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The research studies Bertolt Brecht's plays The Elephant Calf and He Who Says Yes as representatives of his epic theater. It defines epicism, and illustrates the characteristics of the epic theater. It also shows how Brecht applies his political and dramatic theories to his theater. Brecht has created plays like The Elephant Calf (1925) and He Who Says Yes (1926) to apply his dramatic theories to them. The study shows why the Brechtian technique is used by several dramatists in the modern age. Besides, it shows how epicism is related to Marxism, and how Brecht mingles Marxism with modernism in his Epic Theater, specifically in his early plays The Elephant Calf and He Who Says Yes.
Keywords: Epicism, Bertolt brecht, Epic theater, Marxism, Modern theater.
The German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898- 1956) has developed a modern form of theater named the Epic Theater. J. L. Styan states that Brecht originally borrowed that form of experimental theater from his mentor Erwin Piscator (139). Besides, John Taylor notes that that "type of theatre [was] advocated by Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, and other German theatre men of the 1920's" (97). However, Brecht's epic theater is the most famous.
Brecht adopts the epic theater mainly to convey his Marxist messages to the readers. It is a didactic theater that serves special goal, and so it can be called 'propagandist.' Brecht's affiliation with Marxism cannot be denied. Edmund Thomas and Eugene Miller state, "Brecht was politically a Marxist who had spent a lifetime in the study of Marx.... He attacked capitalism; he satirized gangsterism and exploitation as the inevitable results of the capitalist society" (27).
Brecht wrote his early plays The Elephant Calf and He Who Says Yes to demonstrate the Marxist ideology. Lowell Swortzell remarks, "His [Brecht's] plays of the late 1920s often mirrored a growing Marxist persuasion although he could not join the Communist Party at this time inasmuch as avant-garde artists were held in disfavor [by the Nazis in Germany]." (105)
Epicism and Marxism are related. Brecht's modern epic theater is called later 'dialectic drama.' J. L. Styan remarks that Brecht in a later stage of his career developed his epic theatre into a dialectical theatre: "Brecht ...began to drop his use of the term...