🎙️ New Episode | THE ARTISTS Podcast
"Brecht and Dialectical Thinking"
with Anthony Squiers, author of Bertolt Brecht’s Adaptations and Anti-Capitalist Aesthetics Today

In an age dominated by doomscrolling and passive viewing, what does it mean to create art that wakes us up instead of lulling us into consumption? In this rich and urgent conversation, scholar Anthony Squiers joins us to re-examine Bertolt Brecht’s radical vision of theatre, adaptation, and aesthetics—and why it matters now more than ever.

Drawing from his book Bertolt Brecht’s Adaptations and Anti-Capitalist Aesthetics Today, Anthony explores how Brecht’s theatrical techniques—rooted in disruption, distance, and dialectics—are tools for reshaping not just art but consciousness.

We cover:

1. Brecht in the Age of Doomscrolling – How Epic Theatre holds up against passive digital aesthetics.

2. Brecht’s Techniques and Innovations – From Gestus to the Alienation Effect, and how they work today.

3. Filmmakers Who Echo Brecht – Cinema that resists identification.

4. Brecht vs. Stanislavski – Emotional immersion vs. critical distance.

5. Art That Effects Consciousness – Why Brecht wanted you to think, not feel.

6. Aristotelian vs. Brechtian Plot Structures – Neat catharsis or jagged provocation?

7. Sartre and Brecht – Political art as philosophical ground.

8. Adaptation as Intervention – Brecht’s irreverent, purpose-driven approach to classic texts.

9. Dialectical Thinking as Creative Tool – Ways to think in tension, contradiction, and complexity.

10. Epic Theatre in 2025 – What does radical performance look like now?

11. Instagram Reels & Passive Aesthetics – What does it mean to consume without questioning?

12. Gestus in Performance – The body as a site of political storytelling.

13. Shakespeare vs. Brecht – Poetic psychology vs. historical materialism.

💭 “The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.”
Let this episode be your first bite into Brecht’s theatrical revolution.