Refunctioning
Encyclopedia
Refunctioning is a core strategy of the aesthetic
developed by the German
modernist
theatre practitioner
Bertolt Brecht
.
"Brecht wanted his theatre to intervene in the process of shaping society," Robert Leach explains, so in his work:
Marxist aesthetics
Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art, beauty, etc...
developed by the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
theatre practitioner
Theatre practitioner
Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical performances and who produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor, or—characteristically—often a combination of these...
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
.
"Brecht wanted his theatre to intervene in the process of shaping society," Robert Leach explains, so in his work:
- "[the] duality of form and content was replaced (to over-schematise briefly) by a triad of content (better described in Brecht's case by the formalist term 'material'), form (again the formalist term 'technique' is more useful here) and function. In Brecht's dramatic form, these three constantly clash but never properly coalesce to compose a rounded whole."
Sources
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 041338800X. USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0809031000.
- ---. 1965. The Messingkauf DialoguesMessingkauf DialoguesThe Messingkauf Dialogues is an incomplete theoretical work by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. John Willett translates 'Der Messingkauf' as "Buying Brass"....
. Trans. John Willett. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0413388905. - 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. ISBN 0521414466.