppositions such as collectiveness-individuality and reason-emotion are handled and discussions are made about whether ends- means relations and technological developments are useful for humanity and whether the law serves the good of humanity. An emphasis is laid upon the common good that has not existed yet, contradictions are provoked, and events are discussed from different perspectives and also through the results of those perspectives. In the plays, in which the current issues are handled from a Marxist political-economy perspective through dialectical abstraction, the aim is
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy to demonstrate the temporariness of any kind of doctrine, of the values and traditions assumed as accurate (Kemaloğlu, 2009). In learning plays, where theses and antitheses do not reach a final synthesis, rules, doctrines, traditions and the familiar are rejected during rehearsals and stagings. Positive identity is also negated with the negative (identity-difference), and the continuity of the negation of negation is provided. This technique can be termed as Brechtian dialectics. In Brechtian dialectics, Brecht uses Marxist dialectics in order to reject the doctrinaire practices and thus dissolves identification. He focuses on the idea of process and heads towards the common good which he would also then overcome. For instance, the learning play Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent ends with the call for an improvement that will never end. However, this improvement can realize through the rejection of the previous stage / consent: The Leader of the Chorus: March on! Chorus: Having improved the world, then, Improve the improved world Lay it aside. The Leader of the Chorus: March on! Chorus: If in improving the world you have fulfilled truth, then Fulfill this fulfilled truth Lay it aside! The Leader of the Chorus: March on! Chorus: In altering the world, alter yourselves! Lay yourselves aside! The Leader of the Chorus: March on! (Brecht, 1997, p. 43) Improvement and change are continuous in learning plays. The past which does no good to human is rejected, and that situation is rethought in each new situation. This can also be seen at the end of the play He Said Yes / He Said No : “The Boy: What I need far more is a new Great Custom, which we should bring
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy most remarkable features of these plays is question sentences/lines. With questions, themes are problematised and left with no final solution. It can be said that the questions in these plays have no single/fixed answer because the questions are also asked to the history and they have the function of raising collective awareness (Karacabey, 2006). According to Brecht, dialectics helps us ask the questions that will lead to effective political acts because only dialectics is revolutionary (Brecht, 1977). Intervention, or ‘constant attempt’ in Brecht’s words, involves the continuity of intervening in a previously written, fixed text for the stage. What constitutes the variety of opportunities is these intervention attempts (Karacabey, 2009). These plays are staged with opennes to such interventions, rewritten in accordance with the suggestions coming after staging the plays, and rebuilt in parallel with the current political processes. For instance, Brecht rewrote his play, He Said Yes, which was staged in a school in 1930, with a new title, He Said Yes / He Said No according to the suggestions coming from the students. Therefore, it is not possible to state that learning plays are complete. The idea of process is a structural feature of Brecht’s learning plays. In his notes related to learning plays, published under the title of Theory of Pedagogies , Brecht (2003; 2009) explained the concepts of the major and the minor pedagogy, and the theory of pedagogies. For Brecht (2009), the purpose of pedagogy is the comprehension of dialectical relations between substructure and superstructure. According to him, the function of major pedagogy is to dissolve the division between audience and actors by transforming all the actors into learners. “The Major Pedagogy completely changes the role of acting. It abrogates the system of actors and spectators. It only recognises actors who are simultaneously students” (Brecht, 2003, p. 88). Brecht states that the minor pedagogy functions to weaken the bourgeois ideology, to activate the audience,
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments and to defamiliarize the figures and the processes for the development of a critical awareness. The division between audience and actors continues in the minor pedagogy. In principle, the division remains; however, the actors should as far as possible be amateurs (and the roles should be such that amateurs must remain amateurs); professional actors, together with the existing theatre apparatus, should be used in order to weaken bourgeois ideological positions in the bourgeois Theatre itself, and the audience should be activated (Brecht, 2003, p. 88). With regard to the theory of pedagogies, Brecht indicates that “young people should be educated by play-acting, i.e., by turning them into people who are simultaneously active and contemplative, as is suggested in the rules and regulations for the pedagogies” (Brecht, 2003, p. 89). He also adds that only through this new pedagogic function of theatre, people can be freed from their horrors, ignorance, and antisocial tendencies. “This is the basis for the idea of using play-acting in pedagogies” (Brecht, 2003, p. 89). Both the dialectical method which Bertolt Brecht uses in learning plays and his method of turning all participants into learners can be used by critical educators in learning environments. In this study, what is suggested is not directly the inclusion of dialectics in the curriculum but the reconstitution of learning environments by critical educators in accordance with dialectical forms. It is suggested that lesson activities may be carried out and the relationships between learners can be built by taking into consideration the dialectical methods used in learning plays, through dialogue and the experience of learning together. One of the most significant technical features of the plays is to reject consensus and to bring this consensus into discussion. At this point, the first steps to take in the learning environments and in the curricula can be rejecting the consensuses/agreements/theses with antitheses or with the negation of negation,
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments social and political-economic aspects, and teacher can provoke the contradictions in the course of the discussion. At this point, it is significant that teacher must direct the discussion towards the ‘common good’ in Brechtian context. At the end of all this process, teacher must be able to generate a new definition, an antithesis together with students related to how human must act for ‘another world’ in today’s conditions. It is also important that students must discover that this new definition is peculiar to today’s conditions and may change tomorrow. The techniques Brecht uses in learning plays have common characteristics with Freire’s techniques. Brecht’s idea of dissolving the division between audience and actors and his approach to all participants as a learner bear a similarity to Freire’s teacher-student and student-teacher model. It can be suggested that in both approaches, the main purpose is to establish a dialogue, to develop a collective consciousness, to abolish the hierarchy among all participants, and to reveal different perspectives. Brecht’s method of handling the issues as a part of social, political-economic fields through dialectical abstraction is similar to Freire’s methods of thematic investigation and thematic universe. Learning plays which involve no final outcome for the continuity of the process of dialectical thinking are reminiscent of Freire’s concepts of historicity and process. Brecht redefines the themes/issues together with learners, provokes questions, problematises those provoked questions and does not conclude them with a fixed/final solution. This technique reminds of Freire’s techniques in his problem-posing education model: In order to overcome the ‘culture of silence’, Freire investigates the factors that build this culture, presents these factors as a ‘problem’, reveals the contradictions in the themes, and encourages students to ask questions about the issues depicted. Brecht states that manipulated consciousness cannot comprehend the truth and therefore attempts to raise people’s consciousness thanks to learning plays. In this regard, Brecht’s concept of manipulated consciousness is parallel with
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy Freire’s concept of submerged consciousness, and what’s more, Brecht’s method of making the unquestioned issues questionable is similar to Freire’s method of breaking through limit-situations with limit-acts. Brecht’s aim to reach the ‘common good’ and again, to constantly overcome this common good through an awareness process in learning plays is similar to Freire’s approach of awareness and praxis. For Freire, the oppressed who liberate themselves liberate the oppressors as well. Brecht similarly thinks that the process of learning and awareness must not be completed in learning environments or in theatre; these processes must serve the function of changing the life through praxis, in other words, through the interpenetration of action and thought. Bertolt Brecht, his epic-dialectical theatre theory, and critical pedagogy When Brecht had to leave Germany, he took a break from writing his learning plays and focused on the theory of epic-dialectical theatre, did theoretical studies, wrote and staged plays in order to develop this theory till the end of his life. Epic-dialectical theatre theory and plays were created chronologically after learning plays. However, although epic-dialectical theatre was a more professional phase from the technical aspect in Brecht’s theatre, it was in a step behind learning plays with regard to the relationship between audience and actors because Brecht aimed to dissolve the division between audience and actors in learning plays. He encouraged the audience to intervene and participate directly in the plays. He thus created a dramatic structure whereby audience and actors experience learning together. However, audience cannot directly intervene in the play in epic-dialectical theatre. They watch the plays and are expected to develop a critical awareness through defamiliarization. Thus, it can be asserted that learning plays may be evaluated under the title of major pedagogy and epic-dialectical theatre may be considered under the title of minor pedagogy (Demirdiş, 2019).
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy of what kind of external forces surrounded them and therefore they were living without knowing how they could cope with manipulation. Brecht aims to make the audience actively participate in the plays, strike an attitude to the stage happenings, and raise an objection to or criticize these stage happenings. For this reason, for Brecht, epic-dialectical theatre and arts of theatre must proceed to a phase in which they can contribute to the changing of the world rather than commenting on it (Brecht, 2003). Brecht states that the world must change, and theatre is a significant tool for this change (Brecht, 1990). Defamiliarization (otherwise known as distancing, alienation, estrangement - Verfremdung in German) is a technique politicized by Brecht through the influences of some Soviet constructivists such as Tatlin, Meyerhold, and Tairov. Brecht employs this technique in order to eliminate illusion and identification that become apparent through the catharsis in Aristotelian theatre (Lunn, 1982). Defamiliarization is anti-illusionist and it dissolves identification. It is a general classification including historicization and gestus; it estranges audience and actors, laying the foundations to enable audience to enter into the process of critical thinking about the staged events, and to encourage audience to take decisions and also raise objections. Education contributes to hegemony but is also a site of struggle for the development of a counter-hegemony (Apple, 1990). Arslan (2001), in his evaluation of Brecht’s defamiliarization technique, asserts that this technique is functional in the development of a counter-hegemony in daily life. From this evaluation, it can be claimed that Bertolt Brecht’s defamiliarization technique can be used by critical educators in order to get out of the hegemonic atmosphere of learning environments. Critical educators themselves can choose
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments or determine the ways whereby they will use this technique because each critical educator can develop his/her own distinctive method. These methods can undergo some changes or progresses and can be falsified in time according to both the content of the lessons, the level of the class, or the kind of the institution. However, it is possible to determine a starting point with reference to Brecht. As the starting point, critical educators can defamiliarize both themselves and their students from antidemocratic, authoritarian, and hegemonic values in order to prevent being manipulated by the ideologies and the existing system, and thus to be able to take a critical distance from the hegemony. This practice also corresponds to the application of Brecht’s criticism of Aristotelian theatre to the learning environments. Here, instead of making the students participate in curricular practices according to the existing hegemonic values (based on religion, culture, class, gender, etcetera), the students can be encouraged to take a critical approach to these values and to intervene in them through defamiliarization technique. Due to submerged/manipulated consciousness and religious, national, and political tendencies, the experiences in learning environments cannot be evaluated critically. For instance, the individuals who criticize or negate the inequalities in the field of education in Chile due to the privatization process may ignore or may not raise an objection to the similar inequalities in their own countries due to their religious, national, and political tendencies. However, this situation can be reversed thanks to the distance provided through the defamiliarization technique. For instance, teacher can use the examples from other countries and from other times while mentioning about the inequalities experienced in the field of education. Thus, students can experience defamiliarization and look at the issue from a critical distance. The issue can be brought into discussion through a dialectical materialist perspective and dialectical abstraction, independently of hegemonic class-based, religious,
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments distance and through a dialectical debate. Brecht (2011) suggests that the process of critical thinking and intervening must not be completed at theatre; it must be carried to daily life. With reference to this argument, a theoretical basis can be provided to encourage students and teachers to demand public education as a fundamental right and to take action in daily life through the use of defamiliarization technique. Historicization is one of the defamiliarization effects that Brecht uses in epic- dialectical theatre. With this effect, firstly, the stage happenings are carried to a distant, a different land, and thus audience is defamiliarized from what happens in their own land or country. History is presented as a process, as a dialectical process, and the role of human in this process, or the role of human in the changeability of history is emphasized. Through the historicization effect, it is underlined that everything in the world we live in occurs in a historical process, and the events, the forms of behaviour and the lines of thoughts are shaped in consequence of the dialectical interactions of historical processes. Actors who differ according to each historical period are presented as a sum of social, economic, and political conditions. Here, an emphasis is laid upon the temporariness of conditions / history (Brecht, 2011; Mumford, 2008). Brecht’s purpose in carrying the issues to a distant, or a different land and period through historicization in order to provide defamiliarization is to enable audience to evaluate the stage happenings from a critical perspective, independently of national, ethnic, authoritarian, and dominant ideological values. To this end, Brecht carried the events in his play, Mother Courage and Her Children , which was staged in the period when the World War II was about to start, to the period of the Thirty Years’ War. He made the criticism of Hitler’s regime through some other figures from a different period and a land in his play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. He handled the relationships between property and labor in his play The Caucasian Chalk Circle through the events taking place in
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy Caucasus. In The Good Person of Szechwan, Brecht discussed goodness in the Chinese town of Szechwan. And, in Antigone of Sophocles , by carrying the events first to Hitler’s Germany and then to Ancient Greece, he underlined that the tragedy of the oppressed and the poor does not change in a history shaped by the sovereigns. In these plays, Brecht handled the historical events on a dialectical materialist basis and made the audience discuss the issues from a political-economic perspective along with the class conflicts. At this point, he put forward the role of subjects in the changeability of history. Historicization effect indeed makes the dialectical historical materialism visible on the stage. The historicization effect involves practices that can be used by critical educators. The functions of the historicization effect (defamiliarization, the changeability of history, the role of subjects in the changeability of history, and the presentation of history as a dialectical process) can be used together or separately. Through the historicization effect, issues can be handled along with the changes they undergo in the historical process. This may corroborate students’ idea that there is always change and will continue to be. Thus, an emphasis can be laid upon the role of subjects / people in the progress of history. For instance, in a lesson on the Lydians and the invention of money, the existence of money in the world can be handled within the ‘once, now and after’ context. In that lesson focusing on the history of money, firstly, an epoch when there was no money can be mentioned. Then, today’s conditions and the negative results of money relations can be mentioned. Finally, it can be inferred that in the future, there may also be another epoch when there will be no money. The discussion can be directed towards that point. In another lesson on the living creatures, evolution theory can be handled in terms of the changes that the creatures experience in the course of history, without any need to mention openly Darwin’s theory^7. While handling the issues along with all the transformations, or the evolutions they undergo within the historical process, as
Muharrem Demirdiş & Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy social / class-based identities at the behavioural level, or the behavioural reflection of our manipulated consciousness (Brecht, 1990; 2005). In this context, apart from petit bourgeois gestus and class-unconscious people’s gestus, we can also consider about proleterian, peasant, and bourgeois gestus. When we carry forward the thinking practice related to gestus with reference to Brecht, we can mention about the states’, neoliberals’, neoconservatives’ and authoritarians’ gestus because all these have gestus that appears in their human relationships and has a social and class-based background. In this regard, while Brecht’s gestus involves Poulantzas’s ‘practices’^8 , it also has a content that can be extended to Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’^9. For this reason, gestus may extend from the class-based practices to the social, cultural, gender-based etcetera behavioural practices. In schools, dominant values are taught and dictated as the true-normal behavioural patterns. According to Apple (1990), through the behavioural practices taught in schools, various behavioural patterns intrinsic to different social classes are eliminated and certain behavioural forms defined by the dominant ideology as normal and appropriate are promoted. At this point, schools turn into the centers of social-control and the sites of the reproduction of hegemony. Brecht states that gestus must be specifically shown on the stage. In a similar vein, gestus can be used in learning environments since it may help to create multicultural, democratic schools and to develop class consciousness. When gestus is considered along with the class-based, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and gender-based differences of students, making gestus visible can serve to strengthen the experience of living together in schools and can contribute to the creation of a peaceful atmosphere with mutual cultural understanding. Moreover, the students who realize their class-based gestus can be expected to
Bertolt Brecht’s Theatrical Techniques’ Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments discover their class-based consicousness and to put forward their own class- based gestus against the gestus of the states, the curricula, and the learning environments together with their friends from the same social class. Similarly, teachers and students may arrange their learning environments with the objects such as paintings, photos, news clippings, and poems that reflect their own gestus against the oppressors’. In this regard, the ‘poetry at school’ activities, which were held by students at the schools of Turkey after the Gezi Park protests, and continued for a while, can be given as an example. During these activities, students wrote dissenting poem lines, which were written on street walls during the Gezi Park protests, on school walls, corridors, and classroom desks in opposition to the racist, sexist, religious texts and visuals that are usually hanged on school walls. Students also added the hashtag #poetryatschool to those poem lines. Gestus involves the language and the discourse as well as the physical behaviours. For instance, teachers may prefer using a political, critical language while giving examples during their lessons. For instance, in grammar lessons, instead of giving the examples of some sentences and words that are not included in students’ ‘thematic universe’, teachers may prefer the examples included in students’ ‘thematic universe’ and the words / sentences underlining anti-war and anti-racism tendencies, hope, and struggle. Teachers may allow and encourage students to express their cultural, class-based, ethnic, and gender-based identities. This encouragement may provide the removal of the ‘culture of silence’ mentioned by Freire. An experience that occured in a school of Turkey sets a significant example for this situation. In a secondary school in Ankara, Turkey, a critical educator noticed her Gypsy students’ skills in music and dance, and founded a music and dance group in which these students actively take part. In an interview, the teacher stated that this experience
