Faculty of Arts Research Seminar Series
Wednesday 18 November
4pm. SEB201.
All welcome!
Taught only by Reality Can Reality Be Changed: Brecht and Applied Theatre
Prof. Tim Prentki (Performing Arts, University of Winchester)
Conventional wisdom regards Applied Theatre as a phenomenon dating from, at the earliest, the 1960s, combining the work of the British Theatre in Education movement with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. This paper will propose an alternative reading, locating the origins in the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht. Particular attention will be paid to the Lehrstücke – those plays written after his study of Marxism and before the Nazi accession to power in 1933 forced Brecht into exile. These works were described by Brecht as his Grand Pedagogy, the theatre of the future. This paper will not, however, confine itself to this period but will also investigate ways in which later plays such as The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Person of Szechwan can be processed as Applied Theatre. It will also examine Boal’s misreading of Brecht and key concepts in Brecht’s theatre philosophy such as the ‘naïve’. The re-framing of Applied Theatre within some of Brecht’s concepts may help to rescue it from the domestication into which it has recently sunk and rediscover its radical potential.
Tim Prentki is Professor of Theatre for Development at the University of Winchester. He is co-editor of 'The Applied Theatre Reader' and author of 'The Fool in European Theatre' and 'Applied Theatre: Development', as well as the short monograph for Australian teachers, 'Banking on Drama Education'. He is a member of the editorial board of Research in Drama Education and of the Advisory Board of Applied Theatre Research.
For more information, please contact Neil Ewen ([log in to unmask]) or Jane Dipple ([log in to unmask])
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