The Dramatic Techniques of Thornton Wilder and Bertolt Brecht: A Study in Comparison

THE DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES OF THORNTON WILDER AND BERTOLT BRECHT: A STUDY IN COMPARISON THORNTON WILDER'S DRAMA HAS LONG BEEN immensely popular in Germany .1 His position as perhaps the most well-known American dramatist has gone unchallenged until the appearance of Albee. What is it, one is led to ask, about Wilder that appeals to the German imagination? We might attempt to explain his appeal by discovering elements in his drama akin to those of Germany's own dramatists. And what greater innovator in 20th Century German drama than Bertolt Brecht should we look to for a beginning? In terms of the intellectual demands both dramatists place on their audiences, and certain dramatic techniques to which German audiences have become accustomed during the time spanning both Wilder's and Brecht's careers, there is good reason to try Brecht's clothing on Wilder for size. There is much evidence to argue Wilder's familiarity with German drama from an early age, especially the drama of Brecht. This study will mention some of the evidence without attempting to argue Brecht's influence. It will be enough here to point out links, common techniques and the like, which might lead to a better understanding of both dramatists' works. Wilder has known German since an early age. As a child he was sent to a German school in Hong Kong. Further, there is abundant evidence that he extended his knowledge of German and German literature with maturity: some of the lines in his early plays are in German; his first published collection of drama, The Angel that Troubled the Waters and Other Plays, published in 1928, is dedicated to Max Reinhardt; he visited Berlin in 1928, at the time when Brecht's plays were receiving considerable notice; much later, it might be added, Brecht and Wilder attempted collaboration on an adaptation into English of Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan, a project which subsequently never materialized. But the main evidence is in the plays themselves. Wilder's first play of the "new period," The Long Christmas Dinner (1931), employs dramatic techniques having much in common with Brecht's already highly developed art. These 1 For instance, Wilder's most recent play, The Alcestiad, exists only in the German edition. 112 1972 DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES OF WILDER AND BRECHT 113 techniques have .to do with theatricalism, characterization, staging and dramatic structure. First, theatricalism. Theatricalism as it ,applies to Brecht and Wilder restores the theatre's reality as theater while destroying the illusion of reality.2 Instead of attempting to imitate reality it essays, more boldly than subtly, the perception of reality through symbol. The central idea, for instance, is suggested iteratively by a "succession of events."3 "Instead of sharing an experience:' Brecht wrote, "the spectator must come to grips with things."4 Brecht's and Wilder's theater, then, is theater which draws attention to itself as theater. Brecht's and Wilder's drama imposes itself upon its audience; the audience is forced to take a critical role.5 In this sense it is didactic. In didactic drama the dramatist has a tendency to speak in his own voice, rather than to dramatize his subject matter. Characterization is reduced to a minimum; it serves only to point up the underlying ideas embodied by the fable. "The myths, the parable, the fable," Wilder wrote, "are the fountain head of all fiction, and in them is seen most clearly the didactic, moralizing employment of a story."6 In order that the audience give their full attention to the lessons of the play it is important that their sympathies not be engaged. They must not, for instance, anticipate the dramatic climax rather than the underlying idea. Brecht and Wilder rebelled against the naturalistic theater on grounds that it deprived the audience of any participation other than strictly emotional. Theater, Brecht wrote, must avoid the "narcotic effects" of traditional naturalistic drama. We see entire rows of human beings being transported into a peculiar doped state, wholly passive.... Their tense, congealed gaze shows that these people are the helpless and involuntary victims of the unchecked lurchings of the emotions.7 Wilder, in his The Skin of Our Teeth parodies...