The technique of interruption pervades all levels of the stage work of the
Germanmodernisttheatre practitionerBertolt Brecht—the
dramatic,
theatrical and
performative. At its most elemental, it is a formal treatment of material that imposes a "freeze", a "framing", or a change of direction of some kind; something that is in progress (an action, a gesture, a song, a tone) is halted in some way.[1]
The technique of interruption produces an effect on the dramatic level akin to the 'pair of scissors' that Brecht imagines cutting a
drama into pieces, "which remain fully capable of life";[2] the metaphor of the cut is a pertinent one, as the technique bears striking similarities to the principles of
montage being developed in the
Soviet Union contemporaneously with Brecht's "
epic theatre" (by the
film-makersEisenstein,
Vertov,
Pudovkin, and
Kuleshov).[3]
Notes
^Leach (1994, 130–135) and Benjamin (1983, 3–5, 11–13, 18–19, 21, 23–25).
^"The epic writer
Döblin provided an excellent criterion when he said that with an epic work, as opposed to a dramatic, one can as it were take a pair of scissors and cut it into individual pieces, which remain fully capable of life" (Brecht 1964, 70).
Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen.
ISBN0-413-38800-X. USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang.
ISBN0-8090-3100-0.
Leach, Robert. 1994. "Mother Courage and Her Children". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 128–138).
Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN0-521-41446-6.