Distancing effect

Brecht first used the term in his essay "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" published in 1936, in which he described it as performing "in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play.

[1] The term Verfremdungseffekt is rooted in the Russian Formalist notion of the device of making strange (приём остранения priyom ostraneniya), which literary critic Viktor Shklovsky claims is the essence of all art.

It was in any case not long after returning in the spring of 1935 from Moscow, where he saw a command performance of Beijing Opera techniques by Mei Lanfang, that Brecht first used the German term in print[5] to label an approach to theater that discouraged involving the audience in an illusory narrative world and in the emotions of the characters.

By disclosing and making obvious the manipulative contrivances and "fictive" qualities of the medium, the actors attempt to alienate the viewer from any passive acceptance and enjoyment of the play as mere "entertainment".

This effect of making the familiar strange serves a didactic function insofar as it aims to teach the viewer not to take the style and content for granted, since (proponents argue) the theatrical medium itself is highly constructed and contingent upon many cultural and economic conditions.

It may be noted that Brecht's use of distancing effects in order to prevent audience members from what he characterizes as bathing themselves in empathetic emotions and to draw them into an attitude of critical judgment may lead to reactions other than intellectual coolness.

A director may take a script that has not been written to alienate and introduce certain techniques, such as playing dialogue forward to remind the audience that there is no fourth wall, or guiding the cast to act "in quotation marks".

Through songs, narratives, dances, music, and commentaries that are embedded within Tamasha, the audience is said to be unconsciously performing a social role and achieving the distancing effects advocated by Brecht.

While the goal for Brecht's alienation effect in the western theatre is to make the audience always aware that they are watching a play, and not being "taken out of themselves" and thus not being distracted from the main meaning of the story, Thai Likay aims to do otherwise.