Distancing Effect / Verfremdungseffekt

CORE DEFINITION

The distancing effect (English: Distancing effect; German: Verfremdungseffekt), also known as the alienation effect or estrangement, is a theatrical performance theory proposed by the German theater theorist and playwright Bertolt Brecht. It refers to distancing the audience from the drama or film, which Brecht called epic theater (German: Episches Theater). Brecht believed that theater should serve politics; the audience's emotional projection onto the stage drama hinders their calm judgment. In playwriting, he often used foreign, ambiguous time-space settings and employed storytellers to narrate the story, achieving a distancing effect between the audience and the plot. The distancing effect requires that "the actor must not act as if there is a fourth wall besides the three walls around him... and the audience no longer has the illusion of being an invisible observer of a real event" (Willett 91). Speaking directly to the audience is one way to break the stage illusion and create a distancing effect. In performance, when the performer "observes himself," his purpose is "to make the audience feel strange or even surprised; he achieves this by examining himself and his work as if he were a stranger."