It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Theater should inspire the desire to change reality and educate audiences about liberation, not just show solutions.
- In plain terms
- Theater must teach audiences to want change and understand liberation, not just show how to be free.
- What can you take from it?
- Art should inspire the desire for change, not just show solutions.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How can art inspire real change?
- What should audiences take from theater?
Another view
It assumes art alone can teach complex political desires.
More from Bertolt Brecht
I see with sympathy The swollen veins on his brow, showing How exhausting it is to be evil.
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