The Street Scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miUiSHY1cJc
(focus on 2:00-2:54)
"theatre will stop pretending not to be theatre"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmA0suwmpO8
(2:23-3:30)
“use of choruses”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuGeaOgQM3Q
(:00-:40)
"the direct adressing of the audience by its actors"

Epic theatre is defined by its “clear description and reporting and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary” (Brecht, 121). The epic theatre should be “natural” and “primitive” but at the same time “may appear richer, more intricate and complex in every particular”. In other words, theatre can be as totally complex as desired by the actors, so long as it retains the “main elements of the street-corner demonstration.” Without these elements theatre could not “any longer be termed epic theatre.”
The claim is made that this concept exhibits a “novelty, unfamiliarity and direct challenge to the critical faculties.”
Brecht says that “the street demostrator’s performance is essentially repetitive” which brings us to question whether “the factor of the repetition of the same thing will perhaps not be acknowledged by everyone as a source of the sense of the uncanny" (Freud, The Uncanny).