Researching Brecht
As we were finishing our last module, we were informed that in the next module which was Contemporary theatre included Brecht and so I decided to do some initial research before hand so that I might be able to understand the style slightly faster and also when we begin to actually work on the style hopefully I will be able to put my prior knowledge into the physical performance. I began my research by searching for a definition of contemporary theatre and I found a website called http://contemporaryperformance.ning.com/forum/topics/how-do-you-define-contemporary that defined it Contemporary Theatre as "hybrid performance works and artists that travels between the fields of Experimental theatre and dance, video art, visual art, music composition and performance art without adhering to one specific field's practice." I then moved on to researching Brecht's methods and techniques. One of the main points that there was a lot of information on was his use of "Verfremdungseffekt" which has no English translation but is known as the "Distancing method." I found a website (http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/alienation-effect/) that described the time period in which Brecht was writing which was between the 1920s and 1940s. They say that "the theatre of his time, like most Hollywood movies now, relied on emotional manipulation to bring about a suspension of disbelief for the audience, along with an emotional identification with the main character. Audience members were taken on an uncritical emotional roller coaster ride, crying when the main character cried, laughing when s/he laughed - identifying with him/her even when the character had nothing in common with them or their interests." This is where Brecht's distancing technique came from, as he wanted to replace this emotional manipulation with something that had a more political background to it. "Rather than investing in or "becoming" their characters, they might emotionally step away and demonstrate them with cool, witty and skilful self-critique." Having the actors on stage almost come out of role, it was allowing the audience to realise that they are indeed watching a performance and he wanted them to focus on "why" the events were happening rather than "what" those events are. The audience almost become morally aligned during his plays as their mindset changes to what they can do to help rather than what is going on in the situation.
Classwork
At the start of the lesson, we were given some background facts about Brecht before we started exploring the style so that we had some ideas of both the time he was alive in, perhaps allowing us to see the meanings behind his style, and also the times in which he was writing his plays, to see whether his writing corresponded with any main events going on at the time. Using Brecht in this module means that we are pushing quite far back in the Contemporary theatre genre as he could also be known as a Historical. During the 1940s was when Brecht's writing was really starting to become known which means that he was formulating his ideas and opinions in the 1930s. We know from previous research that Brecht was German and so the ideas that he must have based his plays off of must have happened in Germany throughout his life.
We did a short task of making 3 freeze frames of what we thought was going on in Germany throughout in the 30s, 40s, and finally, the 50s to help us understand some of the events that were going on in Brecht's time period. We decided that we would make a freeze frame on the Nazis rise to power for the 30s. For the 40s, we decided on the war as World War II started in 1939 and lasted while 1945. And for the 50s, we did about the divide between East Germany and West Germany. We found out that Brecht was a Liberal, or more so a Socialist, and he was living in Germany around the late 30s and through the 40s. Like we had picked out in our freeze frames, Hitler was gaining support for his fascist regime during the 30s and at this point he started drawing out lists of people that were against his ideals and who were speaking out against him. Brecht was on one of Hitler's death lists because he spoke out about his opinions which were against Hitler.
When the war broke out, like we had shown in our freeze frames, it became too dangerous for Brecht to stay in Germany and so he left to live in America where he spent most of his life afterwards. When he was in America, the divide between East and West Germany began and, as a Socialist in America, he was actually called before various committees to answer to claims about him being a Communist and they brought out an array of poems that he wrote that could be classed as having Communist views behind them. He was a political writer and this segregation became his driving force as he wanted to inspire change through theatre.
One of Brecht's famous quotes is "Theatre isn't a mirror that we hold up to reality but a hammer in which we shape it." Showing that Brecht's theatre was much more about the audience watching the play and coming out of the performance wanting to change something and help solve the issue that has been portrayed on stage, rather than watching a performance a getting a large emotional response to it. We brought up the question of whether evoking the audience into wanting to change something could be classed as an emotional response to the performance and we talked about Brecht wanting to argue that what you want to change is a broader political idea rather than thinking about an individual thing that you can do to help change that issue. We used the film Titanic as an example to help us understand this theory more and we identified that the story of the Titanic is based really tightly around and through the story-line of Jack and Rose, which is a love story and truthfully the audience becomes more focused on their story as they become emotionally connected to these two people but, the audience are therefore forgetting about the larger political side of the film. If Brecht were to do this play in his style, he would not on the amount of people that were killed in this tragic event but the class of those people and the effect that it had on the different classes that were on board. It would be seen as a motivation to try and make the audience feel something political rather than emotional. A popular misconception about Brecht is that he didn't like emotion which is a lie because he's not saying that he doesn't want his audience to feel emotions, he just wants them to use these feelings to fuel them to make a change. Linking this idea to his use of the V effect, we can clearly see that this technique was used to make the audience focus on the political message of his play and relate that to something that they could change in their own lives.
We participated in another small discussion exercise where we were given the situation of the time period which was "the majority of the people at this time, went to the theatre to be entertained and there were lots of musical type theatre going on or there were high-brow intellectual realistic theatre going on." The questions that we needed to discuss was "What are the things that you feel you would have to do to a piece of theatre to start people being more politically motivated by it?" and "What would you change about the theatre to make it more political?" We weren't trying to relate this to Brecht's theories, we were just trying to think of our own ways on how we would address this idea.
When the war broke out, like we had shown in our freeze frames, it became too dangerous for Brecht to stay in Germany and so he left to live in America where he spent most of his life afterwards. When he was in America, the divide between East and West Germany began and, as a Socialist in America, he was actually called before various committees to answer to claims about him being a Communist and they brought out an array of poems that he wrote that could be classed as having Communist views behind them. He was a political writer and this segregation became his driving force as he wanted to inspire change through theatre.
One of Brecht's famous quotes is "Theatre isn't a mirror that we hold up to reality but a hammer in which we shape it." Showing that Brecht's theatre was much more about the audience watching the play and coming out of the performance wanting to change something and help solve the issue that has been portrayed on stage, rather than watching a performance a getting a large emotional response to it. We brought up the question of whether evoking the audience into wanting to change something could be classed as an emotional response to the performance and we talked about Brecht wanting to argue that what you want to change is a broader political idea rather than thinking about an individual thing that you can do to help change that issue. We used the film Titanic as an example to help us understand this theory more and we identified that the story of the Titanic is based really tightly around and through the story-line of Jack and Rose, which is a love story and truthfully the audience becomes more focused on their story as they become emotionally connected to these two people but, the audience are therefore forgetting about the larger political side of the film. If Brecht were to do this play in his style, he would not on the amount of people that were killed in this tragic event but the class of those people and the effect that it had on the different classes that were on board. It would be seen as a motivation to try and make the audience feel something political rather than emotional. A popular misconception about Brecht is that he didn't like emotion which is a lie because he's not saying that he doesn't want his audience to feel emotions, he just wants them to use these feelings to fuel them to make a change. Linking this idea to his use of the V effect, we can clearly see that this technique was used to make the audience focus on the political message of his play and relate that to something that they could change in their own lives.
We participated in another small discussion exercise where we were given the situation of the time period which was "the majority of the people at this time, went to the theatre to be entertained and there were lots of musical type theatre going on or there were high-brow intellectual realistic theatre going on." The questions that we needed to discuss was "What are the things that you feel you would have to do to a piece of theatre to start people being more politically motivated by it?" and "What would you change about the theatre to make it more political?" We weren't trying to relate this to Brecht's theories, we were just trying to think of our own ways on how we would address this idea.
We had discussions in smaller groups about the strategies that we would use to move the focus onto the political message.
Some of the ideas that we came up with as a class were:
Brecht's idea of Spass revolves around the idea of using humour to engage the audience and make them think at the same time. If you are making your audience laugh then they have already made a decision about the piece and are therefore open to thinking about why the events are happening as they have already made a decision on how they feel about the play. Spass was also a way to break tension on stage as Brecht needed to break any kind of tension so that the audience weren't becoming emotionally involved. Spass can include anything such as breaking into song at random junctures, slapstick comedy and even stand-up routines. Before Brecht got to the idea of Spass, he went through a period of time where he wrote the "Lehrstucke plays", also known as the "Learning Plays" which we the idea of working with the audience as a group of actors are they are going to work through the play with the actors guiding them and there would be a moral lesson at the end of it, normally a political lesson as well. As you may expect they weren't very popular and he tried to go into places like the steelworks and they weren't very successful. They are rarely performed today due to their lack of success but they were a key stepping stone for Brecht and the development of his ideas. The key idea is that Brecht's play should be funny and have humorous elements to them, and so Spass is important in understanding his plays and the language involved.
We then moved onto talking about another one of his techniques which was the "V effect" which I had previously researched and we talked about the fact that there is no English translation which has caused many problems. It wasn't something that he invented, it's more a collection of things that he did during his plays which lead to this effect being in people's brains while they were watching the piece. Like, for example, if we were to say "we want an emotional response" that's not a technique that you use, it is the response that you want to happen. Brecht wanted this "V effect" to happen throughout everything that he was doing in his plays so the audience would watch it with this effect going on and it would make them think about the political message instead. It makes the audience tilted their perception slightly at what they are watching and hopefully see it in a different light.
He accomplished this effect by what he called "Epic Theatre" which looked at the form in which the performance is presented and what the audience would be watching. Epic theatre's purpose is to emphasise the audience's perspective on the piece and their reaction to it through the techniques that we have already discussed which forces each individual audience member to react in their own way instead of having a collective reaction. This allows each audience member to make their own opinions on the issue that has been pointed out and therefore throughout the piece will be thinking of that issue in relation to their lives and what impact that could have had on them. Epic theatre also included the use of Historicisation which was used in order to make the audience look into the connections between historical events and a similar event that was happening in our modern world. Plays like "Mother Courage and Her Children" and "The Good Person of Szechwan" highlight issues that were relevant in that time period in relation to another historical event. Also in Epic Theatre, majority of the set that was used was realistic as were the costumes worn by the cast to highlight the reality of these problems and how relevant they are to the audience regardless of their societal positioning. The actors who were involved had to portray a believable character with making the audience think they have become that character. This is where another technique called Gestus comes in. This means that the actors on stage take on the characterization of what is being said during the social commentary. An example of this would be that if there was a character of a housewife, their movements could be very quick and agitated whereas her husbands could juxtapose with that and be very slow and sluggish to reflect there position in society at that point. Actors also played multiple roles to show that everyone was acting and they were told to be specific characters at those points in the play.
After discussing some of Brecht's main aspects, we moved onto doing a short scene where we had one person who came home late, to their partner because they were working late at the office. They were tired and their partner was a little irritated that they didn't call but were okay with it. The last person in the group was to be a child who comes in to say goodnight to the parent who just arrived home. We made a short realistic scene that highlighted the weariness of the father and the frustration of the mother and then we had the child come in at the end to say goodnight even though they should have been in bed. We then show the other group our short piece but we had the added feature of a placard, which was another aspects of Brecht's theatre. He used placard to add to the "V effect". On the placard was "Alexis arrives after a hard day's work, a frustrated Megan serves her food. Connie arrives to say goodnight." The other group that was watching us had to imagine that they were seeing this placard all throughout the scene and afterwards we were discussing that because they knew what was going on in the scene already and what was about to happen, they were watching the scene in a different way. They were more tracking what was going on in the scene and it stopped them being emotionally connected with the scene as they weren't trying to understand what was going on because they had already been told. It's not that the actors have stopped acting realistically but the audience's perception has slightly changed due to them knowing what was going to happen. One things thing that Brecht thought was an issue was the idea that if the story had massive amounts of suspense in it and the audience were looking to find out what was going to happen all the time, they actually get distracted from thinking about why it's happening.This is one way that he used placards, which is to remove suspense from what the audience were seeing by telling them what was going on in the scene.
We then watched the other groups scene and we were looking at a different way to use a placard. Theirs said "Charlotte has been having an affair for the last 6 weeks. The husband does not know." As an audience member, with that use of placard, it added a reason to the way that Charlotte was reacting towards Caitlin and it gives the scene some sort of context without having to spend a lot of time building up this backstory, the audience are just given it. Using placards, can also begin to create a sort of judgement like if the placard hadn't been there, we might have thought about the interaction on stage in a different way.
We then moved onto discussing some other aspects of his work and one of the main topics was structure. In a realistic play, the most common structure is chronological and during the realistic plays that were being performed when Brecht was alive, there setting was in a short span of time, like a week or an afternoon in someone's life. Some plays were set in real life time situations which makes sense if you are performing a realistic play. Brecht opted for a more episodic structure, which is shorter scenes which might be consecutive but they might be consecutive and years apart. So this gave Brecht a chance to explore a whole decade of issues that might be going on in a short space of time. This accentuates the "V effect" because the audience don't have an extended amount of time to connect emotionally with a character, they could see them when they are a child and then the next time is when they are an adult and are married. If we tie in other aspects like being told what is going on, with placards or placards telling you what is going to happen, very quickly the audience's perception does begin to shift from trying to work out what is going on, to working out why its going on. Brecht also liked to use music and songs in his productions, sometimes in the middle of the play and this is clearly a distancing effect for the audience as it has nothing to do with the scene that was just happening. Brecht also liked to use realistic props, but only enough to set the situation up. For example, he would use the corner of a building, made very realistically but the rest of it wouldn't be there. So he would use elements of realistic staging but not whole set pieces which adds to the "V effect" in the idea that the audience would be able to see that it was set that was being used and therefore it was a play that they were watching and not real life. Adding to the idea of wanting the audience to know that they are watching a play, he liked to show the scene changes and the lighting desks as well.
After studying some of the theory behind Brecht, we looked at one of his plays called "Mother Courage and her children." We read through the scene and then proceeded to look for elements of the Brecht style that we had been discussing previously and outline them.
We then began to discuss the scene and we found that the language was colloquialised but if we were to perform it in our modern day, we could do it with an earthy tone to it and the colloquialisms would be able to be recognised by the audience. We then ran through some confusions that may occur with the scene as the language was slightly hard to understand and we clarified that Mother Courage's son was killed because she wouldn't pay the price for him to be released and kept bartering to get the price down. She wanted to bring the price down because she likes to keep hold of her money and she originally was relying on the money from the cash box, that Swiss Cheese had hidden, to get the money to get the wagon returned to them. From this you can sense the Capitalist background as there are many bargains being made and everyone wishes to spend the least amount of money possible. Mother Courage has got herself into this situation as well as her family and her son is in a worse position that she is at this point. She is desperately trying to work her way out of it using money to do that but essentially it doesn't work.
After discussing Mother Courage, we moved onto looking into "The Silent Scream" picture by Helene Weigel, she was Brecht's wife and he gave her all of the main female roles in his plays. They were married about 4 times and she was one of the best actresses of her time. He gave her the part of Mother Courage and the "Silent Scream" was included in the scene that we had just read through in her performance. One thing that is cut out from the picture is the body of her son which is over to the left.
During the scene, she actually had to silently scream because if she screamed out loud then the guards would have heard her and known that this was a result of seeing her son's body. This became part of the "V effect" as it is a highly emotional moment but the audience are distanced by the facts that are surrounding the scene, they can;t get emotionally attached to Mother Courage and they cannot have the emotional attachments to the son considering there isn't much character development on his behalf. At the start of this scene, there is a placard that tells the audience what is going to happen so at this point they were expecting a reaction from Mother Courage but perhaps they did not know to what extent.
Mother Courage is an actual play written by Brecht so we moved onto looking at a play called "Our Country's Good," that is written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, which is a more modern version of a Brecht play. We have previously studied this text, during Director's Challenge, were we had to research the play and use that to direct a group of actors. One of her biggest influences, of course, was Brecht and Epic Theatre. We looked at a scene and read through it and began to see it in a Brechtian way rather than just a text as, in our previous research, we had only skimmed over the idea of Brecht and we had focused on why she had written the text instead of her influences. I did some more research into the text and got some extra background information which may help us to understand the conversation subjects a little more. In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia, hence "the savages" also known as Aborigines, as part of the first colony there. This play highlights the class systems both within the convicts and within the racks of the officers. It discusses themes such as sexuality, punishments, the Georgian court system and the idea of using "theatre to be a humanising force". Wertenbaker actually went to see a play performed by convicts which allowed her to see how they acted with one another and also allowed her to see a play that was actually being performed with people in the same situation as her characters. She said that "the convicts were, at least momentarily, civilized human beings, and they had taken their work very seriously: The convicts knew their lines absolutely because they had nothing else to do and they didn't want to waste time with pleasantries; as soon as you came into the room they started rehearsing. The two hours were very intense because the time was so valuable and we saw immediately how doing a play could become absolutely absorbing if you were incarcerated." In Our Country's Good, most of the characters are based on real people that would have been aboard the ship as Weretenbaker was allowed to read the journals of the First Fleet members in order to portray them accurately.
Here is our interpretation of one of the scenes from "Our Country's Good"
https://youtu.be/sD97oklxqZk
- We used chains to reflect the idea of "the savages" as they are slaves so we had the chains to add context to the scene and the constant noise of them banging together or against the chairs showed that the slaves hadn't just disappeared but these men were just drinking and laughing as though they didn't exist at all. The chains would ideally be fitted into the costume, if we were doing this scene professionally, and we wanted the chains to become the tassels that majority of high ranking officers have on their uniform so that it would be a constant reminder for the audience that they were to blame for the mistreatment of the slaves. We also wanted to include the idea of keys and one of the characters have a large amount of keys on their belt.
- In the centre, the smaller tables are representing a large banquet table that would be filled with an excessive amount of food and drink. Reflecting the idea that the slaves are starving and these men are wasting so much food that could be given to those who need it. And with the added use of forks, the officers use them to accentuate their point and so use them as tools to point with and then continue eating. These props, both the food and the chains, re-enforced the irony of the topics that we are discussing and the language of what we are saying.
- In terms of the delivery of the lines, we are directing some of the lines out to the audience and then some to other characters on stage. Those who opposed the idea of the play have the bigger gestures and bigger movements around the stage to reflect the idea that they are commanding and therefore can project their lines outwards but because of the power that they hold, whoever they are talking to still knows that the lines are being directed towards them. One of the character makes reference to the stars as so the setting must be outside with some sort of slight covering over the food and so the higher ranking characters direct their lines outward as though they were observing the scenery. We wanted to make it clear on which characters were for the play, against the play and those who were neutral ground about the play.
- We did realise that there were two singular characters who were coming across more realistic than the others which were Connie's characters of the Ralph, who was going to direct the play, and Alexis' character, who was the Captain of the ship. We thought that this was based off of the ideas that they were the more calmer members of the group and they were more for the play to be held whereas the rest of the cast were more exaggerating their disagreement towards it due to them wanting their point to be heard.
- The use of stereotypes and stereotypical actions allowed us to heighten the aspect of the audience knowing that this was a play. They also add as an element of social commentary about the opinions that were present at the time in which the play was set.
A possible next step would be to look deeper into the characters of Ralph and the Captain to see whether we can use their realistic nature to reflect a political or societal issue. They could be the voices of reason in the scene as they do try and justify the play being held. Connie's character is the more diplomatic whereas Alexis holds more power due to her status and so she has the final decision on whether the play will go ahead or not. There are also references to people like Rousseau which reflects how educated both these characters are in contrast with mine and Caitlin's characters. We are so against the idea of the play that we begin to stereotype the people that they bring up such as the Irish and the Swiss. Our characters could reflect those who have strong beliefs about the British Empire and believe in everything that they say is what we should live by which, in a modern setting, would equate to xenophobic and racist people who believe that punishment is punishment and the convicts are in prison because that is where they belong. We do not see them as human beings which reflect what the play is about as we are exploring the idea about the morality of punishment and rehabilitation which are the political arguments that are being made apparent for the audience to consider.
Some of the ideas that we came up with as a class were:
- Conversations being directed at the audience - So rather than the conversations taking place between characters, we would "break the fourth wall" and use direct address towards the audience so that they would know that this is a play they are watching and focusing more on the relationship between the audience and the issue are arising rather than the relationship between the characters on stage being effected by that political issue. This will also help educate the audience which comes about through a more direct dialectic discourse between the actors and the audience.
- Using plays that are written with a more political intention - This means that we would be able to follow the writer's intentions more clearly and the political message would be clearer for the audience to grasp if the political intention was the focal point originally. These would then enable the characters to discuss the politics of that time as well.
- Drawing attention to the political motivations behind each character - We could have things happening to our characters but we're looking at the political motives that fuel them to make their decisions, like the example of Rose and Jack in Titanic. Instead of it being emotional, we draw attention to the reasons why they are in that situation.
- Satire - It is the use of humour and comedy to expose/criticise people's political judgement. There is normally an element of wit involved as well.
Brecht's idea of Spass revolves around the idea of using humour to engage the audience and make them think at the same time. If you are making your audience laugh then they have already made a decision about the piece and are therefore open to thinking about why the events are happening as they have already made a decision on how they feel about the play. Spass was also a way to break tension on stage as Brecht needed to break any kind of tension so that the audience weren't becoming emotionally involved. Spass can include anything such as breaking into song at random junctures, slapstick comedy and even stand-up routines. Before Brecht got to the idea of Spass, he went through a period of time where he wrote the "Lehrstucke plays", also known as the "Learning Plays" which we the idea of working with the audience as a group of actors are they are going to work through the play with the actors guiding them and there would be a moral lesson at the end of it, normally a political lesson as well. As you may expect they weren't very popular and he tried to go into places like the steelworks and they weren't very successful. They are rarely performed today due to their lack of success but they were a key stepping stone for Brecht and the development of his ideas. The key idea is that Brecht's play should be funny and have humorous elements to them, and so Spass is important in understanding his plays and the language involved.
We then moved onto talking about another one of his techniques which was the "V effect" which I had previously researched and we talked about the fact that there is no English translation which has caused many problems. It wasn't something that he invented, it's more a collection of things that he did during his plays which lead to this effect being in people's brains while they were watching the piece. Like, for example, if we were to say "we want an emotional response" that's not a technique that you use, it is the response that you want to happen. Brecht wanted this "V effect" to happen throughout everything that he was doing in his plays so the audience would watch it with this effect going on and it would make them think about the political message instead. It makes the audience tilted their perception slightly at what they are watching and hopefully see it in a different light.
He accomplished this effect by what he called "Epic Theatre" which looked at the form in which the performance is presented and what the audience would be watching. Epic theatre's purpose is to emphasise the audience's perspective on the piece and their reaction to it through the techniques that we have already discussed which forces each individual audience member to react in their own way instead of having a collective reaction. This allows each audience member to make their own opinions on the issue that has been pointed out and therefore throughout the piece will be thinking of that issue in relation to their lives and what impact that could have had on them. Epic theatre also included the use of Historicisation which was used in order to make the audience look into the connections between historical events and a similar event that was happening in our modern world. Plays like "Mother Courage and Her Children" and "The Good Person of Szechwan" highlight issues that were relevant in that time period in relation to another historical event. Also in Epic Theatre, majority of the set that was used was realistic as were the costumes worn by the cast to highlight the reality of these problems and how relevant they are to the audience regardless of their societal positioning. The actors who were involved had to portray a believable character with making the audience think they have become that character. This is where another technique called Gestus comes in. This means that the actors on stage take on the characterization of what is being said during the social commentary. An example of this would be that if there was a character of a housewife, their movements could be very quick and agitated whereas her husbands could juxtapose with that and be very slow and sluggish to reflect there position in society at that point. Actors also played multiple roles to show that everyone was acting and they were told to be specific characters at those points in the play.
After discussing some of Brecht's main aspects, we moved onto doing a short scene where we had one person who came home late, to their partner because they were working late at the office. They were tired and their partner was a little irritated that they didn't call but were okay with it. The last person in the group was to be a child who comes in to say goodnight to the parent who just arrived home. We made a short realistic scene that highlighted the weariness of the father and the frustration of the mother and then we had the child come in at the end to say goodnight even though they should have been in bed. We then show the other group our short piece but we had the added feature of a placard, which was another aspects of Brecht's theatre. He used placard to add to the "V effect". On the placard was "Alexis arrives after a hard day's work, a frustrated Megan serves her food. Connie arrives to say goodnight." The other group that was watching us had to imagine that they were seeing this placard all throughout the scene and afterwards we were discussing that because they knew what was going on in the scene already and what was about to happen, they were watching the scene in a different way. They were more tracking what was going on in the scene and it stopped them being emotionally connected with the scene as they weren't trying to understand what was going on because they had already been told. It's not that the actors have stopped acting realistically but the audience's perception has slightly changed due to them knowing what was going to happen. One things thing that Brecht thought was an issue was the idea that if the story had massive amounts of suspense in it and the audience were looking to find out what was going to happen all the time, they actually get distracted from thinking about why it's happening.This is one way that he used placards, which is to remove suspense from what the audience were seeing by telling them what was going on in the scene.
We then watched the other groups scene and we were looking at a different way to use a placard. Theirs said "Charlotte has been having an affair for the last 6 weeks. The husband does not know." As an audience member, with that use of placard, it added a reason to the way that Charlotte was reacting towards Caitlin and it gives the scene some sort of context without having to spend a lot of time building up this backstory, the audience are just given it. Using placards, can also begin to create a sort of judgement like if the placard hadn't been there, we might have thought about the interaction on stage in a different way.
We then moved onto discussing some other aspects of his work and one of the main topics was structure. In a realistic play, the most common structure is chronological and during the realistic plays that were being performed when Brecht was alive, there setting was in a short span of time, like a week or an afternoon in someone's life. Some plays were set in real life time situations which makes sense if you are performing a realistic play. Brecht opted for a more episodic structure, which is shorter scenes which might be consecutive but they might be consecutive and years apart. So this gave Brecht a chance to explore a whole decade of issues that might be going on in a short space of time. This accentuates the "V effect" because the audience don't have an extended amount of time to connect emotionally with a character, they could see them when they are a child and then the next time is when they are an adult and are married. If we tie in other aspects like being told what is going on, with placards or placards telling you what is going to happen, very quickly the audience's perception does begin to shift from trying to work out what is going on, to working out why its going on. Brecht also liked to use music and songs in his productions, sometimes in the middle of the play and this is clearly a distancing effect for the audience as it has nothing to do with the scene that was just happening. Brecht also liked to use realistic props, but only enough to set the situation up. For example, he would use the corner of a building, made very realistically but the rest of it wouldn't be there. So he would use elements of realistic staging but not whole set pieces which adds to the "V effect" in the idea that the audience would be able to see that it was set that was being used and therefore it was a play that they were watching and not real life. Adding to the idea of wanting the audience to know that they are watching a play, he liked to show the scene changes and the lighting desks as well.
After studying some of the theory behind Brecht, we looked at one of his plays called "Mother Courage and her children." We read through the scene and then proceeded to look for elements of the Brecht style that we had been discussing previously and outline them.
We then began to discuss the scene and we found that the language was colloquialised but if we were to perform it in our modern day, we could do it with an earthy tone to it and the colloquialisms would be able to be recognised by the audience. We then ran through some confusions that may occur with the scene as the language was slightly hard to understand and we clarified that Mother Courage's son was killed because she wouldn't pay the price for him to be released and kept bartering to get the price down. She wanted to bring the price down because she likes to keep hold of her money and she originally was relying on the money from the cash box, that Swiss Cheese had hidden, to get the money to get the wagon returned to them. From this you can sense the Capitalist background as there are many bargains being made and everyone wishes to spend the least amount of money possible. Mother Courage has got herself into this situation as well as her family and her son is in a worse position that she is at this point. She is desperately trying to work her way out of it using money to do that but essentially it doesn't work.
After discussing Mother Courage, we moved onto looking into "The Silent Scream" picture by Helene Weigel, she was Brecht's wife and he gave her all of the main female roles in his plays. They were married about 4 times and she was one of the best actresses of her time. He gave her the part of Mother Courage and the "Silent Scream" was included in the scene that we had just read through in her performance. One thing that is cut out from the picture is the body of her son which is over to the left.
During the scene, she actually had to silently scream because if she screamed out loud then the guards would have heard her and known that this was a result of seeing her son's body. This became part of the "V effect" as it is a highly emotional moment but the audience are distanced by the facts that are surrounding the scene, they can;t get emotionally attached to Mother Courage and they cannot have the emotional attachments to the son considering there isn't much character development on his behalf. At the start of this scene, there is a placard that tells the audience what is going to happen so at this point they were expecting a reaction from Mother Courage but perhaps they did not know to what extent.
Mother Courage is an actual play written by Brecht so we moved onto looking at a play called "Our Country's Good," that is written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, which is a more modern version of a Brecht play. We have previously studied this text, during Director's Challenge, were we had to research the play and use that to direct a group of actors. One of her biggest influences, of course, was Brecht and Epic Theatre. We looked at a scene and read through it and began to see it in a Brechtian way rather than just a text as, in our previous research, we had only skimmed over the idea of Brecht and we had focused on why she had written the text instead of her influences. I did some more research into the text and got some extra background information which may help us to understand the conversation subjects a little more. In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia, hence "the savages" also known as Aborigines, as part of the first colony there. This play highlights the class systems both within the convicts and within the racks of the officers. It discusses themes such as sexuality, punishments, the Georgian court system and the idea of using "theatre to be a humanising force". Wertenbaker actually went to see a play performed by convicts which allowed her to see how they acted with one another and also allowed her to see a play that was actually being performed with people in the same situation as her characters. She said that "the convicts were, at least momentarily, civilized human beings, and they had taken their work very seriously: The convicts knew their lines absolutely because they had nothing else to do and they didn't want to waste time with pleasantries; as soon as you came into the room they started rehearsing. The two hours were very intense because the time was so valuable and we saw immediately how doing a play could become absolutely absorbing if you were incarcerated." In Our Country's Good, most of the characters are based on real people that would have been aboard the ship as Weretenbaker was allowed to read the journals of the First Fleet members in order to portray them accurately.
Here is our interpretation of one of the scenes from "Our Country's Good"
https://youtu.be/sD97oklxqZk
- We used chains to reflect the idea of "the savages" as they are slaves so we had the chains to add context to the scene and the constant noise of them banging together or against the chairs showed that the slaves hadn't just disappeared but these men were just drinking and laughing as though they didn't exist at all. The chains would ideally be fitted into the costume, if we were doing this scene professionally, and we wanted the chains to become the tassels that majority of high ranking officers have on their uniform so that it would be a constant reminder for the audience that they were to blame for the mistreatment of the slaves. We also wanted to include the idea of keys and one of the characters have a large amount of keys on their belt.
- In the centre, the smaller tables are representing a large banquet table that would be filled with an excessive amount of food and drink. Reflecting the idea that the slaves are starving and these men are wasting so much food that could be given to those who need it. And with the added use of forks, the officers use them to accentuate their point and so use them as tools to point with and then continue eating. These props, both the food and the chains, re-enforced the irony of the topics that we are discussing and the language of what we are saying.
- In terms of the delivery of the lines, we are directing some of the lines out to the audience and then some to other characters on stage. Those who opposed the idea of the play have the bigger gestures and bigger movements around the stage to reflect the idea that they are commanding and therefore can project their lines outwards but because of the power that they hold, whoever they are talking to still knows that the lines are being directed towards them. One of the character makes reference to the stars as so the setting must be outside with some sort of slight covering over the food and so the higher ranking characters direct their lines outward as though they were observing the scenery. We wanted to make it clear on which characters were for the play, against the play and those who were neutral ground about the play.
- We did realise that there were two singular characters who were coming across more realistic than the others which were Connie's characters of the Ralph, who was going to direct the play, and Alexis' character, who was the Captain of the ship. We thought that this was based off of the ideas that they were the more calmer members of the group and they were more for the play to be held whereas the rest of the cast were more exaggerating their disagreement towards it due to them wanting their point to be heard.
- The use of stereotypes and stereotypical actions allowed us to heighten the aspect of the audience knowing that this was a play. They also add as an element of social commentary about the opinions that were present at the time in which the play was set.
A possible next step would be to look deeper into the characters of Ralph and the Captain to see whether we can use their realistic nature to reflect a political or societal issue. They could be the voices of reason in the scene as they do try and justify the play being held. Connie's character is the more diplomatic whereas Alexis holds more power due to her status and so she has the final decision on whether the play will go ahead or not. There are also references to people like Rousseau which reflects how educated both these characters are in contrast with mine and Caitlin's characters. We are so against the idea of the play that we begin to stereotype the people that they bring up such as the Irish and the Swiss. Our characters could reflect those who have strong beliefs about the British Empire and believe in everything that they say is what we should live by which, in a modern setting, would equate to xenophobic and racist people who believe that punishment is punishment and the convicts are in prison because that is where they belong. We do not see them as human beings which reflect what the play is about as we are exploring the idea about the morality of punishment and rehabilitation which are the political arguments that are being made apparent for the audience to consider.
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