Brecht/Epic Theatre Research

Brecht/Epic Theatre Research

About Bertolt Brecht

·         Born in 1898 and died in 1956

·         Brecht was a German playwright, poet, director and theatre practitioner.

·         In his late 20’s,Brecht became a life- long committed Marxist

(Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that analyses class relations and societal conflict).

·         Brecht created epic theatre.

EPIC THEATRE

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” –Brecht.

Brecht wanted to create theatre where his audience had the ability to think critically and judge what was going on on-stage. He believed that the world of naturalistic theatre, where the audience lose themselves in the lives of the characters, meant that the audience could no longer think as they were emotionally invested in the play. To keep his audience emotionally distant, so that they could make rational judgements about any social comments or issues Brecht brought up in his plays, he created EPIC THEATRE. He used a range of theatrical devices to remind his audience that they were watching theatre (not real life). Brecht called this process of distancing the audience from emotional involvement verfremdungseffekt or “alienation”.

Examples of “alienation” include…

Ø  Songs used as commentary on action

Ø  The use of captions/placards

Ø  Narrators

Ø  An episodic format

Ø   Masks

Ø   Gestus

Ø  Juxtapositioning

Ø   Props/set

Ø  Lighting

Key elements of Brechtian Theatre

Ø  Breaking the fourth wall

o   Actors directly address the audience.

Ø  Gestus

o   Presenting an emotion through gesture

Ø  Didacticism

o   Teaching of a moral lesson

Ø  Narration and song

o   Adds commentary on/or narrates the story.

Ø  Acting techniques

o   Multi-rolling characters

o   Exaggerated/ repetitive actions

Ø  Alienation technique

o   Audience is left to question characters

o   Use of lighting/ sound is simple and exposed.

Brecht’s plays:

o   Mother Courage and Her Children.

o   The Good Person of Szechuan.

o   The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

o   The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Useful links:

Introduction to Brechtian theatre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-828KqtTkA

The Caucasian Chalk Circle Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M14jcmTQGwk

Frantic Assembly Workshop

Frantic Assembly

“Start with movement and write a story from there”.

“Always move forward not backwards”.

What we did in the workshop…

Lifts

·         Leg lift – Stand hip to hip with feet in a parallel second position. Lean into each other’s hips, trying to create a vertical line between your bodies. When ready, lift the two feet in the middle and balance.

 

·         Side lift- Again stand side to side with feet in a parallel second position. The person who is lifting holds the others waste and the person being lifted applies pressure with their hand on the lifters shoulder (the one that is furthest away from them). The lifter lifts sideways and upwards. Once mastered they can then start putting the person that they lifted down in a different place that they picked them up from.

 

 

·         Clamp lift- The person being lifted bends their arm and places it behind the shoulder of the lifter. They then apply pressure so that they can support themselves. The lifter then bends their knees, keeping a straight back, and lifts the person whilst holding their waist. Again you can start to move the person a couple of steps and place them down somewhere else once you have mastered the lift.

 

 

Partner routine

We had to touch our partner’s body, using the head and torso only, five times each and then squeeze the part that we touched. Then using the same movements, we then took it in turns so that she would touch, then I would touch etc. We then started to rehearse the routine, taking out the squeeze to make the sequence more fluid, but still lingering long enough to keep the significance of the movement. We then added a push and a pull in the middle of the routine to create a more interesting transition between the movements. Once we had rehearsed this we then included a side lift and clamp lift for more transitions between the movements. We then rehearsed and perform this sequence of movements in front of the class and watched other pairs. Then, as a class, we commented on each other’s pieces sharing if we thought we had seen any stories/themes/moods emerging from their movements. This is when we could experiment with speed, dynamics, focus/eyeline,  and adding other people and props (e.g chairs or a full cup of water) to see if it changed the qualities of the movement or the stories that we had originally thought of.

Summary…

1)      Touch, squeeze, move

2)      Make movements  fluid, take out squeeze

3)      Add push and pull

4)      Add X2 lifts

5)      Rehearse

6)      Perform

7)      EXPERIEMENT!!!

 

 

Group lifts

Front lift

Back lift

 

 

Wall walking

 

Rhythm game

·         8 jumps turn 8

·         Repeat but  add: clap and 4

·         Repeat but add: reach up and 6

·         Repeat but add: right leg forward back on 1,2

What have I gained from this workshop?

From this workshop I learnt that you don’t always have to have a stimulus when you start devising. You can create movement and work with that: seeing where it takes you and what stories emerge from this. I think this is a really interesting way to start devising as different relationships and dynamics may emerge that you may not have been thought of or come to life if the initial idea hadn’t started with movement.