The Epic Theater

WHAT IS EPIC THEATER?

• Stage is generally bare.

• Any set pieces or props obviously such.

• Lights and light changes visible, so spectators could see how their moods were being manipulated by light

• Stage montage of slides, signs, music, and film to interrupt realistic continuity.

• Actors to “DEMONSTRATE” rather than “EMBODY” their characters.

• To “quote” their characters’ lines rather than submerge themselves in them.

• “Gest,” or “Gestus:” To portray the characters’ social constructed ness, rather than their psychological individuality.

• In Epic theatre narrative is preferred versus plot. Narrative “TELLS” and can comment on something. Plot “SHOWS” and sweeps us up in its march, without time for critical reflection.

• Epic theatre strives to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar (“alienation effects”).

• Epic theatre helps to condition the mind for critical thought, which helps to un-hook theatre from its complicity with the social status quo (dialectic rather than didactics), in order to HARNESS ITS ENERGY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.