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Leitman 1Haley LeitmanNovember 25, 2013Asian DanceProfessor Jia WuBrecht, Chinese Acting, Exoticism, and Mei Lanfang Bertolt Brecht was a German theatre practitioner who is most famous for his non-Aristotelian form of theatre, Epic Theatre. Epic Theatre sought to break conventional theatre structures of realism that he feltlimited spectators ability to think critically and reflectively about social issues. His form of theatre debunked Aristotle’sconcept of mimesis—an imitation of action—and katharsis—the purging of pity and fear—in order to separate audience members from feeling an empathetic connection to the central character or characters onstage. Brecht’s main concern about empathy—feeling with a character or feeling for (otherwise known as “sympathy”) a character—was that byidentifying with the character and sharing his or her feelings, the audience member was“locked into the perspective of the character”(Curran, Angela Brecht’s Criticisms of Aristotle’s Aesthetics of Tragedy173). As a result, the audience members lose thebigger picture perspective from which they could analyze and interpret the social themes and issues addressed in the play. In orderto eradicateempathyfrom his theatre, Brecht employed the concept of Verfremdungor the “Alienation Effect” to distance his performers and audience membersfrom the charactersby making the familiar everyday incidentsin which the characters lived in“appear strange”or unfamiliar onstage(Brecht, Bertolt “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”92).
Leitman 2Brecht first introduced his concept of the alienation effect or “A-effect” in his essay, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting.” This essay first appeared in the winter of 1936 in Life and Letters, translated by Eric White and was later published in 1949. In this essay, through a series of (inaccurate) observations of Traditional Chinese theatre, Brecht (wrongly) concludes that Chinese acting uses the concept of the alienationeffect. Because of his poorly educated background of Chinese theatre, Brechtincorrectly assumes that Chinese theatre artists used theatricaltechniques that incorporatedthe alienation effect. Brecht, who came from a Western theatre perspective, simply imposes Western concepts of theatre onto Chinese theatre, and assumesthat Chinese theatre uses the same structures and terminology as Western theatre, whichis not the case. Brecht usedChinese theatre for the basis of his argument on the alienation effectwithout the proper research and understanding of Chinese theatre itselfandas a result, Brecht exoticized Chinese theatre throughhis essay, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting” as a means tosupport his theatre technique, Epic Theatre. The term “exotic”implies the existence of “different” cultures. Labelinga culture “exotic” deemsthat certain culture, the people within that culture, and values, customs, beliefs that make up that culture as “different.” To determine a culture as “different” a comparison between cultures needs to take place, that is comparing one’s own(familiar)culture to the(different) exotic culture; “there needs to be two humanities facing one another in which one partly appears alien to the other—in other words, exotic”(Ménil, Reneé “Concerning Colonial Exoticism” 177).Exoticism is connected to power, privilege, and the dominant culture and