Dalkey, Fredric

The distancing effect, also translated as alienation effect (German: Verfremdungseffekt or V-Effekt), is a concept in performing arts credited to German playwright Bertolt Brecht. 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. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious". These remarks find their precedent in an essay largely devoted to the theory of Brecht's epic theater, "The Author as Producer," written by Walter Benjamin in 1934. This way of formulating the technique would have been familiar to Brecht from his conversations with Benjamin before he met the Russian playwrights Shklovsky or Tretyakov (to whom he later attributed the coinage), insofar as Benjamin wrote the essay with the intention of showing it to Brecht when they roomed together at Brecht's cabin in Denmark during their mutual exile in the summer of 1934. In all likelihood Brecht conceals Benjamin's participation...