Brecht

Who is Bertolt Brecht?

Born in Germany in 1898, Brecht wrote his first play at the age of only 20 - the same year he was conscripted into the army. He became increasingly involved in theatre and studying the writings of Karl Marx. Brecht was forced to flee from Germany during the Second World War as his communist sympathies endangered him. During this time of unrest, Brecht wrote some of his most famous plays, Life of Galileo (1938), Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1943).

Brecht called his plays 'epic theatre' - plays that tell a story, usually historical, on a large scale. Brecht used epic theatre as a way of presenting his political views. In the final analysis, his plays are propaganda, made interesting by Brecht's theatrical genius. The plays tell stories in a way designed to make the audience (or 'spectators') feel they are simply observers, watching the events happening on stage and making judgements about them. Each scene makes a particular point about human behaviour for the audience to consider.

In Brecht's epic theatre, the audience became like scientists, sitting back and observing events in a completely detached and logical way. The audience would form intelligent opinions and make rational judgements on the behaviour of the characters and the action of the play, relate these to the social and political context of the real world, and then work to change that world. All Brecht's theatrical techniques were designed to make sure this happened.

Adapted from Living Drama, Bruce Burton

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."

~ Bertolt Brecht

Epic Theatre

Episodic Structure

Epic plays used non-linear, fractured plots, where the events of an episode were not necessarily a result of the preceding episode. Plays move in a series of independent scenes, sometimes skipping years in time and moving from place to place. Each scene exists as an 'episode' and delivers a clear message about human behaviour. The scenes are relatively self-contained with the story. The juxtaposition of scenes employing multiple locations and time frames created a montage effect.

LOGBOOK - In your own words, explain why you think Brecht's plays use episodic structure. How might it help achieve his overall purpose?

Workshop response - Reflect on the Picture Book Fragments workshop from the viewpoint of either an actor or audience member. How was your understanding and experience of the story affected by the fragmented structure of the piece?

Direct Address

The father of the modern (individual) narrator is widely considered to be Bertolt Brecht. In his Epic Theatre style, developed in collaboration with other practitioners, Brecht encouraged characters to directly address the audience (to "break the fourth wall"). This was seen as one of Brecht’s many distancing (alienation) techniques, reminding the audience to remain emotionally detached from the action of the play. Without notice, a character would address lines to the audience directly, jolting their intellectual reaction to the plot and themes of the play. In the process, the character’s function may change to that of storyteller or quasi-narrator.

The epilogue of Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan is an example of this. The open-ended conclusion to the play, deliberately left without proper resolution (denouement) so the audience can finish the play themselves in the real world outside the theatre walls, has no character assigned to speak the final lines. An obvious direct audience address, this brief epilogue can be spoken by anyone the director chooses. But one thing remains clear- whoever speaks them is functioning as a narrator.

An important difference to Brecht’s version of direct address is a character who is named as the play’s narrator from the outset and behaves as such throughout the entire performance.

LOGBOOK- Workshop Response - Survey your audience after your 'Narrating a Silent Movie' exercise and record their responses. How did breaking the fourth wall affect their experience of the 'silent movie'?

Gestus

Gestus is socially encoded expression that is deliberately employed by an actor. Character gestus denotes one’s social attitude and human relationships with others. Brecht felt that traditional theatre focused too much on facial expression and so gestures dried up. He wanted people to investigate their own body language as well as the body language of a social class, their mannerisms and customs included. As Brecht was uninterested in traditional drama that presents the mental attitudes and actors of its protagonists as God-given or unknown forces, he wanted to display a character’s actions as choices a person makes because of the social factors affecting them. For example, a ‘peasant’ would lick their plate not because they were a peasant but because that is how they had been brought up to behave in a less wealthy environment.

LOGBOOK- Workshop response- During your exercises in class, 'Snobs and Servants' and 'Montage Line-up', take some photos of the gestures used in combination with a clear attitude and status (make sure you have permission to take a photo of a peer; it is strictly for Drama logbook use only). Reflect on the use of gestus in terms of what was communicated to the audience.

Historification

'Historification’ (or ’historicisation’) is a Brechtian term defining the technique of setting the action of a play in the historic past to draw parallels with contemporary events. Historification enabled spectators to view the events of the play with emotional detachment and evoke a "thinking response". Brecht distanced contemporary events by placing them in the past. By communicating similarities and differences between the past and present, he encouraged the spectator to have an intellectual response to his plays and to seek change.

LOGBOOK- How might an Australian audience respond to the performance of a play about the Royal Wedding (Harry and Meaghan) set during the Great Depression (1929-32)? Why?

Note - if you need some basic information about the Great Depression in Australia, check out:

Australia during the Great Depression

Workshop response- How was the audience affected by the use of historification?

Verfremdungseffekt

The 1964 translation, 'alienation effect', later became 'distancing effect'. Today, the most accepted translation or Verfremdung is 'defamiliarisation'. Essentially, the purpose of this technique is to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance.

Techniques sometimes used to achieve the defamiliarisation/alienation effect include:

Structure
episodic, disconnected montage of scenes
often not chronological
purposefully open-ended (spectators arrive at their own conclusions)
Staging
bare stage to prevent audience from escaping into a fictional theatrical world
exposed stage "machinery" such as the lighting grid, wires and pulleys
exposed back wall and wings of the stage
Design
use of technology (projections- words, images, film)
placards
industrial or mechanical design aesthetic
Music
incorporating popular culture in an ironic way
musicians not hidden; on stage with the actors
discordant with the action on the stage
Acting & Character
actors not completely connected to character
actors present instead of become their character

Video left: Notice how this student is "alienating" you, her spectators, in this video....

Images below: actors sit in chairs onstage and watch each other perform (instead of disappearing into wings offstage); a production of 'The Threepenny Opera' using techniques such as exposed sides of stage and the Coca-Cola sign design (commenting on capitalism).

LOGBOOK- Video Response- Discuss some of the techniques used in this production to "alienate" the audience. Have you personally seen any of these techniques used in a theatrical production?

Workshop response - Write a paragraph discussing your emotional duologue workshop experience. Make sure you include detail of the verfremdungseffekt techniques you utilised.

MORE InFORMATION

If you would like to learn more about Bertolt Brecht and his Epic Theatre, take a look at the following link and video:

BBC Bitesize - Brecht

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