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.