This is a short introductory video to Brechtian style acting. As this practitioner is new to me, I thought it wise to research a bit more about him and for me watching a video is the best way to learn. I found it very interesting to hear actual quotes said by Brecht and I now feel like I have a better understanding of his way of acting.

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was one of the most influential playwrights and theatre practitioner of his time and possible of all time. he re-defined and re-shaped theatre entirely. He was born on 10th February 1898 and died at the age of 58 on 14th August 1956, yet even in that short amount of time, he created some of the most inspiring and influential acting techniques within this centenary. He redefined theatre and it's use, creating a style of theatre that was designed to shock and test the audience so they would see the piece for its political values and not for its entertainment morals.

He is most famous for his thoughts on theatre and how acting should be. Brecht got tired of the audience feeling empathy for the characters, so created a brand new type of theatre known as Epic Theatre. He is also known for his two most famous and practiced techniques, The Verfremdungseffekt (also known as the Alienation effect or strange making) and Gestures. The V effect is Brecht's most notable techniques that defined his career and the entire style of theatre. Brecht was a very political man and always wanted to create a type of theatre that could be seen and used as a political devise so the audience would start to question their society. The V effect is the method Brecht created in order to achieve this type of new theatre he had created. Fundamentally, the Alienation effect is anything within the piece which either shows or reminds the audience that they are watching a constructed piece of theatre and that the characters and plot lines are symbolic and aren't real life. The actors do this by constantly breaking the fourth wall so they will talk and engage with the audience. On some occasions, the actors will come out of their characters and explain the construction of the piece to the audience. This done by directly talking to the audience, changing costume on stage and even removing or adding set midway through a scene. These are all done in order to show the audience that what they are watching as been constructed and made for a specific political purpose.

Brecht's idea of Gestures are slightly more complex. On the surface it is simply an English translation to: a gesture. This could be anything from moving a foot of an impatient by-stander, to the shiver of shoulders of the lost and cold young boy. Basically it is simply the physicality of the character. However, if you look deeper, its real use if to show the physical attitudes of members in society, almost like a parody or a microcosm. These are used to highlight the attitudes of society as a whole, so the audience can understand its meaning. Brecht often made his pieces of theatre accessible to the working class, so often the themes would be relatable to them.

Brecht's idea of Epic Theatre was something that became more prominent within his early and later works. He wanted his theatre to be non-linear and episodic to make the Alienation effect more of a feature. His work became Shakespearean in essence; switching from one characters perspective to the next, often with no clear linear narrative or links between the scenes. he also gave music its own voice, often giving a scene nothing except music, which again is applying the v effect. Brecht liked to use music as an effect for some scenes. He would often play a piece of music against the content of the scene which again amplifies the Alienation Effect.

http://www.slideshare.net/SalvatoreGiovanniSorce/bertolt-brecht-epic-theatre-14203501
Here is a link to a website which posts slide shows on Brecht's work and compares it to other practitioners.     

Week One

Today was our first day of our political theatre term. Jack told us that the term would centre around the title Do we get more Right Wing in hard times? and we would be focusing on the Brechtian style of acting (named after the theatre practitioner and playwright, Bertolt Brecht). He believed that theatre should be used as a means to express political ideologies and not for immediate entertainment. He wanted the audience to be pushed out of their comfort zones and to avoid them getting 'sore bottoms'. Brecht teaches his actors to forget given circumstances and objectives and to instead use the basic foundations of a character as their purpose for the play. He tells his actors to only demonstrate the character and to not bother about becoming the character. His most famous teaching, and the technique we will be including in our performance, was the verfrendungseffekt effect or the 'v' effect. This loosely translates to the estranged effect. Some people may also call it distancing or strange making, as the actors will often break character and talk to the audience, reminding them that they are watching a play, not real life. Brecht also believed that the actor should always 'act as if there is no fourth wall. She/he expresses his awareness of being watched. the audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event that is really taking place.' 

The Verfrendungseffekt Effect:

Arguably, this is the most famous technique Brecht enforced. Loosely translated from German, the verfrendungseffekt effect means the estranged effect. There are many other names for this techniques, the most common being; strange making, the v effect or alienation which connects to Communism (Bertolt was a Communist). This technique is used to remind the audience and the actors that they are watching/performing a play, and therefore shouldn't have an emotional connection to the piece. The performance can inspire them to change their lives and it can make them angry, but there should be no emotive response to the characters. This technique helps break the fourth wall, so there is no illusion, the audience except they are seeing a performance. The v effect is used to highlight a particular moment in a play when you want the audience to be aware of something. For example, if you wanted the audience to be shocked or to question something, you would apply the alienation effect and remind the audience they are watching a performance and that this isn't real life. An example of strange making is when the actors 'break' character to talk to the audience. This theatrical event again reminds the audience that the actors are playing a character, they are only demonstrating.

 

To start the term of with this very new style of acting, we first had to get used to the way Brechtian styled acting worked. To do this, we started todays lesson with a political story we had either heard on the news or researched. We would then combine the political story with the v effect t help us understand what it was and its use. In my group, with Lucy and Hana, we discussed  a story that Hana had found in the Daily Mail. It was about an Islamic wedding being bombed and thirty innocent people being killed. After this short discussion, we then did our first exercise which helped us explore the v effect; the moody body exercise. Here we would walk around the space as Jack called out a number of body parts and an emotion. We would have to quickly move into a group of that number and apply the emotion Jack had said, using the body part. For example, if Jack had called '3 happy elbows!' we would have to get into groups of three and express to the audience that the elbows were happy. This exercise is designed to help the actor demonstrate to the audience the fact that they are not real people, only actors acting. I think this exercise was effective in it's aim, as it was simple to understand but yet humorous enough for the actors to not take it seriously and try to make it look realistic. It helped me understand the mind-frame of a Brechtian play, and what is included in one. If the actors are too focused on making the play look realistic and trying to convince the audience with their acting, then the play becomes too saturated and the audience will become too involved with the character s and plot lines, therefore not paying attention to the political message of the play. After this exercise, we then added another layer on top. We got into pairs, I was with Lizzie, and started to combine our chosen political story with the moody body exercise to create a short improvisation about the feelings evoked by the article. Lizzie and I focused on our feet, and as the emotions had to be opposing, she was calm and I was angry. We moved around the space arguing with our feet while applying the set emotions. I noticed that it became almost dance-like. I enjoyed this exercise because, to me, it was more effective in helping me understand the Brechtian style of performing. By making us apply a political story to the basis of our improvisation, it helped me to understand the political undertones of most of Brecht's pieces. It also helped us see how to convey them in our own pieces. It also helped us to understand our role as an actor in a Brechtian styled piece; to make the audience aware that the characters we are demonstrating aren't real. We do this by using exaggerated and occasionally, ridiculous actions.

 

Our next exercise was more a political discussion, verging on a debate, than an exercise. We talked about the left and right wings and what their policies were. The Left Wingers are scholiasts, or communists. They believe in general equality and that we should all pay to the state, protecting the weaker in our society. The Right Wingers are more traditional, commonly called capitalists. They believe you should keep the money you earn and not to share it. The far-right wingers have been called fascist. We talked about how both far left and far right somehow end up meeting in a circle. For example, Hitler was an extreme right-winger and Stalin was an extreme left-winger. In the end they both killed a lot of people and ruined people's lives, so both wings have seemed to have merged together over the years. We then symbolised our opinions on a line in the room. By the window was extreme right and by the radiators was extreme left and in the middle was in between left and right. We then had to justify our opinions. This soon turned into a lively debate. I found this very interesting to hear other people's political views. I wasn't very sure where I stood, so I stayed in the middle, but closer to the left wing side. I have a basic knowledge of politics so I felt like I couldn't really justify my opinion as people wanted facts that I couldn't really provide. I'm not a very argumentative or bold person, so I found this debate hard in that sense but very interesting and enjoyable to listen to. We then applied the v effect to our debate. Brecht taught gestures which are exaggerated movements. We started of doing some basic gestures, that gradually got bigger. We the added a word on top of them. For example, we had three gestures; hands thrown out to the side, hands and arms stretched up to the sky and hands on hips. The first gesture we added the word 'DUNNO' , the second 'YES' and the last 'NO'. We then applied these physicality's to political statements and we had to answer then with the gestures and the word. I found this very useful in deciding what my political views were, as you had to make a fast decision therefore it was your immediate impulse. Here, we were directly applying the v effect.

 

We then looked at character creation, Brecht style. Brecht's idea of character creation is very basic. He believed that acting is 'acting' in quotation marks. The actor should impersonate the character, but should always narrate the actions, movements and gestures of that character. All you need to do is effect the audience, find the characters movements and don't connect with their reality, only look at their existence. To understand this more, we did an exercise based on Brecht's idea of character creation. We took a physical stance and then found the character, from the outside in. Some of the characters we created were the following:

• Nose outwards and bum out= an old man
• Legs out and chin up= an old women
• Hands on our back and stomach forward= a pregnant women
• Hands on stomach = rich capitalist
• 'Special Brew' in hand= drunk working class
• Champagne in hand= drunk posh person

We discovered that these characters were block characters and almost linked in with the Melodramatic stock characters we studied last term. They serve a purpose and the audience is to question their words and lines. This makes them wake up and discuss what is going on, so they become an alert audience.

After this exercise, we were told the theme of our performance would be Race and Immigration. This isn't an easy topic and it's something that politically isn't talked about much. Because of this it is perfect for theatre, as through theatre we can talk about touching topics. The theatre is a safe environment. To start of with we used a play form Theatre Uncut 2013, a collection of plays performed at the Young Vic every year, showcasing the newest and greatest plays of the year. The play is called 'Pick One' and is written by Neil Labute. The play centres around three middle-aged white men who want to get rid of every black person in America as they believe it would solve all their problems. It is written in a very comical and breezy manner which makes the controversial subject matter almost forgettable. Although there are some points where the audience see the serious side of this matter. It is a very Brechtian play as it makes the audience think and question why they react the way they do. The characters are very Brechtian, having no personal names, just being Fat guy, Thin guy and Medium guy. This makes the audience focus on the subject matter rather than the characters. We also had the idea to have Michael, Khai and Ben as the three main characters, as it would add a layer of humour much more prominent then if we'd had three white guys playing the leads. It is also a Brechtian technique, as again we are reminding the audience this is a performance and these are actors acting.

Jack also asked us to find one song and one news article to bring to next weeks lesson. Here is what I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax9SOup0054
I thought this song could be played over the 'Pick One' scene. This is 'Ode to Joy' by Beethoven and I thought it offer a nice contrast to the brutal scene. The idea of having contrasting music and content is very Brechtian, so I typed in classical music on youtube and this came up. I started to listen to the song and I really liked how, near the end, the tempo picked up. If you listen to the whole song, you can see the foreshadowing of the dramatic ending, and I thought this would reflect the piece well, as near the end of the play the characters decide to go eat Caribbean food.  I also thought the music could be played subtly in the background and not disrupt the performance as there are no lyrics to clash with the lines of the actors, so hopefully the audience won't get confused in a bad way.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/14/david-cameron-blunkett-immigration-riots
I found this article online about immigration from Roma and how some politicians think they will cause riots. I think this is an interesting article because it shows how even politicians get fired up over immigration and the vast differing opinions on the matter.

 

Week Two

We started to work on our individual pieces today. But firstly, we discussed our previous research topics and our song choices which led into a discussion  about Brecht's idea of Epic Theatre and its use. The idea of using music throughout a piece is very Brechtian as it is used to create a conflict between the music chose and the content of the scene. 

 I am in a group with Danny, Ellesse, Eleanor and Maya. Each group had to take a story from the news and use that to inspire our piece. We choice the article about the EDL leader, Tommy Robinson, spending a year with a Muslim called Mo Ansar http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01kgnrs andhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24729175This stimulated our piece.

http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/ --- this is a direct link to the EDL's website.

This is an image of Tommy and Mo during the filming of the documentary.

We decided to base it on Hitler and all the different groups he discriminated against. We chose Hitler because the topic for this term is Do we get more Right Wing in hard times? And we felt this historical figure fitted that topic perfectly. Brecht also was not a supporter of right winged extremists and not a supporter of Hitler. In 1945 his series of short plays and poems (Fear and Loathing under the Third Reich, 1945) showed his hatred of Nazi Germany.  We started brain storming and thought that it would be really impactful if we had Hitler going on blind dates with a gay person, a black person, a disabled person and Anne Frank as these represent the groups he discriminated against. In the spirit of our inspiration, we thought at the end Hitler would chose to go on a date with Anne Frank, or go to her house. As Brecht believed the actor should demonstrate the character and to not become it, we didn’t give the minor characters names. To apply the alienation effect, I will play the black person, Ellesse will play Anne Frank, Eleanor will play the disabled person and Maya will represent the homosexual character.

Our initial idea was to have Hitler in a coffee shop, going on blind dates with the people listed above. To apply more Brechtian techniques to our piece, we thought we'd have one person in our group sit in the audience and a=start shouting racial and offensive abuse throughout our scene, but then they would get up, put on their costume and become one of the characters. Brecht used interruptions and awkward silences to alienate his audience and make them feel unsettled, again reminding them they are seeing a play and the stage is just a stage.

This short video shows, through film, what the alienation effect looks like. After last week I still wasn't too sure what this technique would look like when being performed, so this video really helped me. The prolonged opening title combined with the music made me feel un-comfortable and nervous, without realising I started looking down the page in hope of an explanation. The rest of the video is this man walking down the corridor and that made me feel slightly awkward because I was watching him but didn't know anything about him and I didn't have an emotional connection with this displayed character. I think this is how our audience will feel when we apply some of our strange making effects to our piece.

 

 

 

These are pictures of the rough script we came up with in today's lesson. The fact that I play a Black person is applying the alienation effect which will remind the audience they are watching actors act and also, I hope, add a bit of a comedic element. 

This is a photograph of Tommy Robinson, who was the group's cofounder. He left the EDL in October this year, claiming he had concerns over the "dangers of far-right extremism" of this party.