Berty & Kyangwali

Monday 8th April

Today, Mr Fearnehough sat us down and talked to us about IST's got Talent, but more importantly the Theatre Vs Oppression Charity. TVO uses theatre all over the world in special workshops in LEDC's as a tool against oppression and cruelty. In this instance, Mr. Fearnehough talked to us about the refugee camp in Kyangwali and TVO's work, in whichhe participated last summer (2012). Kyangwali is a refugee camp in Uganda, containing 30,000 people. The main reason for this talk was that last year, Year 12 drama students organised a talent show in order to raise monay and awareness for TVO and, in this case, Kyangwali. We aim to do the same this year. I think this is an excellent way of raising money because it puts us as drama students in the position of director and performer for the talent show.

Wednesday 10th April

In a dramatic turn of events, we left Commedia and are now studying Berthold Brecht. Now I've heard this name a lot, especially in TAPS, and I wondered at the time, who the hell is he? Well, as it turns out, Berty was very much the German Don Juan, a ladies man, bit of a player. More importantly however, he started a unique genre of theatre, designed to anger and inflame its spectators into rioting and revolution. You see, Berty was a hardcore communist and happened to live in Germany in the 1930's. Prior to the rise of Nazism, he was desperately hoping for a proletariat revolution and so did his dutiful communist bit and tried to inflame the lower classes through theatre.He therefore made his plays very direct, but he also made sure everybody knew it was a play, that it wasn't real.He wanted the spectators to be opinionated by the end, not for them to float through and forget it. To do so, he constantly broke their concentration and focus, with narrators and a breaking of the fourth wall. This is called the A-effect, or alienation effect. Brecht does this to make sure the audience are thinking hard about the puropse his play, not how tragic the story is (and they often were tragic). He wanted the audience to connect with the characters and to do so he made some of the actors sit in the audience and watch when it wasn't their go. These techniques worked and got is audiences so angry they left the theatre rioting. Brecht moved to America to escape Nazism but returned after the war, before dying in 1956.

Thursday 11th April

Today, we backed up our theoretical work with some practical Brecht. I immediately realised I preferred this type of acting to Commedia as it felt more natural to me. For example, I had to play a servant girl who finds the king's baby whilst she is trying to escape from the castle, which has been taken by the revolutionaries. She has to take the baby and make the decision to save his life, all the while putting herself in danger. I really enjoyed that because I did not find it too hard to simulate that kind of emotion, having seen it so often in films. We each did this and discussed our performances. Lydia frantic looking around made her look scared and vulnerable, which is exactly what was needed for the servant girl character to come through. Halley's fall and slide added greatly to the drama of it all, which is something I need to keep in mind when I act and think about different tension levels.