When you look at the story of The Good Women of Setzuan, written by Bertolt Brecht, it is not easy to understand whether it is a tragedy or a comedy. Although the play contains many comedic elements, the overall plot is rather sad and most of the characters end up in worse conditions than at the beginning of the play; although the elements of comedy that Brecht chooses to include are an essential part of the play. Each piece of comedy has a specific function to broaden understanding of the play's message. Through the alienation effect “Brecht wishes(s) to make his productions truculently didactic” (Silcox). Brecht believes that when audiences watched a play they were too complacent and did not absorb the true meaning of the play. This is why he created the genre of epic theater. Brecht attempts to alienate the audience through the use of stage directions, the element of surprise and through the use of song. This generally works, although there are cases where this technique fails. Reading Brecht's stage directions is almost as much fun as reading the play itself. They are specific and often funny. This, however, is an element of the play that will only be apparent to the person reading the script, as opposed to the usual multimedia elements used to alienate the audience. Not always, but often, the reader of a Brecht play is someone who has read other plays and is familiar with typical stage directions. These typical captions usually consist of "swivels in the chair" (Wilder 69) and "returning to his bench" (Shaffer 68), while as in The Good Woman of Setzuan they can be paragraph long and often sarcastic. For example, Brecht gives directions to Yang Sung sa...... in the middle of the paper... ay. Only rarely do they turn against him and cause the audience to be so detached from the show that they no longer want to be there. When this is not the case, comedy is a very useful tool for alienating an audience and ultimately conveying an important message. Works CitedArts Online. Ministry of Education, nd Web. 26 February 2014.Brecht, Bertolt. The good woman of Setzuan. Trans. Eric Bently. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999. Print "Brecht and Artaud." Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT and Web. 26 February 2014.Moore, Andrew. "Studying Bertolt Brecht." Universal Teacher: n. page Print.Shaffer, Peter. Equus. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print. Silcox, Heidi. “What's wrong with alienation?” Johns Hopkins University Press: n. page PrintWilder, Thorton. The matchmaker. Toronto: Samuel French, 1985. Print.