ABSTRACT
Bertolt Brecht distinguished between dramatic or Aristotelian theatre, which depicts events as though they were taking place in the present, and epic or non-Aristotelian theatre, which shows actions as having taken place in the past. An essential component of Brecht's epic theatre was the audience's awareness that what was thus narrated on stage happened as a result of alterable causes; the dramatic theatre, he argued often with happy disregard for the facts all too easily showed that the processes leading to the conclusion of the play remained unquestioned and seemed inevitable. Brecht's intention is much simpler and much more closely related to reality: the actor tells the audience about the character he is to portray. Fundamentally, reality will be accepted and approved. Clearly the leaders of post-revolutionary Russia wished their reality to be approved and so encouraged the assimilation of bourgeois realism. As long as the revolution persists, reality needs to be challenged.
