On TV, a COVID sign outside a London court :
PLEASE OBSERVE SOCIAL DISTANCING
which triggers memories of studying Brecht in our matriculation year, of being very interested in his deconstructive meta-strategy verfremdung (*have never forgotten that term) variously translated as ESTRANGEMENT, ALIENATION, DISILLUSION, DEFAMILIARISATION, DISTANCING EFFECT.
MAKING THE FAMILAR STRANGE sits best here. David Barnett writes :
The Difficulty of Translating the Term
Translating the term has caused all manner of problems in English, primarily because it was once almost universally known as ‘alienation’. This is not a useful translation because of the negative connotations the word has in English (if you alienate an audience, for example, spectators tend to leave the theatre). I prefer to consider Verfremdung as a single word that describes a process: making the familiar strange. The editors of the latest edition of Brecht on Theatre have decided to keep the word in its original German to acknowledge the lack of an easy translation into English.
Translating the term has caused all manner of problems in English, primarily because it was once almost universally known as ‘alienation’. This is not a useful translation because of the negative connotations the word has in English (if you alienate an audience, for example, spectators tend to leave the theatre). I prefer to consider Verfremdung as a single word that describes a process: making the familiar strange. The editors of the latest edition of Brecht on Theatre have decided to keep the word in its original German to acknowledge the lack of an easy translation into English.
‘Making the familiar strange’ is an example of a dialectical process : the audience encounters something it recognizes; that thing is then presented as strange (that is, the ‘thing’ is now in contradiction with itself); and the audience then has to reach a new understanding in order to move beyond the contradiction.
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
The Caucasian Chalk Circle :
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA