PERF219 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Bertolt Brecht, Applied Drama, The Roots
Chapter Summary
Textbook: The Applied Theatre Reader, edited by Tim Prentki
and Sheila Preston, Routledge, 2009.
Chapter 1 – Applied Theatre: An Introduction
By Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston (pp. 9-15)
Defining Applied Theatre
- A form of theatre that is beyond the conventional styles of theatre.
- Responsive to ordinary people and their stories.
- Often takes place in informal and non-conventional/traditional theatre spaces
oE.g. day care centres, prisons, village halls, the street.
- Often has some content of relevance to the community.
- Can be used to convey a political stance.
- Audience can be participants.
-“Applied Theatre defies any one definition and includes a multitude of intentions,
aesthetic processes and transactions with its participants.”
A brief history of Applied Theatre
- The conventions of applied theatre emerged in the 2nd half of the twentieth century.
- After the second world war the social science areas underwent a reformation.
- Applied theatre derives from the sociology discipline.
- The goal tends to be group transformation over individual transformation.
- Applied theatre may be used as a form of community building.
- Bertolt Brecht may be viewed as the “founder” of applied theatre. “He took Marx’s
dictum articulated in the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, ‘the philosophers have only
interpreted the world, the point is to change it’, and applied it to theatre.”
- Applied theatre therefore may have developed earlier if not for the Nazis’ election
victory in 1933.
- It was not until the 1950s that Brecht’s work became accessible in English and this
meant his influence was felt during the social and theatrical experimentation of the
1960s.
- Influenced by emerging theories in the education field – the teacher is also the
learner and vice versa.
- Community Theatre, Theatre in Education, and Theatre for Development are
principle sub-sets of applied theatre.
- Theatre for Development – applied to educate illiterate communities about the
spread of HIV/AIDS.
The Politics of Applied Theatre
-“The roots of applied theatre grew in the soil of progressive, radical people’s
movements in various places around the world.”
- Applied theatre is NOT a left wing or socialist methodology.
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