German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, through his clash of ideology with the opposing theories of Realism and Naturalism, developed the concepts of "alienation" and "historification" and through these, successfully made an enormous impact on the world of theatre which continues to this very day. Brecht sought a type of theatre in which the audience could concentrate on a play's themes or didactic statements rather than becoming emotionally engaged with its characters. Thus, he developed the revolutionary Epic Theatre using a series of techniques to draw the audience's attention away from the emotion and feeling of the play and direct it towards the philosophy or moral lesson in the performance. Brecht's fascination was with a social activist theatre and his belief was that the only way to achieve this social action was to eliminate all emotion from the stage.

Alienation is the more critical of the two theories. To alienate...