The Baby Elephant

Synopsis

A bustling marketplace in India, where a group of performers prepare to entertain the crowd with a morality tale.

Brecht’s The Baby Elephant is a play-within-a-play that exemplifies his concept of epic theatre. The main narrative follows a group of actors who perform a morality tale about a merchant and an elephant calf to avoid paying rent. As they present their story, they frequently break character to argue about the performance and its meaning, blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

The piece serves as a critique of capitalism and exploitation, using the allegorical tale of the elephant calf to illustrate how the powerful manipulate the vulnerable for personal gain. Through its metatheatrical structure and use of the Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), Brecht challenges the audience to critically engage with the performance rather than passively consuming it. The play’s self-reflexive nature and frequent interruptions force viewers to confront the artificiality of theatre and, by extension, the constructed nature of social and economic systems.