Erwin Piscator, coiner of the term "epic theater," was a big influence on Brecht, but also a big advocate of turning the theater into a multi-media realm that reflected historical realities. In Germany, we would stage productions whose text was altered based on what had happened that very day in the news. There's very little about him on the web, and I've only found one book about him back when I was trying to do some research, but I didn't try very hard. Anyway, here's a pretty good web page that runs down some of his basic ideas -- the better web pages are in German.
ACTING: development of epic theatre
"[T]he actors have a totally new attitude to the subject of the play they are acting in. The actor can no longer remain indifferent to his role, as he has done up till now, nor can he lose himself' in it, that is, give up all conscious will." (43)
Series of multi-media productions:
"Film projections, the colour organ, the interchange on stage between light and film light,' complete motorization of the stage--through these, and how many other, innovations modern creative science can supplant the ancient peep-show. And what would happen if it were to introduce a wholly new architecture, making the stage a play-machine, a wonder-world, an arena for battling ideas, perhaps even setting the audience on a turntable, dynamically bursting the static illusion of the present stage? I do not say that new techniques will be the saviour of the theatre. I merely say that they can express new dramatic contents by liberating the creative forces of playwrights, directors and actors."(472)
Designed to present complex social and economic forces shaping contemporary society.
"It has probably become clear from what has already been stated that technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery." (244)
Technology necessary for two reasons:
[1] needed to represent contemporary reality (masses)
[2] needed to achieve function of connecting to audience and forcing them to take sides.
While I was study to Erwin Piscator, I found this paper. Thanks from Türkiye! (Turkey)
Posted by: Filiz BALCI KESKİN on December 15, 2003 04:51 PMLet's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
Posted by: Gartheride on January 18, 2004 11:44 PMEach Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.
Posted by: Ebotte on January 18, 2004 11:45 PM