ABSTRACT
In the early 1950s, Brecht wanted to change from “epic” theatre to “dialectical” theatre. The latter was to keep the “narrative element” of the former, but had a distinct aim: “…deliberately to develop features-dialectical vestiges-from earlier forms of theatre and make them enjoyable” (Schriften zum Theatre, vol. 7, p. 3161). “Developmental laws” were to be worked out by means of “the dialectic of the classical writers of socialism, so that we could perceive and enjoy the alterability of the world.” To this end, it would be necessary to make perceptible the “imperceptible contradictions” in all things, people, processes. Alienation techniques were to be used to depict the “contradictions and development of human co-existence,” and to make dialectic “a source of learning and enjoyment.” In line with this, Brecht wrote in an addendum to the Kleines Organon:
The theatre of the scientific age will make dialectic enjoyable. The surprises of development-whether logically progressing or leaping-the instability of all conditions, the inherent humor of contradiction, etc., all let one enjoy the vividness of men, objects, and actions, and intensify joie de vivre. All arts contribute to the greatest art of all: Lebenskunst, the art of getting through life. (SzT, 7, p. 65)
In rehearsing for Katzgraben at the Berlin Ensemble, Brecht was intent on working out the desultory, transitory, intermittant, antithetical, on bringing “phenomena to their crises in order to grasp them,” on working out “conflicts of a social nature (and naturally others as well)” (SzT, 7, pp. 113-14). He wanted an attractive and lucid structuring of scenes and characters. “The theatre of the dialectic urgently needs images that stick to the memory, because such plays develop, and the spectator must have the earlier stages at his fingertips in order to juxtapose and compare them with the newer phases” (SzT, 7, p. 103). By working out the contradictions and conflicts the plot can develop “in caracols and leaps…and avoid banality, idealization (the two go together) and the trite forcing of purely subordinate parts towards a conclusion satisfactory to all sides” (SzT, 7, pp. 71-2).
