While in recent years Caryl Churchill's drama has engendered substantial critical inquiry, there has been no sustained or comprehensive examination of her work in the context of one of this century's most influential dramatic forms, what has been known as Brechtian epic theatre. Epic theatre's counter-discursive, counter-hegemonic elements have appealed to a new generation of women playwrights, among them Caryl Churchill, who finds its politics invaluable to her socialist feminist dramaturgy. A detailed exploration and analysis of several of Churchill's explicitly socialist feminist plays, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine (1978), Top Girls (1982), Fen (1983), and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), enable us to determine the extent to which her plays can usefully be considered within the context of Brechtian epic theatre and to understand Churchill's unique application of epic techniques to a politic that moves beyond class concerns to incorporate concerns of gender, race, sexual orientation, and age. The theoretical framework of this dissertation will address subjectivity, power, and discourse in an attempt to demonstrate how Churchill's plays, like all literary texts, construct meaning and subject positions for the reader and for the audience. This dissertation privileges socialist and/or feminist theories that stress the social construction of subjectivity and recognize the need for historical specificity. Such a critical methodology not only clarifies how Churchill's epic drama, with its strong socialist feminist politic, constructs fictive representations of women and men that contest norms of patriarchal gender relations and the implicit hierarchies of value at work within them, but also reveals how Churchill moves beyond Brecht to present complex female and male characters whose subjectivities are constructed in the experience of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and age.

Det finns både skillnader och likheter mellan Stanislavskij och Brecht. En av de tydligaste är att de har olika ismer i grunden, Stanislavskij är naturalist och Brecht är realist. Dessa ismer gränsar till varandra i det att de båda vill ge en så realistisk bild av verkligheten som möjligt, men tar olika vägar i synen på verkligheten och hur denna ska avbildas på bästa sätt. Där Stanislavskij vill ha total inlevelse vill Brecht fjärma och hålla distans. Där Brecht bara låter skådespelaren ge utlopp för sina känslor i det inledande repetitionsarbetet låter Stanislavskij känslan vara med som en röd tråd genom hela processen från rollskapande till färdig föreställning. Jag har även kommit fram till att politiken, i synnerhet kommunismen och den socialistiska realismen, tilläts större utrymme hos Brecht än hos Stanislavskij. Vidare ansåg både Stanislavskij och Brecht att publiken hade en jämförelsevis stor roll i teaterns varande. Brecht menade att publikens möjlighet till kritisk eftertanke var det viktigaste för teatern i det stora hela, detta samtidigt som underhållningsfaktorn vägde tungt. Stanislavskij å sin sida strävade istället efter publikens beständiga upplevelse av den verklighet som skådespelarna åskådliggjorde på scenen, för honom var det viktigare att publiken trodde på vad de såg än att de blev roade.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Anita Gonzalez, Florida State University, School of Theatre. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6/16/04). Includes bibliographical references.

In this dissertation I investigate the stylistic shift in the cinema of selected filmmakers whose work is rooted in Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic theory: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins, and Lars von Trier. Through the work of these filmmakers, I trace the ongoing change in the cinematic applications of the theory. By and large, the change consists of a lessening of the role of montage – a technique that occupies a paramount place in Brecht’s theatrical and filmic practice – in favour of the objects within the camera’s field of view and the sounds within the microphone’s range. Since the ultimate effect for which the Brechtian filmmaker aims is that of Verfremdung, theatrical stylisation – itself estranging within the context of cinema – appears as a natural corollary of the described shift in emphasis. I also suggest a causal connection between the aforementioned shift and the growing self-consciousness of the style employed by meainstream cinemas (of which Hollywood is the foremost representative), which often manifests itself in the use of unorthodox editing patterns. Accordingly, I propose that we can attribute the contemporary Brechtian filmmaker’s growing reliance on mise-en-scène elements as a source of Verfremdung largely to the major film industries’ adoption of montage and other specifically cinematic codes that make a film’s style overt. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Brechtian filmmaker – whose political stance is inherently antagonistic to that exemplified by most mainstream cinema, reacts to the normalisation of foregrounded film style by employing the opposite strategy.

Zugl.: Bielefeld, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2007

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 2009. / Bibliogr.: f. [146-147]. Publié aussi en version électronique dans la Collection Mémoires et thèses électroniques.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Bochum, 2000. / Mixed media.

This study describes the relationship between auditorium and stage and their mutual interaction. It addresses the development of theatrical space troughout different historical periods and the concept of site specific. It contains a summary of basic terms concerning theatrical space, spectator, auditorium and site specific. It is based on works of leading experts on the topic.The main objective of this study is to analyze my own acting experience gained in Univerzity Theatre Disk and other theatrical or non theatrical spaces, map the trends and development of auditorium and stage and their subsequent effect on actor´s performance and overall perception of the audience. The relationship between an actor and his audience in each specific performance is created due to many factors such as social facilitation, form of dramatic space and unique communication proces between those who create theatre and their recipients.

This thesis deals with the costume design for the play The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht. The theoretical part focuses on researching the use of costume in epic theatre, the history of Chinese clothing , Chinese mentality and philosophy, and the use and history of masks . The practical part studies the philosophical content of the play, the nature of the characters and situations, and describes the process of development of the design concept.

Na pesquisa desenvolvemos um percurso por Bertolt Brecht na especificidade do seu exílio. Objetivamos traçar relações entre sua posição de exilado e as camadas do pensamento brechtiano verificado por Fredric Jameson (2013), no livro Brecht e a questão de método. A constituição do exílio de Brecht é entendida como um deslocamento, dentro do estado de exceção, de uma situação de exílio para uma posição de exílio (DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2008) que, entre diferentes características, evidencia a própria exceção (AGAMBEN, 2004). Ao final do percurso, trabalhamos, a partir de autores da psicanálise e do pensamento utópico, com a hipótese de que Brecht fez de sua situação de exílio um sintoma. / In this research, a path was developed for Bertolt Brecht specifics of his exile. The main focus was to draw relations between his position as an exiled person and the layers of brechtian thoughts verified by Fredric Jameson (2013), in the book Brecht method. The nature of Brecht's exile is understood as a displacement, within a state of exception, of an exile situation to a position of exile (DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2008) in which, among different characteristics, Brecht puts in evidence himself his own exception (AGAMBEN, 2004). At the end, psychoanalyst authors and utopian thinkers were used, bearing in mind the hypothesis that Brecht made a symptom out of his exile situation. / En la pesquisa desarrollamos un recorrido por Bertolt Brecht en la especialidad del su exilio. Objetivamente trazar relaciones entre su posición de exilado y las capas del pensamiento brechtiano verificado por Fredric Jameson (2013), en el libro Brecht y el Método. La constitución del exilio de Brecht es entendida como un desplazamiento, dentro del estado de excepción, de una situación del exilio para una posición de exilio (DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2008) que, entre distintas características, evidencia la propia excepción (AGAMBEN, 2004). Al fin del recurrido producimos, a partir de autores de la psicoanálisis y del pensamiento utópico, con la hipótesis de que Brecht hizo de su situación de exilio un síntoma.