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A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Bertolt Brecht

The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Art Epic Film History Purpose Song
What’s a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other.
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Joy Nightmare One Other
Things take indeed a wondrous turn When learned men do stoop to learn.
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Men Scholarship Turns
Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.
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Democracy Favors Freedom
Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can’t bear to see it.
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Bears Creating Earth
We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.
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Ground Knows Others Ourselves
I am a playwright. I show What I have seen. In the man markets I have seen how men are traded. That I show, I, the playwright.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Men Show Traded
With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.
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Majority Purpose Shoulders
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
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Cheesy Funny Gone Good Morning
Who built the seven gates of Thebes? In the books are listed the names of kings. Did the kings heave up the building blocks?
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Block Book Kings
If you fight you might lose, if you don’t you have already lost.
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Fighting Lost
What a miserable thing life is: you’re in clover; only the clover isn’t good enough.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Gratitude Life Sadness
I was called up in the war and sent to a hospital. I dressed wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, did blood transfusions. If the doctor ordered: “Brecht, amputate a leg!”, I would reply, “Certainly, Your Excellency!”, and cut off the leg. If I was told, “Perform a trepanning!”
BERTOLT BRECHT

Cutting Men Transfusion War
Would it not be simpler If the Government dissolved the people and elected another?
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Another Government People
General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.
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Defect Men Thinking
The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren’t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Defeat Sunset Victory

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

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A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

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