Esta pesquisa teve por objetivo verificar, nos filmes e na obra escrita de Glauber Rocha, a presença de elementos da estética de Bertolt Brecht. Foram selecionadas seqüências de O dragão da maldade contra o santo guerreiro e de Der leone have sept cabezas para análises mais detidas, passando-se em seguida a uma observação mais geral dos procedimentos e conceitos brechtianos na obra de Glauber Rocha. A análise dos filmes levou ao encontro da história do Brasil, da América Latina em sua relação com a África, da guerrilha, do pensamento político e da figura mítica de Che Guevara. A observação de recursos do teatro épico em uma obra cinematográfica gerou a apreciação das especificidades do cinema na busca por uma participação reflexiva e crítica do espectador, e o aprofundamento na compreensão da relação entre cinema e teatro. / This research is an attempt at finding, in the films and written work of Glauber Rocha, elements of Bertolt Brecht`s aesthetics. Scenes from O dragão da maldade contra o santo guerreiro and Der leone have sept cabezas were selected for deeper analysis, then moving on to a broader observation of brechtian concepts and procedures in Glauber Rocha`s work. The film analyses have led to the study of Brazillian history, Latin American history and their ties with Africa, with gerrilla warfare tactics and the mythical character of Che Guevara, whose political thoughts are also looked into in this study. By observing epic theatre techniques at work in a film, we could better appreciate cinema`s specific traits employed in its search for the reflexive and critical participation of its viewer, leading to a deeper understanding of the relationship between cinema and theatre.

Trata-se aqui de uma pesquisa intercultural e interdisciplinar envolvendo teatro e literatura em que foram aproximados os romances Os anos de aprendizagem de Wilhelm Meister (1795-6), de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), e Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956), de João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), por meio de uma ideia de formação desenvolvida a partir da relação entre Bildung e uma tradição intelectual brasileira de ensaios de formação. Aliaram-se a esse estudo as teorias sobre o Teatro de Aprendizagem de Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). Esse aparato teórico é utilizado para analisar uma oficina teatral baseada em uma adaptação de Grande Sertão: Veredas, oficina realizada em diversos locais do Brasil e da Europa entre 2004 e 2006. Através do desenvolvimento e aprofundamento de elementos estéticos e teóricos presentes nessa oficina, intitulada atores da violência atores do diálogo, juntamente com a análise de sua recepção, buscou-se entender e organizar essa experiência cênica com vistas à proposição de um método pedagógico. / This text is the result of an intercultural and interdisciplinary research involving theater and literature in which an approach has been made between the novels Wilhelm Meister Apprenticeship (1795-6), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), and Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956), by João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), using the formation concept developed from the relationship between Bildung and the Brazilian intellectual tradition of formation essays. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) theories about his Learning Theater have been allied to this study. This theoretical apparatus is used to analyze a theatrical workshop based on a Grande Sertão: Veredas adaptation. This workshop was performed in several places in Brazil and Europe between 2004 and 2006. Through the development and deepening of theoretical and aesthetic elements presented in this workshop, with the title actors of violence actors of dialogue, along with the analysis of its reception, we sought to understand and organize this theatrical experience targeting the proposition of a pedagogical method.

– Här kommer vi att börja och här kan vi också komma att sluta. – Vi befinner oss i ett slags vakuum eftersom att start- och slutpunkten för den här texten finns någonstans i ett flertal parallella verklighetsskildringar - berättelser som å ena sidan kan tala för sig själv, men samtidigt är beroende av varandra för att förklara och förtydliga strategier, tematik och intentioner i en konstnärlig praktik. – Den här texten är enbart en text och existerar inte på något annat sätt än just som text. – Den här texten är en förklaring, ett komplement, en svepande rörelse men också ett tidsdokument - ett statement of the times. – Vi som talar är på sätt och vis samma person, men är också medvetna om att vi besitter olika förmågor och har olika kvalitéer som skiljer oss åt. – Vi är yttre skal och inre demoner. – Vi är någon slags karaktärer - verklighetsflyktens frukt. – Vi som talar är ständigt närvarande i texten och vi kommer att sammanfoga våra röster och kanaliseras genom en kropp, just eftersom att det är så vår verklighet ser ut.

This thesis proposes a critical study of the theoretical framework of Urinetown, asking the question of whether or not the show is truly a “Brechtian musical,” utilizing the tenets and beliefs of Bertolt Brecht. Set in a quirky, Gotham-like town where you have “to pay to pee” due to a severe drought, Urinetown follows a cast of absurdist characters as they navigate a society plagued by the perils of big business, ecological devastation, and the inequalities of capitalism. While the show appears to make a relevant social commentary, supporting a righteous rebellion to overthrow the evil Urine Good Company, in the end, by proving that revolution does not always succeed, writers, Kotis and Hollman invalidate these commentaries, proving that despite its Brechtian appearance, the show in its textual form is much more simply a comedic parody. However, Pomona College’s production, in which I played Hope Cladwell, takes on a much more severe tone, creating legitimate commentary by replacing many of the comedic, two-dimensional characters with living breathing, realities. In a text traditionally lacking authenticity, I approached Hope Cladwell with the intention of finding strength and satire in an otherwise vapid character.

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.

In the period following the May 1968 protests, French women began to create theatre that highlighted women’s struggles. This study explores the dual influence of Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht on plays by Hélène Cixous, Simone Benmussa, and the Théâtre du Soleil led by Ariane Mnouchkine. Artaud argued that theatre should become a transformative experience through an explosion of sensory stimuli: music, light, noise, and imagery. Conversely, Brecht wanted to use theatre to revolutionize society and theorized that by maintaining historical and emotional distance between the audience and the play, spectators would be encouraged to think critically about the its significance and be compelled to action. The female playwrights and directors studied created powerful theatre by combining these ideas in a manner mimicking Julia Kristeva’s notion of subject formation. Kristeva proposes that the human subject is never stable. Instead, it oscillates between the non-discursive, emotion-filled state she labels the semiotic and the more language- and logic-propelled symbolic register. These two realms are in constant tension as the semiotic disrupts the logic of the symbolic and in turn, the symbolic strives to regulate the semiotic impulses. In this study, I argue that the ideas of Artaud are aligned with the semiotic while those of Brecht resemble the symbolic. In the plays examined, the non-linguistic elements of the design and mise-en-scène engage with the didactic aims of the playwrights and directors, causing the spectator to connect emotionally with the story while simultaneously reflecting on its real-world signification.

Access to new forms, conduct and practices of educational research remain elusive providing researchers stay within the narrow theoretical constructs�the static, single vista of conventional research models. This dissertation presents the findings of an experimental study that aims to extend the discourse of educational research through a 'performative ethnographic analysis' by using a single-site case study approach. The case study is an analytical parody based on multiple discourse relevant to a 'new' and different approach to educational research so that a more comprehensive and complex process of reading and writing text becomes possible. Throughout this process, a generative methodology and interpretative base are anticipated to provide a metaphoric focus for a critical dialogue. The discourse informing the theoretical and interpretative base of the study include philosophy, science, visual arts, literary theory, critical postructuralist theory and theatre performance. The data are presented as a series of performance narratives in the form of socio-drama, interspersed with critical reflection that enables the researcher, the research participant and reader to become part of a triadic construct. The findings from this study have major implications for informing contemporary educational research, as they demonstrate that by approaching research in 'new' and different ways, the researcher and the educational community have access to insights that are unavailable within the constraints of conventional models of research.

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.

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.