Brecht for Theater Majors: Teaching Epic Theater in a Play Analysis Course

Summary

As a faculty member in Theater Studies, I regularly teach Brecht's plays in both introductory and upper-level courses for undergraduate theater majors. This essay explores the strategies I have used for discussing Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) in a play analysis course for first-year students, including the use of film and video, comparative study of Brecht in the context of modern drama, and proposals for Brechtian adaptations of realist plays. Ultimately Brecht's work serves as a lens for understanding multiple movements in twentieth-century theater, while providing students with tools for analyzing play texts from the perspectives of critic, dramaturg, actor, director, and designer.

Learning Objectives

Many theater programs offer an introductory play analysis course for majors. Such courses are typically distinct from literary courses in the analysis of drama in that they position the dramatic text as the impetus for theatrical performance. Methods for theatrical play analysis often begin with literary study of a play's structure, ultimately leading students to think about practical aspects of the script in production. While production history is also likely to be part of the study of dramatic texts, the most significant goal of many play analysis courses in US theater programs is to develop the student's creative capacity for understanding the artistic possibilities of a play script. In our department, this course is called Theatrical Play Analysis and focuses on how directors, designers, dramaturgs, actors, and other theater artists make choices for real and imagined productions of plays. This emphasis on practical considerations for production is emphasized in the catalogue description: “Play study in relation to theatrical production.” An online version of the course is offered as an elective for non-majors and is structured primarily to develop students’ critical capacities for analyzing production choices. Developing these critical capacities is also a goal of the face-to-face version of the course offered for majors, but the course for majors insists further on developing students’ ability to use these critical frameworks to make creative decisions about play scripts.

As part of a group of three courses intended to be taken by first-year theater majors at Michigan State University, Theatrical Play Analysis (THR 110) invites students to participate as citizens in departmental undergraduate programs. Our department is organized in three areas: Acting, Design, and Theater Studies.