Complex Seeing: An Inquiry into the Selected Plays of Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht, an outstanding German playwright of the twentieth century, changed the course of Modern European theatre. He broke away from the traditional reliance on unities of time, place and action clearly directed towards a climax and a catharsis that leads to exhaustion of all passion and a calm of mind.He formed his own distinct form of theatre and declared:‘the modern theatre is the Epic theatre’. As a Marxian playwright,he wanted his theatre to evoke a critical response from the audience, so as to transform the society. Brecht employed certain techniques to keep the audience critically detached from the characters and situations that would make the intended ‘estrangement’ or ‘alienation’. Brecht was convinced that things that look the same are different, differences matter, and the margins matter. In such a context, “thinking above the flow of the play is more important than thinking within the flow of the play”.Complex seeing then becomes the basic commentary on a persistent Brechtian theme.