Bertolt Brecht's Theatrical Techniques' Connection with Critical Pedagogy and Their Usability in Learning Environments

This study examines Bertolt Brecht's theatrical techniques in terms of critical pedagogy and their potential application by critical educators to overcome neoliberalization, neoconservatization, and authoritarization in learning environments. Brecht creates his 'learning plays' in a peculiar form that can be called 'Brechtian dialectics'. Brecht aims to remove the distinction between audience and actors in learning plays and not to teach any doctrine, but to enable them to develop dialectical thinking. In these plays, Brecht deals with current issues, confronting thesis and antithesis, but purposely avoids reaching a final synthesis to maintain dialectical thinking process. Through epic-dialectical theatre, Brecht points out that the illusionist aspect of Aristotelian theatre makes audience passive, therefore he attempts to involve audience in the play with an effective and critical perspective. Brecht realizes this through defamiliarization technique and the effects of historicization and gestus. This study examines Brechtian dialectics as a way of developing dialectical thinking practice and asserts that the authoritarian relationship between teachers and students can be eliminated in a similar vein to the transformation of the relationship between audience and actors in learning plays. The study explores defamiliarization technique as a tool to move away from the existing hegemony, and historicization effect as a way of underlining that history is a process and can be changed by subjects. The study also presents the ways how the gestus effect can be used to create multicultural democratic schools and develop class consciousness. Additionally, the study points out the similarities between Brechtian theatrical techniques and Freireian pedagogical concepts.