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"All those who have grown out of going to school have to do their learning virtually in secret, for anyone who admits that he still has something to learn devalues himself as a man whose knowledge is inadequate," Bertolt Brecht once wrote. Brecht himself was a big champion of theater as a forum for instruction. To him instruction meant not telling people what to think -- although as a Marxist woolyhead he definitely had his own values to promote -- but challenging audiences to figure out how to think. His fantasy was that critical thinking -- that is, imagining how things could be different than they are now -- acquired through theatergoing could spur critical thinking on political and social issues. He believed critical thinking could best be fostered by putting the incidents of a play through a process of alienation, "the alienation that is necessary to all understanding. When something seems 'the most obvious thing in the world' it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up." Critical thinking means being alive and alert at the theater rather than dozing through a pleasant entertainment.
At a typical play, according to Brecht, most people say to themselves: "Yes, I have felt like that too -- Just like me -- It's only natural -- It'll never change -- The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are inescapable -- That's great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world -- I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh." He wanted spectators at his theater to say: "I'd never have thought it -- That's not the way -- That's extraordinary, hardly believable -- It's got to stop -- The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary -- That's great art: nothing obvious in it -- I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh."
-- Don Shewey, reviewing David Hare's Racing Demon
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