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| Bertolt Brecht |
Brecht couldn`t stay any longer in the country full of sorrows and moved to America, and after some time was announced as an American citizen. However, home will always stay home, in 1947, he returned to Europe and established Berliner Ensemble. Theatre meant a lot to him. It was a place where he had an opportunity to express his political views and opinion about society at that time.
He died in 1956, at age 54. Interesting fact: he requested to be buried with a stiletto heel in his heart.
Theories and Epic Theatre
Inquisitive Brecht was interested in many different things. Mainly his beliefs was based on Karl Marx`s theories about socialism and Chinese theatre. Marx`s theories were all about social justice. Although he never joined the Party, he was not against the communism. Literally, it was about who`s got the power and money,and who does not, and why is that happening. How does industrialisation affects people, their lives and jobs, and the way they label themselves who is who. Obviously, who`s got a higher position is better than the ones who does all the poor work. But better job does not make a better person. This is just all the consequences of the war. It is like a survival between animals. Stays alive only those who can adapt themselves in the environment. In that case, most of his poems and plays are called theatre of war.
Brecht was not afraid just go for it and fail. Basically his theories started from `this might
work this might not` but this is how you find what you are looking for by rejecting things and theories that wasn`t working for you. That`s how he designed his own theories and is known as one of the greatest practitioners ever.
Epic Theatre was founded by Brecht during the years when realism, naturalism and melodrama were global favoured theatre forms. Naturalism is all about convincing the audience to believe that what happens on stage is real. It is more like recreating a real life on stage referring to what was actually happening in real life during this time. Using realism and naturalism forms of theatre he engaged people and tried to send them a message. Brecht wanted the audience to forget, escape from their minds, just stop thinking for a moment. Basically, Bertolt Brecht didn`t want people to enjoy his theatre he wanted them to think about it and question them so they could start thinking about really important things, why is there a war, is it necessary, what people fight for, He wanted to open the spectators eyes and realize how cruel war actually is as some people seem not to understand that.
Brecht believed that each scene in a play has to have its story and even though it is the same play the scenes should be worked on separately as it was a different story in each scene. In that case, every scene becomes interesting itself and after watching couples of scenes the audience don`t know what to expect next. It also leads to alienation effect.
So how did he woo the audience to his side? Brecht used the alienation effects (Verfremdungseeffekt). The alienation effect was used to distract the audience to something new. To do something what spectators would not expect to happen. When the natural rhythm of the story is interrupted and it does not follow the regular criteria what people are willing to see or have been predicting what`s going to happen. In that case, it makes them start thinking and questioning. Make them use their brains. It is like ice bucket challenge. It wakes people up and spreads around. The idea of alienation effects was to remind the audience that they were in a theatre, watching a play, and that people on stage are actors, not real people, playing their characters, communicating ideas to us the audience. However, the effects typically include:
- In order to audience member to be aware of each other house lights were on during the plays.
- All actors performed in black instead of fancy costumes.
- Very often scenes were sung.
- Posters were used to display the information for the audience.
The following are his techniques for actors:
- Exchange roles with other actors.
- Breaking the fourth wall. Perform directly to the audience.
- Use mismatched emotions, for instance play sad in a comedy scene.
- Robotic, dreamlike movements.
- Speak as like quoting someone else rather than speaking yourself.
- Not matching voice and movement.
- Keep physically and emotionally detached from the other actors.
- Gestus. Presentation of an emotion through gesture.
- Didacticism. Teaching of a moral lesson
Mother Courage
The play Mother Courage and Her Children is a narrative story about how war destructed many families and changed people lives forever. The main character is Anna Fierling that was a real protagonist through a play, although everyone calls her `Mother Courage`. She is a brave and valiant woman, despite the fact she loves her children one by one. She plays a `tragic figure` in a play. That means she causes sad, pitiful feeling to the readers and audience through her suffering. She is a victim due to social state of affairs, faced the cruelty of war and lost the most important people in her life and according to the government it was her fault. The audience likes her because she tries to stay strong and shows her endurance through out the play. However `Mother Courage` has two sides positive and negative which is called `a heroic anti-hero`. In one part of the play she is even compared to a hyena the animal. Despite the death of her 3 children she stays around the same battle field. The audience should criticize her for not caring too much about her children but at the same time it makes them think why would she do that, if I was her what would I do, would I stay. And this is what Brecht wished to achieve in a theatre. People thinking about what`s going around and not just watching. Brecht tried to send a message to a people about what problems the war causes to people through Mother Courage`s character. The war harms not only beauty of the earth but also the beauty of human beings.
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| From left to right: Eilif, Kattrin, Mother Courage, Swiss Cheese |
Mother Courage and Her Children known as theatre of war play and was performed in USA starring Meryl Streep, knowing as one of the best american actress and in London, National Theatre starring Fiona which showed a spectacular performance and left everyone speechless. Mother Courage has moments that was not expected to happen and that makes it shocking and exiting at the same time.
Differences between Stanislavski and Brecht Techniques
They both are world wide known theatre practitioners but their techniques are completely different. According to Stanislavski actor should be acting realistic so the audience should be involved in the story and think of it as it is real. He used methods such as `Magic If`, Objectives, Actions which they are all give psychological approach to the character. The actor needs to believe that everything whats happening is real and be drowned in the life of the role. One of his most known method is `memory recall`. The actor sits down on the chair totally relaxed and uses memories to recall feelings. For example, if the character in a play just made a delicious dinner, the actors needs to remember a time when he/she ate something really nice and tasty, recall the smell, taste, was it hot or cold and how he/she felt about it, and use these feelings to get under the character`s skin.
Brecht theories are completely opposite comparing to Stannislavski. His theories are more about the audience not enjoying the show but thinking and questioning about it. His theories doesn`t require to be realistic, although it should be more dramatic, dreamlike. As mentioned above Brecht wanted to wake the audience up and send a message to the world by using theatre, plays and actors than Stanislavski aimed to make the play more believable.
My character Kattrin
I got to be a dumb daughter of mother courage who is not able to speak. She is considered as the most affected character by war. She is not able to save both her brothers, Eilif and Swiss Cheese, because of her disabilities. She`s been pitying throughout the whole play. Mother Courage keeps highlighting that Kattrin is a whore and is afraid that one day she may be raped and never get married.
Evaluation of Performance
Today`s performance went very well. Everyone prove their ability to act under Brecht`s technique. That means: exaggerated movements, involving audience and making them be a part of the performance even though the audience was quite rude and wasn`t listening. That might be because they are not used to that kind of theatre style and knowing that the audience members were mostly teenagers, felt the situation that they had been asked, they started chatting. I really liked how Klaudian involved the audience by making pauses between sentences and facing the audience members which gave the opinion that he`s waiting for their answer. It is important to mention that everyone on stage were relaxed as the performance wasn`t supposed to be believable. I think that the most shocking thing was that we were allowed to use scripts on stage, it supposed to be weird for audience as they are not used to it.
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/mothercourage/
http://www.shmoop.com/mother-courage-and-her-children/kattrin.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l7Yb49x7A
http://www.slideshare.net/Crooked49/bertolt-brecht-epic-theatre
"Marx`s theories were all about social justice and were against communism"...!! Although he never joined the Party , he was not against Communism Amber.
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