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Show me What Democracy Looks Like: Brechtian Dramaturgy and the Modern Protest Theater

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Abstract

Abstract

Show me What Democracy Looks Like: Brechtian Dramaturgy and the Modern Protest Theater

by Victoria Gardiner, MA

This thesis explores the disjunction between the impact of UC Santa Cruz’s 2017 production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui on the production’s cast and on its audience. Specifically, this thesis examines the impact of the decision to conclude the production not with the final lines of Brecht’s text, but to add a theatrically staged protest. This protest stepped outside the play’s use of parable and directly engaged with the discourses of the 2016 presidential election.

While the cast of Arturo Ui reported an experience which was both artistically fulfilling and theatrically empowering, our audiences responded with resistance to elements of the production's message. While we did produce a work which celebrated the ability of the students to engage in political resistance, by adding the staged protest we positioned ourselves as ideologues from the perspective of our audience. As we positioned ourselves as a source of ideological authority right after completing a text about resisting sources of ideological authority we were, of course, resisted.

In this thesis, I analyse the differing perspectives of the actors and the audience through the lens of Augusto Boal’s “Theater of the Oppressed.” Specifically, I use Boal’s theories of a dialectic aesthetic space to talk about the practice of instructive theater as protest theater. Additionally, I discuss the viability of ultimately didactic theater models in what must necessarily be a dialectic space.

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