A review by charles_vivian
The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht

4.0

I believe that ‘Life of Galileo’ is extremely successful as a political play, because, at it’s core, it is inherently political. Brecht establishes a genre of theatre - epic theatre - that undermines the tradition of naturalism which allows for political themes to permeate the text seamlessly. One of the ways in which Brecht does this is through his belief that the audience should be distanced from the characters (i.e. if they are too emotionally invested in them they will be misled into believing that the characters can not change and are victims of their circumstance); in ‘Life of Galileo’, this is done, for example, by having subtitles at the beginning of each scene that spoil the plot so as to eliminate dramatic tension. By distancing the audience from the characters and narrative it allows them to watch the play from an objective perspective and thus respond to the political themes (of the purpose of science and the moral questions surround scientific discoveries as to whether or not one should share ideas if they will could be misused).