BERTOLT BRECHT AND THE TRANSNATIONAL THEATRE

Abstract

Transnationality and transculturality, which have been attracting increasing attention within the scientific community in recent decades, have become an integral part of modern literature. Decolonization and globalization, as well as the mobility and migration caused by them, have become triggers for the blurring of ethnic, national, and cultural boundaries. These processes have also found their embodiment in literature. The transnational turn observed in literature since the 1990s shows that the understanding of literary works within national frameworks no longer corresponds to modern reality, and nations, cultures, and identities are featured with convention, fragmentation, and hybridity. And although consideration of transnationality is mostly focused on lyric and epic works, its manifestations take place in drama and theatre as well. This article examines the influence of Bertolt Brecht on contemporary transnational and/or transcultural theatre. It is noted that the manifestation of transnational elements in the playwright's work occurs both at the level of his plays and performances. In particular, the effects of alienation used by B. Brecht to depict the strange, foreign and unusual in one's own self have a significant impact on the formation of transnational theatre. Another manifestation of the transnational is the playwright's departure from the idea of closed nations and cultures in favour of open, conditional and fluid ones. An important aspect is also the intertextual references of his plays, which are artistic interpretive models of famous works of the past and thus enable their existence through space and time. Focusing on the processes of alienation, B. Brecht's epic theatre shows the hybridity and fragmentation not only of cultures and nations, but also of identities, therefore encouraging readers and viewers to search for the strange in themselves. At the same time, topics and problems raised in his plays and performances are not limited to local or national contexts, but are transnational in their nature.