Brechtian Elements in Edward Bond's Red, Black and Ignorant and Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest

This thesis is primarily concerned with Edward Bond and Caryl Churchill’s attempts to implement Bertolt Brecht’s methods of Verfremdungseffekt with the same artistic intent of social change in their plays, Red, Black and Ignorant and Mad Forest. In order to provoke critical and objective thinking, and action for positive change, both of the playwrights make use of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt techniques of episodic structure, characterization, audio-visual aids, and open-endedness. These techniques let the playwrights present familiar situations, actions and attitudes as if they were unfamiliar so that they could be alienated and evaluated with a critical eye by the audience and the reader. In addition to studying the Brechtian elements in these two plays, this thesis argues that there is a point which drifts Bond’s Red, Black and Ignorant from Brechtian dramaturgy and Churchill’s Mad Forest; the point is that Red, Black and Ignorant includes non-Brechtian character design aspects and lack of Brechtian audio-visual aids.