"What do we achieve by this? We achieve the fact that the spectator need no longer see the human beings presented on the stage as being unchangeable, unadaptable, and handed over helpless to fate.

What he sees is that this human being is thus and so because conditions are thus and so. And conditions are thus and so because human beings are thus and so. This human being, however, is capable of being presented not only in this way, as he is, but in other ways also, as he might be; conditions, too, are capable of being presented in other ways than as they are.

As a result of this, the spectator has a new attitude in the theatre. He has the same attitude towards the images of the human world opposite him on the stage which he, as a human being, has had towards nature during this century.

He is also welcomed into the theatre as the great reformer, one who is capable of coming to grips with the natural and social processes, and one who no longer merely accepts the world passively but who masters it. The theatre no longer seeks to intoxicate him, supply him with illusions, make him forget the world, to reconcile him with his fate.

The theatre now spreads the world in front of him to take hold of and use for his own good."

(Bertolt Brecht, On Experimental Theatre, 1939)