A Study on Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan

Each play is produced with the use of a different method, and one of the methods which has a significant influence on drama is constructed by Bertolt Brecht. According to him, the best way to show his reaction against the system and stimulate the audience to take action against such system is epic theatre. His aim is to create a conscious society. For this aim, he uses epic theatre to create a distance between the play and the audience so that the audience can gain a critical insight. The reason is that such distance makes the audience use their reasons not feelings, which creates the feeling of rebel against the system including politics, economy (Benjamin, 1969). This helps the audience question the system and give the strength to change it. In order to activate the audience, he uses certain techniques of alienation based on distance between the audience and the play in epic theatre (Akçeşme, 2009). The Good Woman of Setzuan by Brecht is a significant play to analyse such techniques. With the techniques, he shows the injustice against the lower class and class distinction in the play. In other words, he leads the audience to question the capitalist society. Such techniques as giving a distant setting, the communication between the actor and the audience and the use of songs and verses can be observed throughout the play in order to break the illusion. Thus, this paper intends to analyse the techniques of epic theatre in the play The Good Woman of Setzuan to understand how Brecht break the automatized perceptions of the audience and show them a different world with the aim of rebel against the capitalist system.