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SASKIA FISCHER
ecstatic and excessive. Ihey even sometimes possess a certain reflexivity and
openness. The diversity of ritual practice and its ongoing importance for cul¬
tural representation, even today, calls for a more differentiated approach. The
still widespread and common belief that rituals have lost their validity in a
secularized and rationalized modernity turns out to be an oversimplification
after closer examination — especially for the arts. In fact, ritual and rituality
seem to be a general artistic option in the process of secularization. This even
applies to artworks that emphatically present themselves as “modern” ® — such
as the theater of Bertolt Brecht, that he deliberately called “epic theater” of
the scientific age.
By using Bertolt Brecht’s controversial play Die Mafsnahme (The Measures
Taken) as an example, I would like to discuss this ambivalence over rituals, and
also show why they are “risky” cultural practices that were successfully taken
up by a totalitarian ideology such as the National Socialists and utilized in
its propaganda, but, on the other hand, led to tremendous artistic innovation.
Brecht’s didactic plays [Lehrstiicke], all written in the early 1930s, establish
an aesthetic that is strongly derived from the use of ritual forms and highly
influenced his concept of “epic theater.” Die Mafsnahme is both ritual criticism
and a reflected play with rituals which integrate, at the same time, the dramatic
tradition of Noh theater and the intensive use of new media. Brecht’s adapta¬
tion of rituals, the references to Noh theater, Christian genres and form show
how he developed his idea of epic theater by also incorporating a transcultural
perspective. This concept of theater is characterized by a dynamic relationship
between dramatic texts and traditions as well as between different culture¬
specific theater forms, ritual performances, and the opportunities offered by
the aforementioned new media of that time.° By doing so, Brecht’s adaptation
5 Saskia Fischer - Birgit Mayer (eds.): Kunst-Rituale - Ritual-Kunst. Zur Ritualität von Thea¬
ter, Literatur und Musik in der Moderne, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2019.
° Transcultural theater, as it is understood here, is more than a “cultural collage” of different
cultural traditions. The intertwining of different theatrical genres and cultural practices,
which fundamentally determine Brecht’s play Die Mafsnahme, leads to a new perspective
on one’s own culture and to a recognition of the self in a foreign culture. The experience
of alienation is the central motif of Brecht’s work. The aim of the so-called “V-effect” (i.e.
“Verfremdungseffekt” [alienation effect]) is to examine the common and well known from
a foreign perspective. This refers to a general understanding of being in the world. Brecht is
always concerned with making the customs and habits of his own culture appear in a foreign
light. He abandons the idea of closed cultures that can be separated from one another. The
symbolic context of a single culture is lost, according to Brecht. The transcultural theater,
however, is a promising opportunity to cope with this loss. It enables the connection between
one’s own culture and an allegedly completely different one as well as the emergence of new
innovative aesthetics through the combination of very different cultural influences. Con¬
densed in existential key experiences, ritual gestures, and practices that can be understood
across cultures, the ritualistic aesthetic of his play expresses in reduced form the experience
of the self and the other in theater. Therefore the revival of ritual in modern theater can
be understood as a search for universal and transcultural forms of expression that take up
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