Brecht- On the reading of plays

"The Threepenny Opera is concerned with bourgeois conceptions not only as content, by representing them, but also through the manner in which it does so.  It is a kind of report on life as any member of the audience would like to see it.  Since at the same time, however, he sees a good deal that he has no wish to see; since therefore he sees his wishes not merely fulfilled but also criticized (sees himself not as the subject but as the object), he is theoretically in a position to appoint a new function for the theatre.  But the theatre itself resists any alteration of that function, and so it seems desirable that the spectator should read plays whose aim is not merely to be performed in the theatre but to change it: out of mistrust of the theatre.  Today we see the theatre being given absolute priority over the actual plays."

- Bertolt Brecht 1927