Art in the age of crisis and resistance -Bertolt Brecht’s Stage for social truth

- Aive

“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”

– Bertolt Brecht

In moments of civil disobedience, economic failure, and cultural warfare, art is often more than art. Art becomes a battlefield, a surface, and at times, a weapon. In the 20th century, when Europe was engulfed in war, fascism and social inequality, I think of Bertolt Brecht as a radical figure who revolutionized theatre as resistance and as truth. For Brecht, the stage is not an escape from reality, but a location for revealing, attacking, and critiquing it. This article examines the ways Brecht used theatre as a means of revealing the social truths of his time, both from the context of material history and the contemporaneous cultural references.

A stage born in crisis

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) came to maturity in a Germany agonized by the First World War and disillusioned about the prospects of capitalism and democracy in the Weimar Republic. As fascism became ascendant in the 1930s, Brecht's Marxist instincts hardened. For him, the rise of Hitler, the consolidation of Nazi power, and the complicity of the bourgeoisie were not anomalous events but derivative effects of systemic injustice.

Brecht felt that traditional theatre predicated on illusion, emotional manipulation and individual heroism had numbed audiences rather than awakening them during crises. In contrast, Brecht emphatically addressed crises with certainty and resistance. He sought to have audiences think instead of feel and question instead of consume.

To do this, Brecht created what he called "Epic Theatre", a form designed to counter a passive viewer experience and encourage critical distancing. Fundamental to this was the Verfremdungseffekt, generally translated to the "a lienation" or "distancing effect." Instead of inducing sympathy for characters, Brecht shattered the illusion: actors sat in the audience, stagecraft was deliberately exposed, and narratives were frequently interrupted—through song, placard or commentary. 

These weren't just stylistic innovations: these techniques were radical. They turned away from manipulating emotion as in Aristotelian theatre, in favor of rational engagement. Brecht purposefully asked the audience to think about the conditions under which characters acted, rather than simply become absorbed by the drama. 

In this way, theatre became a location for the revelation of social truths—the class struggle, the experiences and costs of war, the contradictions of capitalism.

Staging Truth in a Broken World

Many plays by Brecht are set in historical contexts or distant lands, but they deal with the crisis of his day.

The Threepenny Opera (1928)

This musical satire is intentionally set in a criminal underworld that mirrors capitalist society in which legitimate business and organized crime collide. It asks the famous question: A Whatever is the robbing of a bank to the founding of a bank?—and critiques the moral invalidity of capitalist system.

Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)

Written in response to the rise of fascism and the Second World War, this play examines the futility of war by telling the story of Mother Courage, a canteen-wagon owner who profits and cares for her children in war—because, in the end, she loses them all to war. The play is not cathartic, nor redemptive. Instead, it exposes the systemic brutality of war, and the complicity of those that live in it.

Cultural and Political Resistance Through Art

Brecht's work is inherently political. Brecht was forced to flee Nazi Germany and lived for a time in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the U.S. where he was subject to investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the Red Scare. His own existence became an act of resistance that paralleled the stories in his plays.

Brecht's notions have had cultural implications far beyond Germany. In Latin America, for example, Augusto Boal, in "Theatre of the Oppressed", took inspiration from Brecht's methods to allow communities struggling with their social conditions to act out and find ways to gain power in their struggles. In South Asia, many playwrights were able to adapt Brecht's techniques to create plays that directly criticized the remnants of colonialism and feudalism. Likewise, in current protests on the streets of Hong Kong, Chile, or Palestine, Brecht's inherited spirit of performative resistance persists in the form of politically engaged art.

Art in Crisis

Brecht's monumental view of art feels achingly germane to our own time—one defined by climate catastrophe, nutritional and economic inequity, authoritarian revival, and mass dispossession. In this age of algorithmic consumption and flickering attention spans, the concept of art as a critical space of truth, friction and thought feels radical once again.

Brecht's testament to the sincerity of art is evident in the various movements using theatrics designed to critique and animate social movements across the globe such as Extinction Rebellion and their attempts to theatricalize a crisis by using protest theatre to dramatize the climate crisis. Works like Anna Deavere Smith's documentary theatre, or Ai Weiwei's installations, while perhaps less confronting than Brecht's, suggest Brecht's charge to artists to intervene and create art that answers to power and those with power. Even instances of online activism in actions that were staged, the theatricality has the ability to reveal some of the contradictions that act within structures of control.

Brecht reminds us that crises produce clarity and resistance is both necessary and possible but only in so far as we are awake to the truths of our times.

Conclusion: A Stage That Still Speaks

Bertolt Brecht didn't provide answers. He provided questions. He didn't resolve conflict; he made it clear. The stage became, in Brecht's use, a laboratory for truth, an exploration of ideology, and an audition for revolution.

As crises worsen and new forms of resistance emerge, Brecht's legacy continues to challenge artists and audiences: What truths do we need to reveal? What illusions do we need to shatter? And how do we use the stage to see the world, not as it is, but as it could be changed?

       Image: Three penny opera

       Source: google