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Teaching Empathy with Brecht As Prompter

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Teaching Empathy with Brecht As Prompter American International Journal of Social Science Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2018 doi:10.30845/aijss.v7n2p3 Teaching Empathy with Brecht as Prompter Ellen Foyn Bruun Associate Professor Department of Art and Media Studies Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU Trondheim Norway Abstract Empathy is a contested concept, understood in different ways. It is pertinent to explore and teach empathy today. Our ability as humans to make informed choices guided from heart and head in balance, needs to be addressed along with profound ethical issues. Re-newer of 20th century theatre Bertolt Brecht is known for his scepticism of empathy. He encouraged audiences and actors to be rational rather than to empathise. In this article, I propose however that the theatre of Brecht, in arts education, offers useful insight into empathy as a competence engaging feeling and intellect likewise. I argue that it is possible to discover fresh aspects of empathy and acquire empathetic skills through staging Brecht’s plays. The teaching practice is demonstrated with case examples from the BA Program in Drama and Theatre at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Keywords: Empathy, theatre, Bertolt Brecht, arts education, empathetic connection, entangled empathy, relational empathy, empathic skills. 1. Introduction The study of empathy seems to have currently caught the attention of a wide range of research communities and disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, neurosciences and new technologies. It has also become a pertinent topic for studies that bridge and challenge conventional disciplines in a time in which we as humans are facing new challenges as a species that were difficult to imagine only twenty years ago. Neuroscientist Anthony Damasio‟s benchmark book Descartes’s Mistake is an example of this trans-disciplinary legacy that challenges assumptions about biological predisposition and social construction, and has flourished since the 1990s taking a paradigmatic turn to affect and emotions (see for example Barad 2007; Clough 2008; van der Kolk 2014). Empathy, as summed up by philosopher Lori Gruen, is a many-faceted term. She suggests that, „[b]eing able to understand what another being feels, sees, and thinks, and to understand what they might need or desire, requires a fairly complex set of cognitive skills and emotional attunement‟ (Gruen 2015, 48). General understanding of empathy rests on our ability to understand another and the clear sense that the other is not me. Gruen states that empathy is linked to the ability of humans and nonhumans to „differentiate between self and other‟ (Gruen 2015, 48). She furthermore explains that „the empathizer does not mirror or project emotions, but is engaged in a reflective act of imagination that puts her into the object‟s situation and/or frame of mind, and allows her to take the perspective of the other‟ (Gruen 2015, 48). The idea of taking the perspective of the other distils empathy into a phenomenal embodied experience. In arts education, such as theatre, empathy therefore plays an important part as theoretical concept and as phenomena of exploration. Bertolt Brecht encouraged the audience to take the role of analytical scientist rather than that of empathic witness. His theatre „appeals less to feelings than to the spectators‟ reason‟ (Unwin 2016, 55). I still argue in this article that the practical theatre work prompted by Brecht, offers noteworthy insight into empathy and that it proposes pragmatic devices to stimulate empathetic awareness. First, I present the educational context and the over-arching didactical objective. I then give a short historical overview of the notion of empathy and narrow down onto Brecht‟s thinking in theory and practice. I demonstrate and corroborate my argument with the bachelor students‟ practical explorations of Brecht‟s plays. The BA in Drama and Theatre is offered at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. It is a practical-theoretic program that prepares graduates to bring drama and theatre skills into a range of professions, such as education, culture and social contexts. 20 ISSN 2325-4149 (Print), 2325-4165 (Online) ©Center for Promoting Ideas, USA www.aijssnet.com 2. Educational context and aims Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was an important theatre pioneer of the 20th century who is widely acknowledged into the post-dramatic era of the 21st century. Most of his plays were written in the period between the First and Second World War. They reflect the political instability and consequences of human exploitation and violence of the times. Brecht was, in addition to being a playwright, also a dramaturge, stage director, poet, thinker and writer of theatre theory. The relationship between his theoretical and practical work is complex and the correlation between the two often ambiguous. The Brecht scholar and translator John Willett states that it is necessary to study Brecht‟s artistic practice rather than his theoretical writings, to understand his theories fully (Willett 1964, 168). This is also my experience. I therefore encourage students to study Brecht‟s theories while working practically with his plays. This happens in full production, in rehearsals and in exploratory workshops. It seemed appropriate to revisit Brecht‟s plays in 2016, one year after the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis. Brecht was also a refugee, his family fleeing from Nazi Germany from 1933 until the Second World War was well over. He wrote many of his main plays in exile in the Nordic countries, the Soviet Union and the USA. After the war, he returned to the German Democratic Republic and East Berlin to form and co-run the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, Helene Weigel, until his death in 1956. The company achieved extensive international recognition as an innovative ensemble theatre and became a model for socially engaged theatre practice all over the world. Brecht‟s influence has also been important in the Arab speaking countries. This became clear to me when I met Syrian theatre scholar and refugee, Rafik Koushha, in Trondheim. Through our talks, we discovered a shared interest. I decided therefore that the BA theatre production for spring 2016 would be dedicated to Brecht, a playwright I had studied and worked extensively with in the past, including as a student of dramaturgy in East Berlin and later in Norway and Denmark. The collaboration with Koushha and other newly arrived refugees in the area was supported by the university policy. We established the Refugee project (Bruun, Haagensen, Søhol 2017) which was run in parallel with the students‟ production period from April to June. During the rehearsal period, the students contributed to the outreach audience work. This focused on newly arrived refugees in the region who were invited to pre-performance events and then as audience to the final performances. The four performances were each based on one of Brecht‟s plays, each lasting 35-40 minutes and with around eight students in each group. The International Rights Agency Nordiska that represents Brecht in Scandinavia gave permission to adapt Brecht‟s work for this purpose. The plays assigned were: Senora Carrar’s Rifles. (Brecht 1937). One Act play. Mother Courage and her Children. (Brecht 1939). Scene 1 and 3. The good Person of Setzuan. (Brecht 1942). Scene 3-5. The Caucasian Chalk Circle. (Brecht 1945). Scene 12-29. Stephen Unwin reminds us that „Brecht sets the modern theatre artist a tough challenge‟ (Unwin 2016, 135). He further argues that Brecht provides us with unique inspiration once we have found the connection between his plays and our own present reality (Unwin 2016, 135). The intention of the outreach initiatives was to provide a bridge for the students between Brecht‟s plays and their own context, impacted by the refugee crisis. The idea of a bridge and an outward focus resonates with empathy. It resonates in particular with the notion of empathetic connection, David Krasner stating that the „connecting process enhances rather than diminishes our reflection (Krasner 2006, 262). Krasner finds support in Martha C. Nussbaum who contends that empathy „involves a participatory enactment of the sufferer, but is always combined with the awareness that one is not oneself suffering‟ (Krasner 2006, 263). The intention of the didactical framing of the students‟ theatre production course and the Refugee project was to promote a thought-provoking and appealing learning environment for all parties involved, students, lecturers, partners and audience. The Norwegian reality in 2016 of having received around 30.000 Syrian refugees had an important impact of the city of Trondheim and its region. It was an opportunity to engage with agency with this social context and start building relationships and inviting new audience groups into the theatre and the university. 3. Mapping empathy The study of Einfühlung in aesthetic philosophy gained ground during the 19th century Romantic era. The Romantics defined empathy as our ability as humans to project ourselves into the soul of another person or into nature (McConachie 2016, 429). The notion of identifying and merging with the „object of contemplation‟ is therefore an aspect of empathy. 21 American International Journal of Social Science Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2018 doi:10.30845/aijss.v7n2p3 Krasner refers to the power of projecting one‟s personality into another being or object of art in order to understand it fully (Krasner 2009, 258). Psychologist Edward Titchener first coined empathy as an English term in 1909 (Krasner 2009, 265). Empathy can however be traced directly to the Greek Empatheia and Aristotle‟s concept of Pathos, the complexity and many different understandings of empathy therefore not being surprising. Bruce McConachie writes that „the English meanings of “empathy” have never been stable‟ (McConachie 2016, 429). It can, even so, be said that empathy involves projecting oneself on-to or in-to something else and, through this, acquiring an understanding of the „something else‟.
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