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

Brechts Epic Theatre is a mansion of destroyed illusions and a wide heat earreach which took birth from the speculation of Korschian Marxism which saw political theory as a material force that served as an important tool of dominance. It is a theatre of study and hence is also termed Didactic theatre and because of the binary opposition bring out in its themes it is also dwell as Dialectical Theatre.The biggest aim of Brechtian gamings is to alienate the earshot to bring about an understanding which depose touch on change, Brecht terms this phenomenon as the Verfremdungs Effekt (Alienation Effect or the A- stamp), which comes from the Chinese incline tradition. The hearing is n constantly unity with the actor, they argon always aware that the walkaway is not real and that whatever is being presented on portray is not reality simply a impression of a certain reality.The A-Effect is also known as the technique of defamiliarization w presentin the familiar is do st range by means of alienation tropes such as yelling the hearing directly, ever-changing clothes in front of the audience, use of songs etc, which en authoritatives that the audience is at solely times rational, intellectual, and act as scientific observers so that they are able to interrogation the industrial knowledge base and its authoritarian structures. As Walter genus Benzoin while summarizing Brechts theatre said for its universe the stage is no longer the planks which signify the world (in some other words, a magic circle), hardly a convenient public exhibition area.For its stage, the public is no longer a collection of hypnotized testing subjects, except an assembly of interested persons whose de mands it must satisfy. For its text, the murder is no longer a virtuoso interpretation, just its rigorous control. For its procedure, the text is no longer a basis of that performance, tho a grid on which, in the form of new formulations, the gains of that performanc e are marked1 and so Bertolt Brechts theory of Epic Theatre transforms into its praxis in his play The neat Person of Szechwan.The untroubled Person of Szechwan is a purely bolshy play that deals with the social conditions of its surround and how the people who are put in those notes reply to it and towards iodine another. The major theme being that of rude(a) selection in a world that is ruled not by goodness of character but by the evil and corruption of the association. The juxtaposition of impoverishment with passel is a leit root word in the play. Wangs The water traffickers Song In The come down brigns forth this juxtaposition beautifully when he laments, I sell water. Who will taste it? -Who would want to in this weather? All my labour has been wasted taking these few pints to deliverher. I stand shouting by my Water And nobody thinks it Worth stopping and bargaining Or greedily drinks it. 2 Since its rainy duration and there is plenty of water no one bother s buying the water from Wang and this tidy sum becomes poverty for Wang. We undertake to pity Wangs character when we realize that he is a task and is burdened by poverty, but Brecht alienates us from Wangs character by show us his cheating and swindling side so that we edit his character and see him as the representative of the project ideology of swindling and cheating.There is no Bourgeois foeman present in the play. The problem is within the proletariat and not amongst the proletariat and bourgeois. The problems that Shen Teh or the other characters brass section are due to their social conditions. The province of Szechwan dirty dog be seen as a microcosm of what is happening solely over the world. Throughout the play there is unvaried reference to lust. Hunger is seen as annihilating honor. Shen Tehs hesitancy to take the divinitys in is because she has an empty stomach. She says Im afraid that a rumbling stomach is no respecter of persons. 3 The motif of hunger a nd poverty basis also be seen in Brechts other play The manner of Galileo. The play starts with Galileo saying Put the milk on table4 and Andrea replying Mother says we must accept the milkman, if we dont 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 pass onnt paid me as much 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 surrounded by Shen Tehs ego fulfillment and Shui Tas self preservation. It is the inevitable clash in the midst of go for and fact and as the paradox of ends and means. These are dickens sides of the same coin. Shen Tehs wish to be benevolent must employ Shui Tas profiteering meanness, or else she would be deprived of her charitable self. 7 successfulness is associated with lack of goodness and social conditions twist the natu ral goodness of human beings into opposites8 and hence if Shen Teh wants to fly high then she needs to give into Shui Tas calculating reputation.In The Good Person of Szechwan we have constant interruptions that are brought about by the musical interludes and every last(predicate) 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 outlay of Shen Tehs goodness as it leaves her not ennobled but economicall(a)y emaciated. Walter Benjamin says that, the interrupting of action is one of the dominion concerns of epic theatre. Therein lies the formal achievements of Brechts songs with their crude, nervus rendering refrains. 9 and hence The Water Sellers Song In The Rain comes meet after the love tantrum between 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 plentitu de. Brecht says that in the epic theatre moral arguments only took hour place. Its aim was less to moralize than to observe. 10 So we see that Shen Tehs goodness is constantly foiled by the social circumstances and harsh necessities of natural selection 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 survive it is needed that Shui Ta also survives. The Gods in the play are ignorant, humanized and a satire on the hegemony in Christianity, questioning the absolutism of Christianity in the archean twentieth Century. instead of one god inquiry we are presented with three Gods and none of them john do any involvement to lift Shen Teh out of the drudgery that she is a go of even though she is good.In the trial scene the gods are seen as nothing but impostors, their omniscience and all powerful stature is questioned. The idea of justice is questioned, deconstructed and done away with. Neither is vi rtue rewarded nor vice punished, rather 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 legal justice by making the Gods don on the attire of the magistrate to handle at divine justice. It is a bolshy blast on the institutionalization of religion.In his other play The ovalbumin Chalk Circle we have the character of Azdak whose manner of delineating legal justice is more serious in purpose and intent as compared to the three Gods here who appear as mere fools. One is coerce to question if justice is being delayed or if there is no design 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 comportment of now in Brechtian plays.According to Walter Benjamin, h istory 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 topical references in the World state of war I and II, the failure of the Russian Revolution/socialism/Dictatorship and questioning of the viability and feasibility of science in a post Hiroshima-Nagasaki world, respectively. Also epic theatre is literarized. The literarization of theatre by means of verbal formulas, posters, captions, is think to, and will, make what is shown 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 bourgeoisie ideology and break freehanded from it, so that the proletariat is emancipated and socialism can be constructed. Brecht believes that society can be changed through intellectual action and that is the reason that his plays are so highly dialec tical. 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 be not much use against hunger. So wherefore cant the gods fortune out what theyve created Come down and distribute the bounties of nature And allow us, once hunger and thirst has been sated To unite with each other in friendship and cheer? 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 adjacent the commandments, one need to have money to buy food and that money comes not from praying but by being economically independent and well of.When the audience hears the song they realize the futility of religion in an economic world. It brings to the forefront the debate b etween 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 future but as Shen Teh her emotions sway her towards Yang Sun.In a direct prognosticate to the audience Shen Teh sings I would go with the man whom I love. I would not reckon what it costs 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 charm but rascally lover Sun. But with her aroused feminine self, as Shen Teh, she cannot give up the fleshly passion and tenderness that bind her to him. In Shen Tehs love the drive for self-fulfillment and the need for self preservation clash in hopeless fight that ca n 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 attempt 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 action on stage wherein Brecht seeks to illumine historically specific features of a milieu in order to show how that milieu influenced, shaped and often battered and destroyed the individual. Instead of focusing on the universal elements of human situations and fate, Brecht on the other hand is interested in show the attitude that people adopted towards each other in a specific historical situation or context.