When Brecht wrote The Good Person of Szechuan (1939–42), he had been influenced by the colour and brashness of Chinese theatre, whose archetypal heroes and villains underpinned his concept of the Alienation Effect. Brecht, ever the political theorist, wasn’t interested in characters with whom the audience empathised, or of employing Stanislavski-based acting techniques that strove to reach emotional truths. His Verfremdungseffekt was designed to shake audiences out of apathy and make them recognise capitalist society’s inherent corruption and amorality, so that they would take action both inside and outside the theatrical space. The play was first produced in 1943 and, though set in distant China for convenience (much less likely to lead to any censorship), skewers the West’s disregard for misery and poverty and its indifference towards the needs of the people.