How did Brecht distance the audience from the play?

Question:i know about placards and songs, but what else did he do?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i know about placards and songs, but what else did he do?

This is also known as the alienation effect. Brecht used this specifically in Epic Theatre and the idea behind it was that the audience needed to feel distanced from the characters in order to view the play consciously and critically. It was making strange what usually might appear “ normal”. He wanted the people viewing the plays to not be passively enjoying simple entertainment. Epic theatre was meant to be didactic. He wanted to jolt the audience out of just sitting back and enjoying a show.

He achieved this by using captions or illustrations on a screen that explained things; the set would have lights, ropes, etc exposed to the audience instead of hidden to constantly remind the audience that they are in a theatre; characters would step out of character and break the fourth wall to sing songs or lecture the audience; and stages would be flooded with harsh white light, no matter where the action was occurring.

Brecht believed that epic theatre should appeal not to the spectator's feelings but to his reason. He wanted the plays to evoke social change.

This style of production became known as ‘Brechtian’.

Brecht made you constantly aware that it is theatre. As opposed to an Arthur Miller play which is extreme realism.

In a lot of Brecht's work, he gave the characters archetypal names and had them act in nonrealistic/idealized ways. The staging often called for some horrific acts which even though offstage or symbolically portrayed, leaves audiences feeling a bit distant in order to protect themselves from the sense of intense tragedy.

He would keep reminding the audience that it was theatre and someone did this with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman as well. It isn't the playwright, it is the director-producer who creates the style of the show.
Brecht wanted the audience to be intently concerned about the intellectual messages of the play rather than getting sucked in to the emotions of it. Generally in most of the world, his plays flopped because theatre is an art form, he tried to make it a teaching platform, and art forms rely on emotional response.