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In the theatre, dramatists and directors challenged the growing entrenchment of realism, rebelling against an illusion of reality that hypnotizes the audience and makes it passive. Instead, they wanted to unsettle the comfortable assumptions of the audience, but each for very different reasons, some ideological and political, some primarily aesthetic. Dramatists in these decades stretched audiences’ expectations and imaginations as never before, and introduced ever more daring subject matter and characterization. One of the most important of these is Bertolt Brecht, to whom a large part of the discussion here is devoted, as he is such a towering figure in modern drama. But others are important too, beginning with Luigi Pirandello.