Brecht and Epic theatre
The epic style can be adapted to any form of theatre that puts a social or political message before the exploration of character. Once character is less important than message and the intricacies of human motive less intriguing than storytelling and the exploration of situation you have Brechtian theatre.
Context
Stanislavski’s naturalism was the accepted norm but it was woefully inadequate to express the social problems Brecht saw around him. The country was in political ferment. He believed that with naturalistic theatre – the audience hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom and are sucked into believing a lie. He is not in total opposition to Stanislavski. He does not want all characters to be stereotypes or unrealistic. The central characters are recognizable and life like. The audience needs to know and understand them so they must be rooted in reality. It is only really the baddies, the extreme characters through whom Brecht is making a political or social point that ought to be stereotypes.
The message must be clear.
The audience must remain critically aware.
Stanislavski seeks to expose the workings of the inner soul of a person which Brecht ignored. Instead Brecht concentrated on how to recognize the outward signs such a person might observe in the social structure around them
Nothing irritated Brecht more than the idea of a whole system of acting was evolved which worked hard to carry sensible people, both actors and audience out of their rational senses into a world of make believe where reason and common sense were put on hold.
Brecht wanted a theatre that achieved something, that challenged and made an audience think. An audience that is sucked into the lives of characters on stage is uncritical. It doesn't ask why something happened; it merely accepts, maybe sheds a few tears, says “that’s life, that’s how it is”. Nothing has changed about the audience’s life. Brecht wanted change because he’s surrounded by a sick society (eg the Depression and the rise of Fascism) and he is looking for tools to enlighten people and do something about it.
Gestus
Brecht’s principle concern is to put over a message in such a way that an audience can be in no doubt as to the intentions of the performance – each stage picture must convey that message.
Social situations change the way people behave (Stanislavski showed through the system that people are the same the world over or through time – their pain is the eternal pain of human suffering,) Brecht believed that human beings are formed by their society and culture and their behavior is appropriate to their time. He wanted to create a theatre that was appropriate to the modern age and characters who react in a twentieth century way.
A Brechtian play must have attitude – and that attitude is political in its broadest sense. Actors must be consciously projecting the message by means of their characters and staging. They must never lose sight of their true objective (provoke debate or educate) so they must never become immersed in their character. The attitude at each moment is gest or gestus.
Brecht works with situation rather than character.
Gestus is gesture plus attitude. It includes body language and facial expression (voice and tone when necessary) but it is also the entire stage picture.
Exaggeration and Realism
There are exaggerated characters and realistic ones. It may be necessary to exaggerate certain features of a character in order to provoke the right response but for more sympathetic characters there is no need to exaggerate or they will lose sympathy. They should be a no nonsense practical down to earth person played strongly and with clear outlines but played to the audience not internalized.
Demonstration and Emotion
An actor should not pretend to be anything else. He is simply presenting a character to an audience.
You must:
1 study the part in context with the play to discover:
2 Decide what vocal features and physical characteristics would clarify the gestus of their character. Do not build up a whole inner
life for the character.
3 Decide which characteristics might need to be exaggerated for further emphasis in order to make a particular statement about the character.
Narrative techniques
Brecht’s theatre is narrative theatre. It tells a story – not for the story’s sake but for the light it can show on ourselves as human beings in our particular social situation.
There should be no surprise – the audience should be informed of the outcome at the beginning so instead of waiting for what will happen they are focusing on why. This confirms the need for a more detached narrative voice.
Use of humor
“Spass” or fun is necessary – people must enjoy what they are doing to learn by it. His humor is the intellectual humor of the satirist. Brecht would exaggerate or ridicule in order to expose the faults of a person or system.
Choice – Not … but …
Brecht wanted to emphasize the free will of every human being to choose his own path in life. He hated the suggestion in so much of our drama that a person’s fate is written in the stars. There are many moments in our life when we need to make a choice – his plays are full of such moments – need to point out to the audience that such choices are common in everyday life and are important to recognize, act upon and live by, without regrets.
Verfremdungseffekt Making strange or Alienation Technique
Much of what has been covered is already Verfremdung already. Brecht wanted an active type of theatre that could be used as a tool for changing our flawed society. To do this EVERYTHING must be critically looked at/reexamined. Including the mechanics of theatre – naturalism, musicals, opera were trying to pull he wool over people’s eyes through the theatrical devices to cover up scene changes, costume, makeup to make someone into a character. Most theatre tried to pretend these things are not happening and try to keep the audience in the dark in order to complete the illusion.
Brecht wanted to ensure that the audience were aware that they were watching a play (surrounded by artificial and mechanical things such as lights, scenery, curtains and actors ‘being’ a character) and not real life, so that they focus on the issues and not the story.
How would they alienate the audience?
· A play’s ending might be announced at the beginning, so that the audience would not be in a state of suspense, wondering what was going to happen.
· The actors might mingle with the audience in the bar before the play started, so that the audience didn’t think that they were ‘stars’ or the actual characters they were portraying.
· Banners and slides would be used to tell the audience what was happening on stage, and to destroy the illusion that they were witnessing ‘real’ events on stage.
· The mechanics of the stage - lighting, sound equipment, props, projectors, and so on - would all be visible to the audience, so that they could not be fooled into thinking that they were watching ‘reality’.
· Characters would often address the audience directly (frequently ‘out of role’) in order to narrate the events unfolding on stage and prevent people from becoming ‘drawn into’ the action.
· Songs would be used to break up the action, and give the audience a chance to reflect on what they were seeing. The effect might resemble the chorus in classical Greek theatre.
· Characters would often speak in the third person. They would also say the stage directions.
· Actors would often multi role.
· Objects would be used as multiple props. EG A crate might be used as a table, a chair, a horse etc.
Epic Theatre conventions
- narration
- direct address to audience
- placards and signs
- projection
- spoiling dramatic tension in advance of episodes (scenes)
- disjointed time sequences – flash backs and flash forwards – large jumps in time between episodes (scenes)
- historification – setting events in another place and/or time in order to distance the emotional impact, yet enhance the intellectual impact for the spectator (audience)
- fragmentary costumes – single items of clothing representing the entire costume
- fragmentary props – single objects representing a larger picture (or setting)
- song – like parables in the Bible, songs are used to communicate the message or themes of the drama
- demonstration of role – actors are encouraged not to fully become the role, but rather to ‘demonstrate’ the role at arms length, with a sense of detachment
- multiple roles – actors commonly perform more than one character in a drama
- costume changes in full view of the spectator (audience)
- lighting equipment in full view of the spectator (audience)
- open white lighting – due to its emotional impact, colored light on stage is eliminated – instead, the stage is flooded with white light
- alienation technique – a complex term translated differently by scholars from the German “verfremdungseffekt”, involves the use of many of the above conventions, with the ultimate aim of distancing the audience emotionally and increasing their intellectual response to the drama
http://www.thedramateacher.com
Theory
· Brecht loathed the theatre of realism. He likened the realistic theatre to the effects of a drug, in that a realistic performance pacified its audience
· Brecht’s plays were didactic and aimed to teach or instruct their audience
· Brecht used the term ‘Lehrstück’, meaning ‘learning-play’
· social activist theatre wanting the spectators to make change in their own world outside the theatre walls
· in 1926 Brecht embraced Marxism and his theatre techniques after this point served his Marxist beliefs
· Brecht’s umbrella title for a range of non-realistic techniques is ‘verfremdungseffekt’
Verfremdungseffekt, or V-effekt (German) / A-effect (English), short for ‘alienation-effect’
Misleadingly translated over the decades as ‘distancing effect’. A recent and more accepted translation is ‘to make the familiar, strange’ or ‘estrangement’
· ‘epic’ borrowed from the great poems of literature (The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Mahabharata, Ramayana)
· Brecht was influenced by (German) expressionism and had an interest in the cabaret scene in Berlin
Form
· Epic plays employed a large narrative (as opposed to a smaller plot), spanning many locations and time frames
· Brecht called scenes ‘episodes’, with each scene being relatively self-contained in the story.
Epic plays used non-linear, fractured plots, where the events of an episode were not necessarily a result of the preceding episode. This juxtaposition of scenes employing multiple locations and time frames created a montage effect
· he used his acting troupe at the Berliner Ensemble to perfect his theories on acting and the theatre
· some of his plays were historical, chronicling the life of a person (Life of Galileo, Saint Joan of the Stockyards)
· focus was always on the society being presented in the play, not individual characters
· events in plays were sometimes told from the viewpoint of a single storyteller (alienation device)
· Brecht wrote his plays with no act or scene divisions; these were added later
· long scenes told the main events of the story and were interspersed with occasional short(er) scenes
· short(er) scenes normally involved parables, used to emotionally detach the audience marginally
· parable scenes often involved the use of song, an alienation device employed by Brecht to help deliver the (Marxist) message of the play
· ‘historification’/’historicisation’ was a Brecht term defining the technique of setting the action of a play in the past to draw parallels with contemporary events. This enabled spectators to view the events of the play with emotional detachment and garner a thinking response
· Brecht crushed Aristotle’s model of the three unites of time, place and action (one location, single day)
Movement & Gesture
· mix of realistic and non-realistic movement
· movement was at times graceful, but at other times forceful
· Brecht used the Latin word ‘gestus’ to describe both individual gestures and whole body postures
· character gestus denoted one’s social attitude and human relationships with others (linked to Marxist principles)
· some Oriental gesture used (Brecht’s influence of a Balinese dance showing)
· groups of characters often positioned on the stage for functional and not aesthetic reasons
· characters grouped according to their social relationships in the play (Marxist)
Space & Actor Audience Relationship
· Brecht’s plays were performed in traditional proscenium arch theatre houses
· however, the stage curtain was often dispensed with or a half curtain used instead of a full one
· Brecht preferred to call the audience ‘spectators’
· direct address by actors/characters to audience was a strong and unconventional technique used by performers
· direct address broke the (invisible) ‘fourth wall’ and crushed traditional realistic/naturalistic conventions
· the narrator was a common figure in Brechtian dramas (Brecht was probably the father of the modern narrator)
Stagecraft
· costume was not individually identifiable eg. the farmer’s costume represented ‘a (typical) farmer’
· costume was sometimes incomplete and fragmentary eg. tie and briefcase for the businessman
· costume often denoted the character’s role or function in society (plus wealth/class)
· sets were sometimes non-existent or fragmentary (either partial sets or one object representing many of the same). At other times sets were industrial eg. ramps, treadmills (influence of Meyerhold’s constructivist set design)
· some makeup and mask use, but non-realistic and ‘theatrical’ eg. grotesque and/or caricatured
· makeup and costume used to depict a character’s social role in the play, not that of his/her everyday appearance
· signs/placards used to show audience a range of information
· screen projection used to reinforce play’s theme/s (to garner an intellectual response, not emotional)
· open white light only (as colour would generate an emotional response from the audience)
· if the house lights were left on during a performance, open white light also allowed for the spectators and performers to share a single same-lit space
· lighting instruments in full view of audience (no attempt to hide them, but rather remind the audience they were watching a play)
· music and song used to express the play’s themes independent of the main spoken text in the play (in parable scenes)
· music was used to neutralise emotion, rather than intensify it (opposite to a modern-day musical)
Acting and Characterisation
· actor was never to fully become the character, as in the realistic/naturalistic theatre
· actor was asked to demonstrate the character at arm’s length with a sense of detachment
· often characters tended to be somewhat oversimplified and stereotyped
· yet other characters were sometimes complex
· historical, real-life characters in some Brecht plays
· some (but not all) character names were generic eg. the worker, the peasant, the teacher
· mix of presentational and representational acting modes
http://www.thedramateacher.com/epic-theatre-conventions/#sthash.zRv5y1Fy.dpuf
The epic style can be adapted to any form of theatre that puts a social or political message before the exploration of character. Once character is less important than message and the intricacies of human motive less intriguing than storytelling and the exploration of situation you have Brechtian theatre.
Context
Stanislavski’s naturalism was the accepted norm but it was woefully inadequate to express the social problems Brecht saw around him. The country was in political ferment. He believed that with naturalistic theatre – the audience hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom and are sucked into believing a lie. He is not in total opposition to Stanislavski. He does not want all characters to be stereotypes or unrealistic. The central characters are recognizable and life like. The audience needs to know and understand them so they must be rooted in reality. It is only really the baddies, the extreme characters through whom Brecht is making a political or social point that ought to be stereotypes.
The message must be clear.
The audience must remain critically aware.
Stanislavski seeks to expose the workings of the inner soul of a person which Brecht ignored. Instead Brecht concentrated on how to recognize the outward signs such a person might observe in the social structure around them
Nothing irritated Brecht more than the idea of a whole system of acting was evolved which worked hard to carry sensible people, both actors and audience out of their rational senses into a world of make believe where reason and common sense were put on hold.
Brecht wanted a theatre that achieved something, that challenged and made an audience think. An audience that is sucked into the lives of characters on stage is uncritical. It doesn't ask why something happened; it merely accepts, maybe sheds a few tears, says “that’s life, that’s how it is”. Nothing has changed about the audience’s life. Brecht wanted change because he’s surrounded by a sick society (eg the Depression and the rise of Fascism) and he is looking for tools to enlighten people and do something about it.
Gestus
Brecht’s principle concern is to put over a message in such a way that an audience can be in no doubt as to the intentions of the performance – each stage picture must convey that message.
Social situations change the way people behave (Stanislavski showed through the system that people are the same the world over or through time – their pain is the eternal pain of human suffering,) Brecht believed that human beings are formed by their society and culture and their behavior is appropriate to their time. He wanted to create a theatre that was appropriate to the modern age and characters who react in a twentieth century way.
A Brechtian play must have attitude – and that attitude is political in its broadest sense. Actors must be consciously projecting the message by means of their characters and staging. They must never lose sight of their true objective (provoke debate or educate) so they must never become immersed in their character. The attitude at each moment is gest or gestus.
Brecht works with situation rather than character.
Gestus is gesture plus attitude. It includes body language and facial expression (voice and tone when necessary) but it is also the entire stage picture.
Exaggeration and Realism
There are exaggerated characters and realistic ones. It may be necessary to exaggerate certain features of a character in order to provoke the right response but for more sympathetic characters there is no need to exaggerate or they will lose sympathy. They should be a no nonsense practical down to earth person played strongly and with clear outlines but played to the audience not internalized.
Demonstration and Emotion
An actor should not pretend to be anything else. He is simply presenting a character to an audience.
You must:
1 study the part in context with the play to discover:
- the message of the whole play i.e. what the director and actors together decide to use the play to demonstrate.
- the attitude of the character will need to display in order to serve this message
2 Decide what vocal features and physical characteristics would clarify the gestus of their character. Do not build up a whole inner
life for the character.
3 Decide which characteristics might need to be exaggerated for further emphasis in order to make a particular statement about the character.
Narrative techniques
Brecht’s theatre is narrative theatre. It tells a story – not for the story’s sake but for the light it can show on ourselves as human beings in our particular social situation.
There should be no surprise – the audience should be informed of the outcome at the beginning so instead of waiting for what will happen they are focusing on why. This confirms the need for a more detached narrative voice.
Use of humor
“Spass” or fun is necessary – people must enjoy what they are doing to learn by it. His humor is the intellectual humor of the satirist. Brecht would exaggerate or ridicule in order to expose the faults of a person or system.
Choice – Not … but …
Brecht wanted to emphasize the free will of every human being to choose his own path in life. He hated the suggestion in so much of our drama that a person’s fate is written in the stars. There are many moments in our life when we need to make a choice – his plays are full of such moments – need to point out to the audience that such choices are common in everyday life and are important to recognize, act upon and live by, without regrets.
Verfremdungseffekt Making strange or Alienation Technique
Much of what has been covered is already Verfremdung already. Brecht wanted an active type of theatre that could be used as a tool for changing our flawed society. To do this EVERYTHING must be critically looked at/reexamined. Including the mechanics of theatre – naturalism, musicals, opera were trying to pull he wool over people’s eyes through the theatrical devices to cover up scene changes, costume, makeup to make someone into a character. Most theatre tried to pretend these things are not happening and try to keep the audience in the dark in order to complete the illusion.
Brecht wanted to ensure that the audience were aware that they were watching a play (surrounded by artificial and mechanical things such as lights, scenery, curtains and actors ‘being’ a character) and not real life, so that they focus on the issues and not the story.
How would they alienate the audience?
· A play’s ending might be announced at the beginning, so that the audience would not be in a state of suspense, wondering what was going to happen.
· The actors might mingle with the audience in the bar before the play started, so that the audience didn’t think that they were ‘stars’ or the actual characters they were portraying.
· Banners and slides would be used to tell the audience what was happening on stage, and to destroy the illusion that they were witnessing ‘real’ events on stage.
· The mechanics of the stage - lighting, sound equipment, props, projectors, and so on - would all be visible to the audience, so that they could not be fooled into thinking that they were watching ‘reality’.
· Characters would often address the audience directly (frequently ‘out of role’) in order to narrate the events unfolding on stage and prevent people from becoming ‘drawn into’ the action.
· Songs would be used to break up the action, and give the audience a chance to reflect on what they were seeing. The effect might resemble the chorus in classical Greek theatre.
· Characters would often speak in the third person. They would also say the stage directions.
· Actors would often multi role.
· Objects would be used as multiple props. EG A crate might be used as a table, a chair, a horse etc.
Epic Theatre conventions
- narration
- direct address to audience
- placards and signs
- projection
- spoiling dramatic tension in advance of episodes (scenes)
- disjointed time sequences – flash backs and flash forwards – large jumps in time between episodes (scenes)
- historification – setting events in another place and/or time in order to distance the emotional impact, yet enhance the intellectual impact for the spectator (audience)
- fragmentary costumes – single items of clothing representing the entire costume
- fragmentary props – single objects representing a larger picture (or setting)
- song – like parables in the Bible, songs are used to communicate the message or themes of the drama
- demonstration of role – actors are encouraged not to fully become the role, but rather to ‘demonstrate’ the role at arms length, with a sense of detachment
- multiple roles – actors commonly perform more than one character in a drama
- costume changes in full view of the spectator (audience)
- lighting equipment in full view of the spectator (audience)
- open white lighting – due to its emotional impact, colored light on stage is eliminated – instead, the stage is flooded with white light
- alienation technique – a complex term translated differently by scholars from the German “verfremdungseffekt”, involves the use of many of the above conventions, with the ultimate aim of distancing the audience emotionally and increasing their intellectual response to the drama
http://www.thedramateacher.com
Theory
· Brecht loathed the theatre of realism. He likened the realistic theatre to the effects of a drug, in that a realistic performance pacified its audience
· Brecht’s plays were didactic and aimed to teach or instruct their audience
· Brecht used the term ‘Lehrstück’, meaning ‘learning-play’
· social activist theatre wanting the spectators to make change in their own world outside the theatre walls
· in 1926 Brecht embraced Marxism and his theatre techniques after this point served his Marxist beliefs
· Brecht’s umbrella title for a range of non-realistic techniques is ‘verfremdungseffekt’
Verfremdungseffekt, or V-effekt (German) / A-effect (English), short for ‘alienation-effect’
Misleadingly translated over the decades as ‘distancing effect’. A recent and more accepted translation is ‘to make the familiar, strange’ or ‘estrangement’
· ‘epic’ borrowed from the great poems of literature (The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Mahabharata, Ramayana)
· Brecht was influenced by (German) expressionism and had an interest in the cabaret scene in Berlin
Form
· Epic plays employed a large narrative (as opposed to a smaller plot), spanning many locations and time frames
· Brecht called scenes ‘episodes’, with each scene being relatively self-contained in the story.
Epic plays used non-linear, fractured plots, where the events of an episode were not necessarily a result of the preceding episode. This juxtaposition of scenes employing multiple locations and time frames created a montage effect
· he used his acting troupe at the Berliner Ensemble to perfect his theories on acting and the theatre
· some of his plays were historical, chronicling the life of a person (Life of Galileo, Saint Joan of the Stockyards)
· focus was always on the society being presented in the play, not individual characters
· events in plays were sometimes told from the viewpoint of a single storyteller (alienation device)
· Brecht wrote his plays with no act or scene divisions; these were added later
· long scenes told the main events of the story and were interspersed with occasional short(er) scenes
· short(er) scenes normally involved parables, used to emotionally detach the audience marginally
· parable scenes often involved the use of song, an alienation device employed by Brecht to help deliver the (Marxist) message of the play
· ‘historification’/’historicisation’ was a Brecht term defining the technique of setting the action of a play in the past to draw parallels with contemporary events. This enabled spectators to view the events of the play with emotional detachment and garner a thinking response
· Brecht crushed Aristotle’s model of the three unites of time, place and action (one location, single day)
Movement & Gesture
· mix of realistic and non-realistic movement
· movement was at times graceful, but at other times forceful
· Brecht used the Latin word ‘gestus’ to describe both individual gestures and whole body postures
· character gestus denoted one’s social attitude and human relationships with others (linked to Marxist principles)
· some Oriental gesture used (Brecht’s influence of a Balinese dance showing)
· groups of characters often positioned on the stage for functional and not aesthetic reasons
· characters grouped according to their social relationships in the play (Marxist)
Space & Actor Audience Relationship
· Brecht’s plays were performed in traditional proscenium arch theatre houses
· however, the stage curtain was often dispensed with or a half curtain used instead of a full one
· Brecht preferred to call the audience ‘spectators’
· direct address by actors/characters to audience was a strong and unconventional technique used by performers
· direct address broke the (invisible) ‘fourth wall’ and crushed traditional realistic/naturalistic conventions
· the narrator was a common figure in Brechtian dramas (Brecht was probably the father of the modern narrator)
Stagecraft
· costume was not individually identifiable eg. the farmer’s costume represented ‘a (typical) farmer’
· costume was sometimes incomplete and fragmentary eg. tie and briefcase for the businessman
· costume often denoted the character’s role or function in society (plus wealth/class)
· sets were sometimes non-existent or fragmentary (either partial sets or one object representing many of the same). At other times sets were industrial eg. ramps, treadmills (influence of Meyerhold’s constructivist set design)
· some makeup and mask use, but non-realistic and ‘theatrical’ eg. grotesque and/or caricatured
· makeup and costume used to depict a character’s social role in the play, not that of his/her everyday appearance
· signs/placards used to show audience a range of information
· screen projection used to reinforce play’s theme/s (to garner an intellectual response, not emotional)
· open white light only (as colour would generate an emotional response from the audience)
· if the house lights were left on during a performance, open white light also allowed for the spectators and performers to share a single same-lit space
· lighting instruments in full view of audience (no attempt to hide them, but rather remind the audience they were watching a play)
· music and song used to express the play’s themes independent of the main spoken text in the play (in parable scenes)
· music was used to neutralise emotion, rather than intensify it (opposite to a modern-day musical)
Acting and Characterisation
· actor was never to fully become the character, as in the realistic/naturalistic theatre
· actor was asked to demonstrate the character at arm’s length with a sense of detachment
· often characters tended to be somewhat oversimplified and stereotyped
· yet other characters were sometimes complex
· historical, real-life characters in some Brecht plays
· some (but not all) character names were generic eg. the worker, the peasant, the teacher
· mix of presentational and representational acting modes
http://www.thedramateacher.com/epic-theatre-conventions/#sthash.zRv5y1Fy.dpuf