Friday 19th September 2014

To help further understand Brecht, we had to do research of Brecht in our own time and in class we came together and wrote a mind map of facts about Brecht.

For our assignment we need to find out more about Brecht and his theories of the Alienation Affect and his creation of Epic theatre and link it to "Fear and Misery of the Third Reich".

On my further research of Brecht, I found out that:
• He developed a style of theatre known as epic theatre.
• One important principle was 'Verfremdungseffekt' roughly translating into 'defamiliarisation/distancing/estrangement effect'.  To achieve Verfremdungseffekt, one must: strip the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality, creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them.
• Brecht wanted to use theatre as a form of showing current affairs, everything relating to society and politics
• Epic Theatre is political drama intended to appeal to reason rather than emotion
• Brecht wanted the audience to not connect emotionally to a play but logically, they shouldn't sit back and feel, but sit forward and think
• Actors should 'demonstrate' rather than 'become' a role e.g. Accident eyewitness
• Actors are storytellers, playing many parts
• Character is determined by circumstance
• Brecht agreed with Stanislavsky's principle of becoming one with the character and showing emotions but Brecht doesn't want that to happen
• Actors must always be in control of their emotions

Theatrical techniques (anti-illusionary):
• Mechanics of the theatre shown to the audience
• Audience must know they are watching a play
• Placecards and projection was also used to change scene quickly
• Lighting was only used to illuminate not to create mood, so lighting was very hard
• Actors direct address to the audience
• Actors changed on stage instead of off stage
• Use of songs which would interrupt stage action
• Actors were made to recite stage directions out loud during the play itself. These elements discrouaged the audience from identifiying with characters, losing detachment, actions must continually be made alien/separate.
• The director must use any devices that preserve or establish distancing

We got the script for the play, and on the first scene, we see an elemental practice of Brecht where Sharney reads the prologues before each scene begins.  We was finding out what scenes we was in and who we were in the play.  I am doing Scene 16: Charity Begins At Home and playing the old woman.

On reading the script further, there seems to be a contradiction of Brecht's style of Epic Theatre of the character and actor being distance.  In scene 9, where the wife is packing to leave her husband because she has no choice in the possibility of her going to a concentration camp, there is obvious emotion within that scene.
The dialogue is written to a third person to engage audience, is not very naturalistic in writing; it's written as if you are commenting on your own acting.

The task now is to make the play as Brecht as possible now.
We started off with the first scene, and at The First SA man (Parys): Wait till we've coaxed German Man out from among all those filthy subhumans.  Parys can engage the audience; break the fourth wall by making the audience the subhumans by spitting at them.  There is a emotional detachment to the line and just blatantly calling the audience filthy subhumans which should cause the audience to react or speak out.
Jade picked up on her scene, 'Scene 11: The Black Shoes' and noticed that it is very Stanislavsky.  Rob explained that it's fine you can be emotionally engaged in the piece but the audience will have the emotional detachment.  Jade felt that her scene is like The Three Sisters where there is more subliminal messages instead of being straight forward as Brecht would like it to be.  After reading the scene I disagreed with Jade somewhat as I feel the scene explains that the mother is stating she has the money to buy her daughter new shoes but not to send her to the Hitler youth.
In Jades' scene, all she needs to do is obviously show her hesitation/reluctance in giving money to her daughter to go to camp but is fine with getting her new shoes which will make the audience question how come she is reluctant for her daughter to go? which is the intention of Brecht because he wants the audience to think.  I went onto explain that there is no initial attachment to the character you don't have to dig deep to understand the character.  I felt Jade was confused with her understanding of emotional detachment with the character so I explained that just because Brecht wanted emotional detachment that doesn't mean no emotions at all, you're going to convey emotion regardless, but with Stanislavsky you have to find emotional memory to relate to that point in time, you have to understand what's going on before/after the scene.  There is no attachment to the character itself you are playing, because the actor and character is separate, two different people whereas Stanislavsky wanted oneness with the character.
It is pretty straightforward and with Brecht there is no need for digging deeper and trying to understand the psychological aspect of what's going on which I explained to her.
We have to understand we are playing the lines of the character in that moment of time, we aren't doing any exercises that look at the relationship between mother and daughter or the throughline of the play (before and after their scene).  We just perform the play.

Friday 12th September 2014

On the week back with Rob, Rob made us watch a Documentary to help further our understanding and history of Brecht. Rob hoped that watching the documentary would help us as actors have a clearer reason as to why we want to become actors.

I managed to take notes.

Notes taken from Documentary we watched:

• There were those who chose to explore the landscape of society and those that explored the landscape of the soul.  Brecht explored the landscape of society
• Brechts' energy was directed outwards towards politics and institutions, seeking to change society and theatre
• Samuel Beckett explored memory and the meaning of existence
• Becketts' work had no effective purpose it simply 'is'.
• Brecht and Bechet created a new language of theatre, inspiring a generation of writers.
• Brecht lived the last part of his life in East Berlin
• Brecht's house is a museum commemorated to preserve the memory of his life and works
• By the age of 30, Brecht was successful, notorious and a communist 
• Brecht wanted his audience to react to scenes on stage as if they was at a boxing match. He wanted the audience to think and analyse and of course take side.  Above all he wanted clarity
• A play he wrote, Mother Courage who was played by his wife, is about a small time profiteer living on the small pickings of war, it analyses what was going to happen in Germany
• Brecht liked to follow small intimate scenes with big public ones, jumping notions, spanning decay simply by telling the audience what was happening
• He wanted his plays to reveal the social reality of characters and situation and to criticise the politics of the day.
• Brecht is known as a theorist about theatre, his theory of alienation meant that audiences were not to be alienated but they were made to look at familiar things in a fresh but accurate standpoint
• In 1933 the Reichstag gave Hitler the opportunity to eliminate his opponents causing Brecht to flee the country. He moved with his family to Denmark, Finland the Russia. In May 1941 they stayed in California.
• Brecht enjoyed America, something he had fantasised about whereas Beckett thought the people was strange
• While in America, Brecht worked on his play Galelao with English actor Charles Law
• The questions actors asked in Beckett's plays were: "why am I doing this?" "Where have I come from?", to which he had no answer to the questions about the characters offstage lives because he didn't believe the characters offstage lives existed.  • Beckett licenced the British theatre to dispense with naturalism; to allow it's potential metatheatrical to breathe.
• Brecht encouraged the theatre to inject realism into productions of Shakespeare, the classics and of contemporary plays and to be ambitious about form and content.  A play could be whatever you wanted it to be.  
• Brechts style of Epic Theatre was reborn in Britain when playwrights like Edward Bond discovered it's roots lay in Shakespeare
• The permanent legacy of Brecht and Beckett was that now as in all the arts there was no hierarchy of form. You can use whatever necessary to say what you want to say. It's a world as Beckett suggested where "anything is possible".

After the documentary, Rob then went over the assignment with us.
We're going to be rehearsing scenes from Brecht's play 'Fear and Misery of the Third Reich'.  It is a very good play that shows Brecht's approach to theatre which was very diatetic.  It contains a variety of short scenes that show how different families and peoples lives were affected during the the rise of Nazism and Hitler.  This play will hopefully help us as actors gain an appreciation and understanding of the style of Brecht.

To help us prepare for the style of Brecht, in the morning in the theatre Rob instructed us to do a variety of exercises in which we are to just show us doing or being something.  We all had a partner and we had to be a cat and mouse, Romeo and Juliet, poor and rich.
Afterwards with our partner we stood in two lines opposite one another on the other side of the stage and we had to pick a nursery rhyme and then had to shout at our partners our nursery rhyme with a dire need that we wanted to be heard.  As everyone was doing this, it sounded like a riot so you really had to shout loud enough just to hear yourself.
These exercises reflected and compared Brecht's theories in which he studied the social landscape of society and politics while Stanislavsky studied the landscape of the soul.  Brecht's style of theatre while acting is more demonstrating (the exercises where we became something) and getting your point across (the exercises of shouting our nursery rhymes and also the first exercise where we were to show who was who). Brecht believed that character and actor was not to become one; there is no need to understand the background of the character; you are to just play/represent the character, while Stanislavsky believed the character and actor was to become one; you need to understand the psychological subject.
However we are not to misjudge Brecht's theories with it being non-emotional, the actor should not be connected emotionally, and mentally with the character, but to the audience who can see the characters situation and circumstances can empathise with the character but always remember they are to think outside the theatrical box that theatre is not for entertainment but for reflection and change.  Example Brecht's play Mother Courage, when the mother loses her children, the audience is able to empathise with her loss but have to ask why she lost her children? It is the result of the war.  How are we to stop the war? Brecht intended for his plays to have a knock on effect with the audience of always questioning and trying to find answers even after you've left the theatre.

Rob then made a statement and then asked us what we thought it meant:

Art is not the mirror to reflect society, but a hammer in which to shape it.

Some comments from the class - 

Tutu: I don't know.

Christina: it's more to change peoples views on the way things are going.

Gifty: it's like Nade Bansky. His art isn't pretty art to look at, his art is for you to look at it and think. It's made to change your perspective.
Rob expanded and said He uses a juxtaposition of images and that's what Brecht does with theatre.

Francis: a lot of people go and see stuff to get away from reality, to laugh at, just to get away from their own un-comfort with their reality, what we put on stage is how we interpret and make us have our own opinion not have someone else's opinions forced on us.

Jade: it's a wake up call.  You're shaping your society, you're shaping what's around you today.  Don't just look at it and let it go pass you, take it in and shape your own future.  We're the only people that can change society otherwise we're gonna be accepting with how society is.

Abigail: I just want to reflect on Francis and Jade's point - art is not a mirror, we see things differently.

Rob then said we aren't in a vacuum, we're all shaped by what goes on.

Sam: it can mean what Francis was saying, or it can mean to send a message out to everyone what we feel is wrong politically but there is no right or wrong.  Rob then argued that Brecht would argue that there is a right or wrong depending where you are politically.

Akele: the mirror is basically yourself, I think it empowers you and what can you do with that. I think it is how you think and how it affects the world.