This week in theatre was quite a shift from what we’ve been
doing lately, because our commedia piece “Love Wins All” is done!!! On Monday
Mr. Fearnehough presented us with the idea of running the school show “IST’s
Got Talent”, a task which is both daunting and exciting to me. However the main
point behind the talent show is actually to raise money that goes directly to a
refugee camp in Africa. Mr. Fearnehough took
the lesson to show us the direct results of the money raised in the past and
its effect on the community at the refugee camp. Additionally he explained the
types of theater workshops that were presented in the camp. It was interesting
to learn about how theater can be used to rehabilitate people and entire
communities, and not purely for entertainment but for healing as well.
Sometimes I place theater in a box, and put it away on a shelf full of
superfluous things. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to enjoy commedia dell’arte
or have a meaningful conversation about drama, because in comparison to the
rest of the world it can seem at times to be shallow. However learning that the
different exercises and team-building activities that stemmed from work in
theater were actually improving these peoples’ lives, it really opened my eyes
to the possibilities of theater as a form of healing.
Wednesday
we started learning about the theory of Bertolt Brecht or “Berty”. I’d actually
already learned a bit about him with my TAPs ensemble in London. I was familiar with the “alienation”
effect, his use of direct address, and his attempts to isolate the audience all
with the aim of the audience being aware of the play and thus primed for social
change. We discussed how his epic (or dialectical) theatre’s sole purpose was
to inspire revolution. His theater was aimed at the lower working classes, and
thus had very direct messages and symbols. The point of watching one of his
plays was not to connect with the characters and slip into a trance of
emotional sympathy, instead Brecht wanted the audience to be fully aware that
the character onstage was just an actor and that jolt from the story would
force his audiences to think and take their own action. It can even be said
that he wanted his audience to have a connection with the actors, in an equal
basis (communism) when the actors would literally come and sit in the audience.
The whole point of the alienation effect was to stop the audience from getting
into the story, which was achieved by unrealistic sets, narrators that
frequently interrupted stories, and constant breaking of the 4th
wall. So far I’m very intrigued by Brecht’s theory and from a historical angle
his work seems very radical and thus significant. However I’ve yet to see a
Brecht production and I have the creeping fear that I will prefer the
plush-seated proscenium arch theatres and comfortably watch “One Man Two
Guvnors” while I block out the problems of the real world…
On Thursday
we did some studio work to get us involved with some Brechtian techniques.
First we had to act out a dramatic moment: a poor (but cute…) servant girl
discovers the royal orphaned baby in the midst of a rebellious coup and must
decide whether or not to take the baby with her as she flees the castle. After
presenting our initial interpretations, and refraining from using baby props, we
discussed the positives and negatives of each person’s performance. Axel’s was
good because he slowed down his pace and “clocked” the presence of the baby on
the groud, so the audience got the chance to notice we he had noticed. Also Lydia looked
around frantically as if she didn’t know which way the guards were coming from.
I decided to make my entrance dramatic and I started by running/stumbling onto
the stage and falling to the ground before discovering the baby. After we were
“comfortable” with the dramatic aspects we had to switch it up and add in some
Brechtian techniques. We paired up and one partner began the scene by
explaining what was going to happen to the audience, in the role of narrator (I
played the narrator) and the other was the servant girl (Axel) who, upon
discovering the baby, listed out loud the pros and cons of taking the baby.
Though we’d just started this section when the bell rang, it already made an
impact on me because all of a sudden the audience could tell that my character was
not invested in the story and thus unreal.
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