Saint Joan of the Stockyards

Abstract

In 1929 Brecht wrote in an essay ‘On Form and Subject Matter’ that formal innovation was necessary if the drama was once again to perform the traditional function of major drama (das groβe Drama), which was to confront the public with the central issues of the age. The traditional form of drama, he argued, could no longer encompass the complexities of the modern world where the life of the individual was profoundly affected by events and processes over which he had no direct, personal control, where indeed the individual had become a factor of much less historical significance than anonymous institutions and social classes. How was drama to deal, for example, with an event like the discovery of petroleum?