Brecht

This week we have been learning about Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born 1898 in Germany. In his early 30's he worked as a medic in WWI but he was appalled by war, he decided to move to Berlin to work in theatre. However, when the Nazis came into power, he fled the country because he was a communist, resulting in his citizenship being removed. He decided to live in the USA where he gained citizenship in 1941. He was a strong communist and was not afraid of expressing his views, hence, was a target of the House of Un-American Activities, who were very much anti communist. He moved back to Germany In 1947. He then founded the Berliner Ensemble. He was vastly influenced, having lived through two world wars he was very political and expressed his strong views through the medium of theatre. 

Epic Theatre 
-He wanted to make the audience distant from emotional involvement. 
-Brecht was against cathartic theatre 
One famous quote of his " Hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom." emphasised his desire to engage the audience. 

VerfremdungseffectThis term is also known as the alienation effect, however, Brecht only wanted his audience to feel distanced, he wanted them to be engaged and excited but not emotionally involved and this always involved breaking the forth wall. 

Brecht's Techniques 
-Narration
-Coming out of role
-Speaking stage directions
-Directly addressing the audience
-Using placards
-Multi-rolling
-Minimal props, costume and set
-Symbolic props or lighting 
-Song and Dance
-Montage 
-Spass (Fun)
-Gestus (Gestures)
-Narrative which jumps around in time 
-Freeze frames



On Monday we were split into groups and were given a script, one of Brecht's pieces of work. We began by listing the large number of characters in the script. There were more characters than actors, so this meant we would have to use of Brecht's techniques, multi rolling. I was given the role of the mother in law as the characters are Russian and I was asked to try and do a strong old Russian accent, unfortunately I could not do this. We then started to label props in the style Brecht did. For example, we labelled a piece of paper with Child, or guitar, to show that we were trying to think and adopt Brechts own techniques into our interpretation but also keep minimal props which is also another technique.

The script we were given doesn't really make much sense and is extremely boring, after some digging we discovered this script was meant to be boring which made me think why, if Brecht wanted his audience to be engaged in his theatre but still not attached why would he write something boring, I do not believe this piece of theatre would engage an audience in anyway, also another technique of Brecht is spass, which means fun, this piece of theatre is not fun in the slightest.