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.
If there is no dance, there is not music.
The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.
All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.
I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.
In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.
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