We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
Interpretation
Theatre should reflect and inspire change within society by expressing and questioning human relationships.
Bertolt Brecht argues for a type of theatre that goes beyond mere entertainment or emotional release. Instead, it should engage the audience in critical thought and reflection on societal issues, ultimately inspiring change by transforming the very context in which the play is set.
In practice
During a lecture on the impact of art, one might quote Brecht to highlight the potential of theatre to effect social change.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.
In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.
I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.
At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us
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