With reference to Bertolt Brecht and John Osborne, discuss ways in which political viewpoints have been communicated to a theatre audience within the last century.

The term 'political theatre' has been accepted as defining a left-wing theatre, critical of the capitalist system and expressing in its work the need for radical change. However, most theatre is political in a broad sense, as a playwright usually has a certain ideology that he wants to convey to the audience. In this essay, I will discuss the rise of political theatre, and will concentrate on the two playwrights Bertolt Brecht and John Osborne. …

…om the great theatres of the past, including the Greeks, the Elizabethans, and the Commedia dell'-Arte. These playwrights wrote for a popular theatre of their own time and many of their themes are still relevant today. Jonson, for instance, exposed greed and corruption in both Volpone and The Alchemist. However, playwrights of this century have devised new and innovative ways of communicating their ideology to the audience, and have broken many boundaries along the way.