Alienation and historicization. The phenomenal body in contemporary Brechtian plays

Bertolt Brecht is widely regarded as a theorist of epic theatre, primarily associated with the concept of alienation (Verfremdungseffekte). As demonstrated in the article, the concept of alienation in Brecht’s theoretical framework is subject to the basic requirement of historicity: to present actions and characters as related to a historically inherited or lived environment. Our analysis of Brecht’s fundamental position of historicization within the theatrical action reveals the potential of the actor’s phenomenal body to reveal these tasks. In this regard, the present study draws upon the concept of the phenomenal and semiotic body of the actor (Erika Fischer-Lichte) to demonstrate how the aesthetic differences in contemporary interpretations of Brecht can be attributed to divergent approaches to representing the historicity of the social environment, namely through the semiotic or the phenomenal body. In the case of performative readings of Brecht F.R. Ankersmith’s notion of Sublime Experience greatly helps to understand new categorisations of history on stage. For Ankersmit, the genuine experience of history is the experience of a traumatically lived radical rupture between the past and the present is a salient one. The final part of the text deals with the manner in which Butusov’s Drums in the Night creates an experience of the Eerie (which is a marker of authentic historical experience according to Ankersmit).

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