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As Eyre and Wright describe him, "He was a brilliant man of the theatre, highly receptive to the avant-garde of his day, quick to improve it and somewhat too precipitate to turn it into theory. He was a communist: not a left-winger, not a liberal, nor a humanitarian. From his twenties onwards, he thought and worked in terms of Marxist dialectic and he really wasn't kidding. " (Bicknell 2012) .
Over the course of his career, Brecht developed his so-called epic theatre, in which narrative, montage, self-contained scenes, and rational argument were used to create a shock of realization in the spectator. To create a distancing effect, Brecht promoted acting and staging that would merely demonstrate what was being portrayed, which gave the audience a more objective perspective on the action. In Brecht's plays, say Eyre and Wright, "lucidity reigns: nothing is worse than a jumble of confused impressions." (Bicknell 2012).
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In terms of construction, Brecht explains that epic drama does not lead to an inevitable climax, and eyes on ˜the course', not ˜the finish' unlike dramatic theatre. For example - the downfall of ˜Miss Julie'. Instead Brecht wanted a ˜montage', in which each scene has a self-contained life, as he wants us the viewer, to experience the story properly. Brecht implies there is not an ending but a continuing story, for human relations do not just ˜end' " opinions and judgements are formed and revised. He reinforces that he wanted the spectator ˜to observe the mechanism of a theatre event like the mechanism of a car'. Brecht wanted his drama/theatre to ˜historicize' the events portrayed "to invite spectators to judge a social system from another social system's point of view. (Leech 2004: 117) .
The legacy of Bertolt Brecht found its way into subsequent examples of political theatre. The Reader's Companion To American History explains: "The cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s led to a new demand in some quarters that theater be a vanguard of reform.