The Contrast Between Dramatic and Epic Theatre

The Contrast between Dramatic and Epic Theatre

               Through the evolution of the theatre we witness the different types of theatre classifications that emerge from the stages. The melodrama as a dramatic form was initiated in France in the late 18-th and the early 19-th century as a part of the Romantic literary period. The melodrama provided a linear plot with exciting events that provoked intensive and heightened emotions in the crowds. It was used as a display of emotions, a moral tale that drew a clear line between good and evil. Emotions were expressed through art in the form of deliverance of spoken lines accompanied by different effects such as appropriate music to demonstrate the nature of the situation. Everything displayed in the stages of dramatic theatre was there to heighten the process and produce a trance-like state. It was very easy for the spectator to become personally implicated with the action and identify with the characters and their emotions. It served as a form of escapism from daily lives in which the spectators lose themselves in the storyline and become over-involved emotionally. The characters are always seen as either good or bad, and nothing in between. Camille by alexander Dumas is a great example of a historically significant classic melodrama in which we have patterns of male-female relating, ideas about the family values, class conflicts and bourgeois ideology. Dumas’s play shows the moral dilemma imposed on the fallen heroine in a patriarchal world. A world in which the women were undervalued and seen as sexual objects, or assuming the traditional role of mothers in the family, possessing Victorian-like virtues and purity. Melodramas like Camille at that period were used as a way for people to escape the depressing social and political realities of the time. People escaped their daily troubles through theatre and enjoyed this form of distraction and entertainment. Bertolt Brecht saw the flaws of the dramatic theatre and aimed to uncover the true agenda of the bourgeois theatre, which is dulling the senses and being blind to the true miseries of life and therefore no positive change occurred in the world. He initiated the German theatre movement that gave birth to the epic or Brechtian theatre. Brecht’s goal was to break the illusion that the melodrama provided and this was done by demonstrating that the theatre is an artificial experience meant to tell a story, but also shed light on complex contemporary issues, while keeping in mind that the theatre is an entire process conducted in order to have the final product. He applied the Marxist alienation effect in order to distance the public from the emotional involvement with the play and develop inner criticism, an objective and rational assessment of the play. He urged spectators to observe the entire process of conducting a play, not just the final result. Loosely connected short scenes that were not given in chronological order, showing the backstage action, interrupting the plot, unsettling music were all characteristics of the alienation effect. Brecht wanted to break away from the sensational, trance-like effect of the dramatic spectacle and inspire the spectator to transform into a critical observer. Brecht’s play Mother Courage and her children, fully embodies the alienation effect and is a perfect representation of the epic theatre. It is considered to be one of the greatest 20-th century anti-war plays. It deals with the misfortunes of life live in conditions of war. By analyzing a melodrama and an epic drama we can draw a parallel between them and form a better distinction of the different types of theatre that they represent and their characteristics.