Cultural Values and the Purposes of the Theatre: Spectators, Brecht and Benjamin

Bertolr Brecht, arguably the most important theorist in the twentieth century of the social purposes of the theatre, developed his ideas in a period -from the 1920s to the early 1950s -that had already been converted well and truly to the cinema, but had not yet invented television. Thus Br~cht's concept of "epic" theatre, which he distinguishes from "dramatic" or "bourgeois" theatre, draws on the world of fllms so as to define more sharply those features of stage work that are the most attuned to modern times.