Writing in 1920s Germany, Brecht shattered then-basic notions of dramatic theatre, with his propagation of epic theatre. In terms of game fixing, his was a departure from the Isben model of the "well done" game; even in terms of acting he moved away from Stanislavski's style of realism. Interestingly, this maverick Marxist playwright was also highly didactic and authoritarian. Not only did he give very specific instructions to the actors on how and how not to act, but he also made the role and function of the audience very clear. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Driven by a Marxist perspective, he insisted that man and society could be analyzed intellectually. His dramatic demands were high; he wrote: "The urgent revolution of the theater must begin with a transformation of the stage: we ask not for an audience, but for a community, not for a stage, but for a pulpit." Theatre, therefore, was an activity destined to be part of a broader social revolution. But Brecht did not ascribe to the philosophy "art reflects life", he was well aware of the possibilities that art had as a bearer of ideology. "If art reflects life", wrote Brecht, "it does so with special mirrors". It was these "special mirrors" that Brecht sought to reverse, in his work, creating a revolutionary new type of epic theater. Karl Marx would call religion "the opium of the masses"; Brecht extended this thought to dramatic theater, calling it a "narcotic." He strove to remove those narcotic elements of dramatic theater through a highly complex system. First, of course, he rejected the paradigm of dramatic theatre; he insisted that his theater offered multifaceted social and political themes, with a clear rejection of conclusions. The solution to a play had to come from the world and not from the stage. The audience therefore had to be part of a larger social process which it would then in turn instigate. The cathartic Aristotelian emotions of pity and fear were useless to Brecht; he wanted the audience's rationality to be involved and not their emotional identification. The idea was that one should not share the experience, but study it. To this end, he worked on creating defamiliarizing effects: simple anti-illusory techniques to remind viewers that they were watching a representation of reality, and not reality itself. . One such technique was to suddenly flood the stage with harsh white light, or to sing a series of inane jingles at critical moments. A person might zip across the stage holding a sign. By eliminating the narrator, Brecht also eliminated the speaking voice that might otherwise have held the audience in bondage. The scenery was minimalist and obviously representative. In short, there was nothing to take away from the message. The actors had a special task in such a comedy. Instructions were given on how to hold on, the limbs must be loose and the neck muscles not tense, because the tension could "magically" attract the gazes of the audience. The speech must be direct, without cadence and in sing-song tones that could otherwise put the audience into a stupor. Brecht was influenced by German Expressionism in his insistence on dramas centered on themes or ideas, rather than dramas centered on plot. As a result, his works are never linear, ignoring the conventions of growth, progress, movement towards climax, or even development in the ordinary sense. In Mother Courage and Her Children, for example, the scenes are loosely held together and episodic to the point of.