ABSTRACT
In 1928 Brecht began to study with the revisionist Marxist thinker Karl Korsch (1886-1961), who focused on the subjective and activist aspect of Marxist politics, as distinct from the more orthodox and deterministic doctrine . Brecht referred to him as his 'teacher' (GW 20, p . 65), but found him more activist in theory than in practice and expressed some disappointment. It was with him, however, that he first developed a concept of dialectics, not as a universal historical principle, but as a critical method of intervention (Briiggemann, 1973, pp. 88-9). Marxist theory was inherent in Brecht's concept of theatre from the beginning. From 1920 onwards he took a critical stance against traditional theatre and was soon preoccupied with developing two types of theatre, an epic theatre designed to reveal the contradictions in bourgeois society and a Lehrtheater which aimed to revolutionize the bourgeois theatre (see Chapter 1). Later he became dissatisfied with the term
'epic theatre' and revised his ground rules in order to accommodate the new designation, 'dialectical theatre'. I shall try to take account of these differences, though not in an over-systematic way, because Brecht's writings resist such an approach.
