Refunctioning (german: Umfunktionierung) is a core strategy of the

aesthetic Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

developed by the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

theatre practitioner A theatre practitioner is someone who creates theatrical performances and/or produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, dramatist, actor, designer or a combination of these tr ...

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

. "Brecht wanted his theatre to intervene in the process of shaping society," Robert Leach explains, so in his work:

heduality of form and content was replaced (to over-schematise briefly) by a triad of ''content'' (better described in Brecht's case by the formalist term "material"), ''form'' (again the formalist term "technique" is more useful here) and ''function''. In Brecht's dramatic form, these three constantly clash but never properly coalesce to compose a rounded whole.Leach (1994, 130).

References

Sources

* Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. ''Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic''. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen. . USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang. . * Brecht, Bertolt. 1965. '' The Messingkauf Dialogues''. Trans. John Willett. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1985. . * Leach, Robert. 1994. "''Mother Courage and Her Children''. In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 128–138). * Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. ''The Cambridge Companion to Brecht''. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * Tian, Min. 2012. ''Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. {{Brecht theory Bertolt Brecht theories and techniques