"The spectator of the Epic theatre says: "I should never have thought so. This is most surprising, hardly credible. This will have to stop. This human being's suffering moves me because there would be have been a way out for him. This is a great are; nothing here seems inevitable. I am laughing about those who weep on stage, weeping about those who laugh."".
Bertolt Brecht .
Bertolt Brecht, the entrepreneur of Epic theatre, changed the way conventional theatre was performed. He did not consent to "realism" or "naturalism", dismissing them as a "middle-class" art form. From this, Brecht devised his dramatic theory of didactism and developed it further through the use of historification and alienation. These became the fundamentals for many of his plays. These techniques are used to distance the audience from the characters and situations, and encourage them to think objectively about the play's content; he wanted reactions like "This human being's suffering moves me because there would have been a way out." He shocked audiences who believed that there should be a happy ending in every play, and strongly contradicted Stanislavski's teachings. Brecht, a German citizen first came to rebel against "traditional" theatre in the 1920's and began writing plays utilizing his techniques while residing in both America and Nazi Germany, hence a strong communist background seen in "The Caucasian Chalk Circle". .
The conventions of Brechtian theatre are assisted by minor stage and direction sequences not normally used in "typical" theatre. Brecht's main aim was to distance the audience, so aids were used to "keep the audience in reality". "This is a great art, nothing here seems inevitable." He wanted a play to be an academic experience rather than an entertainment event, making the audience reflect on the historical lessons to be learnt rather than the moral or social implications which may occur in other plays.