Download Brecht's Epic Theatre: Acting, Designing, Playwriting, Lighting, Directing, Composing and more Exams Theatre in PDF only on Docsity!
From miscellaneous WWW sources Bertolt Brecht 1898- 1956
EPIC THEATRE
using Verfremdungseffekt (AKA the V-effect, Making strange, Distancing, Alienation) “The actor is not Lear He shows Lear.” Verfremdungseffekt: through Fixing , Gest, Spass, and Multimedia Brecht was against naturalistic theatre where the audience “hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom.” “The V-effect is to make the spectator adopt an attitude of inquiry and criticism in his approach to the incident. No attempt is made to put the stage (and the audience) in a trance.”
Everyday Examples of the V-Effect: “Witnesses of an accident demonstrating to newcomers how the victim behaved, a facetious person imitating a friend's walk”….. Stage Example: “Chinese Theatre”
Aids to achieve this technique:
“1. Transposition into the third person.
- Transposition into the past.
- Speaking the stage directions out loud.” “Addressing the audience direct” as both actor and character. Stage “purged from anything magical” Use of half curtains “Making visible the sources of light” Using signs at the start of scenes
Fixing
From the first rehearsals, the Cast forms opinions of the incidents or characters they are playing. I.e. for what social purpose they are performing this particular historical event. These opinions, once “fixed”, then determine the acting style for each character and event.
Gest
“Gesture with attitude”. To be able convey the intentions of the performance Either by the whole picture, a single gesture or voice inflection Example of Gest: Gesture= “Soldiers marching across a stage.” Gest= “Soldiers marching over wounded and dead across a stage”
physicality- gesture used to indicate inner feelings ensemble swap roles to evaluate characters
Epic Designer
dispense with illusion and symbolism no 'fourth wall' minimal props set change in view of audience one prop per person- representative using half curtains
Epic Playwright
structured episodically awareness of events in the past tell audience through labels use of cue cads to reinforce- fill in missing link socialist message prevailed use of parable clear one sided message 'anti illusive techniques- flash back, missing time
Epic Lighting
The lighting director in Epic theatre needs to abandon the idea of hiding sources of light to achieve a mysterious effect to draw the audience into the action. Brecht flooded the stage with 'harsh white light', regardless of where the action was taking place and leaving the stage lamps in full view of the audience. Obvious lighting constantly reminds the audience they are watching a play.
Epic Director
An Epic director decides the blocking for the actor, which is done not for formal beauty. Brecht wanted directors to block so it clarifies the structure of the human relationships in the play. Brecht wanted to use everything on the stage to make the audience develop a more critical attitude.
Epic composer
The composer in Epic theatre is very important as Brecht intentionally interrupts the action at 'key junctures', with songs to get the message across. The composer should express his ideas of the plays themes independently and provide a separate comment on the action about themes and ideas. Music helps distance the audience by not reinforcing the text but to provide a counterpoint to the action on the stage. The words and tunes clash which draws attention to the words.
Aims
(two essentials)... The message must be clear The audience must remain critically aware
Brechtian Techniques: Archetypes & stereotypes Gestus & V Effect (Adding meaning & Making Strange) Placards Luxury Balance Opposing Tension Focus on social classes Ensemble (actors on stage at all times) Montage (Putting scenes together) Breaking down the fourth wall on stage ARTAUD Artaud worked primarily in France in the early part of the century (died in 1948). Whereas Brecht thought problems were in society, Artaud thought they were in the subconscious. Thought values had become the property of the elite. Not civilization, but syphilization (his term) We need a theatre that stirs up feelings by stirring up pain. Language is a tool of rationalization, we can deal with it. Theatre should not work through language, but something more elemental that gets down deep. Visual and aural explosions, surprises, violence. Action should surround the audience. Large, open spaces. Overhead bridges. He liked to use space like factories and airplane hangars for his work, ritualistic costumes. Huge puppets, instruments, unidentifiable lighting - vibrating, shriveling effect, sound - staccato, shrill, like a factory. We need myths, but new myths. "The theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively" The only way to heal is through the Theatre of Cruelty. Forcing confrontation to face things buried in subconscious. Actors and audience should leave exhausted and transformed. Certain techniques have gotten into standard acting techniques body movement and vocal sounds
Biography of Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in the medieval city of Augsburg, part of the Bavarian section of the German Empire. Married in 1897, his father was a Catholic and his mother a Protestant. Brecht was their first child and he was baptized as Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht. His father, Bertolt Friedrich Brecht, worked as Chief Clerk in a paper factory and clearly fit the definition of “bourgeois.” His mother, Wilhelmine Friederike Sophie Brezing, was ill with breast cancer most of his young life. He had one brother, Walter, who was born in 1900. Throughout his life Brecht was supported by his family, especially his father with whom he disagreed strongly concerning the bourgeois lifestyle. His father continued to provide financial support and a home for much of his life. Only one correspondence between them survives: a letter where Brecht begs his father to raise his illegitimate children. Brecht was a sickly child, with a congenital heart condition and a facial tic. As a result he was sent to a sanitarium to relax. At age six he attended a Protestant elementary school (Volksschule) and at age ten a private school: The Royal Bavarian Realgymnasium (Königlich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium). Like most students, he was educated in Latin and the humanities, and later exposed to thinkers such as Nietzsche. He suffered a heart attack at the age of twelve, but soon recovered and continued his education. While in school he began writing, and ended up co-founding and co-editing a school magazine called “The Harvest”. By age sixteen he was writing for a local newspaper and had written his first play, The Bible , about a girl who must choose whether between living or dying and saving many others. He was later almost expelled at age eighteen for disagreeing on whether it was necessary to defend his country in time of war. By nineteen he had left school and started doing clerical work for the war, prevented from more active duty due to health problems. In 1917 he resumed his education, this time attending Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet in Munich where he matriculated as a medical student. While there he attended Artur Kutscher’s seminars on the theater. He despised many of his fellow students and took every opportunity to return home. By this time his mother was heavily drugged with morphine as a result of her progressing cancer. He started to write Baal at this time, a play concerned with suffering caused by excessive sexual pleasures. Brecht’s sex life is fascinating in many ways. He is thought to have had no less than three mistresses at any time throughout his adult life. As a child, the family’s second servant, Marie Miller, used to hide objects in her undergarments for Brecht and his brother to search for. Through Brecht’s poetry we are told that his mother used to smell his clothes to determine the extent of his sexual activities. By the age of sixteen he began to frequent a brothel as part of consciencious effort to broaden his experiences. Between ages sixteen and twenty he simultaneously pursued eight girls, including Paula Banholzer, the woman who gave birth to his illegitimate child in
- He is known to have experimented with homosexuality, often inviting literary and musically inclined males friends to his room on weekends in order for them to
Pedro (the harbor of Los Angeles). He was able to collaborate on his writings with many other German exiles in Los Angeles, including Thomas Mann. In October of 1947, during the McCarthy years, Brecht was called to appear before the House Committee for Un-American Activities in order to investigate the “subversion” of Hollywood. Although not an official member of America’s communist party, Brecht left the United States for Switzerland the next day. He soon reunited with Helen Wiegel and they travelled to East Berlin in 1948 and set up the Berliner Ensemble with full support from the communist regime. In 1950, Brecht and Wiegel were granted Austrian citizenship. Brecht experimented with dada and expressionism in his early plays, but soon developed a unique style suited his own vision. He detested the “Aristotelian” drama and the manner in which it made the audience identify with the hero to the point of self-oblivion. The resulting feelings of terror and pity he felt led to an emotional catharsis that prevented the audience from thinking. Determined to destroy the theatrical illusion, Brecht was able to make his dreams realities when he took over the Berliner Ensemble. The Berliner Ensemble came to represent what is today called “epic theater”. Epic theater breaks with the Aristotelian concepts of a linear story line, a suspension of disbelief, and progressive character development. In their place, epic theater uses episodic plot structure, contains little cause and effect between scenes, and has cumulative character development. The goal is one of estrangement, or “Verfremdung”, with an emphasis on reason and objectivity rather than emotion, or a type of critical detachment. This form of theater forces the audience to distance itself from the stage and contemplate on the action taking place. To accomplish this, Brecht focused on cruel action, harsh and realistic scenes, and a linear plot with no climax and denouement. By making each scene complete within itself Brecht sought to prevent illusion. A Brecht play is meant to provoke the audience into not only thinking about the play, but into reforming society by challenging common ideologies. Following in the footsteps of Pirandello, he blurs the distinction between life and theatre so that the audience is left with an ending that requires social action. Brecht received the National Prize, first class, in 1951. In 1954 he won the international Lenin Peace Prize. Brecht died of a heart attack on August 14, 1956 while working on a response to Samual Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. He provided instructions that a stiletto be placed in his heart and that he be buried in a steel coffin so that his corpse would not be riddled with worms. He also left a will giving the proceeds of his various works to particular mistresses, including Elisabeth Hauptmann and Ruth Berlau. Unfortunately for them, the will lacked the necessary witness signatures and was therefore void. His widow, Helen Wiegel, generously gave small amounts of money to the specified women. Brecht is buried in the Dorotheenfriedhof in Berlin. Thanks to: Delamare-arts.com: Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956.http://www.delamare-arts.com/brecht.htm. Kattwinkel, Susan. Brecht and Artaud: basic facts and differences, 2004. http://groups.msn.com/PerformingZone/yourwebpage1.msnw. Smith, J. N. "ClassicNotes: Bertolt Brecht." GradeSaver.com. 4 April 2000. GradeSaver. 16 April, 2005 <http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/ about_bertolt_brecht.html>.
