Week 25: Intro. to Brecht

Monday: Today Mr. Fearnehough told us about a CAS project that the theatre students traditionally do. It was the "IST's got talent" event. It is in association with TvO (theatre versus oppression). 

One of the theatre practices used by TvO

TvO "is a collective of educators, counsellors, theatre workers and artists working with theories of dramatherapy, counselling and the theories of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. To this end the organization works with educational establishments, health care workers, governments and international human rights organizations, as well as individuals to develop training and provide support for specific situations."-excerpt from TvO mission statement. 

Mr, Fearnehough had gone on a trip to a refugee camp in Uganda with this organization over the summer. He told us stories about how it really was in the refugee camps and how his group and the one before had made a difference, by breaking down social issues or helping provide incomes to some. The way that he talked about how theatre could be used in a real life situation, not to change abstract things like politics or philosophy, but the way people associate with each other, the act of a man and a woman touching, or helping a dying person, was amazing. We had been studying commedia dell'arte which is solely for entertainment, this was a way to use theatre to change the world. Another interesting thing he said was that they would teach the refugees one thing, then they would use it in their own way. e.g. they taught them how to rap, then they rapped in their native language: Swahili. 

Wednesday:  We discussed the TPPP and the PPP a little bit, then we began a new topic, leaving commedia behind! We began Brecht. First we wrote down everything we already knew about Brecht in a mind map. Halley already knew a lot about him because she had learned about him in TaPS. Mr. Fearnehough told us even more about his style of theatre. Its purpose is to make the audience think, about social issues, particularly communist ideals since that was Brecht's ideology. To keep the audience thinking he believed he had to keep them from experiencing the performance emotionally, to achieve this he used the alienation effect (A-Effect). This simply put is continually reminding the audience that this [the play] is not real

Ways the A-Effect can be Achieved

• Having the actors sit in the audience instead of going backstage (even talk to those around them)
• This makes the audience see them as a person not just a character in the story
• Suggests equality between the audience and the actor, no hierarchy with the actor on top
• Use a narrator-whenever the audience is at risk of getting into the story have the narrator interrupt
• Uncomfortable seats
• Allow the audience to see the lighting rig (no tab curtain)
• Don't hide scene changes
• Use character positions as names (e.g. the mother's name would be Mother)
• Have a suggestive set, allow it to be a representative as possible while still portraying the setting.
• Crack jokes at "inappropriate" moments of the performance
• Use the third person between two people (speaking to one another)

We also watched a few videos about his practice, including one about his wife a Mother Courage. Here is one that is very good about his practices and how to uses them in the modern theatre.

Thursday: We experimented with Brecht's acting style today. Mr. Fearnehough told us a story about a servant girl who finds the son of a nobleman during a rebellion/coup/revolution. She takes the baby to keep it safe. She spends the rest of her life running from the soldiers and protecting the child. We performed two scenes from this play. We did them twice, the first time in "normal" dramatic style, and the second in pairs (one person as narrator and the other as the servant girl). The first scene was when the servant girl finds the child (while in the nobleman's house). She is scared and running away. The second is when she is deciding whether or not she will marry an ugly, completely horrible farmer to keep the baby safe, knowing that this will mean she loses her fiance forever. In the first scene I tried to show my fear and nervousness with short, jerky movements, I also borrowed Halley's big entrance (running in loudly). I attempted to talk a lot as well. In the second scene, I played with my ring, as though it were an engagement ring, to show nervousness and indecision. I also meant to take it off and leave it when I left the stage. One thing that we all had difficulty with was miming the baby. I was difficult to hold it natural and not "drop" it roughly when moving it. When me and Mary did the second scene in a Brechtian style, she was the narrator and I was the servant girl. Ideally she would have told the audience what the servant girl's final decision would be. I also tried to use many pros and cons in my dialogue. This was meant to engage the intellectual side of the audience, and not their emotions. One thing I would change, for sure, if I did it again was not refer to the baby as "it". This made the audience laugh, broke my concentration, and took me and the audience away the super objective.