Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Use of Song in Brechtian Pieces

Post Inspired by Theatre 460B and The Good Person of Szechwan

Brecht not only wrote, directed and produced plays, but created poetry as well. He wrote songs and poems for almost all of his productions, mostly in collaboration with Kurt Weill. If you are a musical theatre lover you know that music is used when words are not simply enough to express emotion or feeling. Brecht used the songs within his plays as a way of de-familiarizing the audience, when words alone would not do so. Songs spring up out of the blue as a way of making audience members pay attention to particularly important subject matter or perhaps even subject matter that is so commonplace, that the only way to think of it in a new way is to do so through song.

"For example, in Mother Courage and Her Children; the songs' content may be serious and forewarning of hardships, while the music is happy and light. It shows a lighter side to a deeply serious situation. The dichotomy and ambiguity of it ultimately shows the audience a new way to understand the subject matter and makes them question the social realities that are being presented."
The Drama Review 43.4 (1999) 77-85. Copyright © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The goal of using these songs and poems is to shed light upon the norms of social construct within theatre, which will in turn lead to audience to then see the same social framework in the world around them. In Brecht's opinion, this framework was not immovable and permanent but could instead be built by individual people, similar to the world within a play is created. Once a person can see the ever changing nature of society as a whole, they are able to see the ways in which they can change that world to make it better.

Sources:
The Drama Review 43.4 (1999) 77-85. Copyright © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
DJ Hopkins