BERTOLT BRECHT

1898 – 1956

Playwright

Director And

Actor

Born 1898 – Augsburg, south Germany Becomes a medical student serves as medic in WW1 and the sees horrors of the

wounded and many of his school friends are killed.

1917 – decides to study drama instead and sickened by the excesses of the war he turns to theatre to change the world

He had been reading Karl Marx and felt Marx’s political and philosophical ideas were close to his own

He wrote many plays and had a love of collaborating with designers, musicians and artists

He becomes a renowned Writer and Director

His work has had a profound impact and influence on developments in

theatre throughout the 20th and 21st centuries

Brecht’s Plays

Bael (1918).

Drums in the Night,

Jungle of the Cities (1923)

A Man's a Man (1926).

Mahagonny. In 1927

The Threepenny Opera. (1928)

The Lehrstuck (1929-30) teaching plays

The Measure Taken (1930).

The Mother (1932)

The Severn Deadly Sins

The Roundheads and the Peakheads

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich.

Galileo (1939),

Mother Courage (1939),

The Good Man of Szechuan (1941),

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)

Caucausian Chalk Circle (1943).

Hangman Also Die (1943

The Days of the Commune (1949), 

Influences on his work

Admired Elizabethan theatre An almost bare stage with the audience

standing round itPolitical and personal events unfolding in

swiftly changing scenes Gripping stories of Kings and their lives

presented for a semi illiterate audiencePerformance that would have taken place in

daylight ( makes audience aware

they are watching a play )

The performances of Travelling Fairs

Tales of heroic deeds

A singer/ narrator

Stories with a moral purpose and added pictorial illustrations

Accompanying music on a barrel organ

Significant changes in performance from his ideas

He believed in people’s ability to change.

Theatre was about exploring the

landscape of society not individual characters

He rejected the traditional theatre for it focused on

the individual,

their psychology

their personal crisis

‘His desire for a theatre that through it’s

expression of particular opinions and attitudes could effect change in the material world.

The change he sought was based on his belief that the oppressed working class had to be empowered to alter their miserable lives through structured political action.’

’

• Mackey, Sally Cooper,Simon (2000). Drama and Theatre Studies . cheltenham: Stanley Thornes. 316.

Theatre should be about exploring the political

Develops Epic Theatre He searched for a form of theatre that

would project the crisis in society and the individuals place within it.

He wanted a questioning attitude from both his actors and audience

He described his epic theatre as

“narrative drama about the state of society”

Epic theatre –is not realism

events and people are depicted within their social and political environment

Characters are often representative of their social group/class – they do not have personal names but are called

e.g. the peasant – the soldier -

Epic He defined epic theatre as challenging

the dream world of dramatic illusion

He wanted a spectator who was awake and alert

He wanted to pose problems that would lead the spectator to action with a task to achieve in the real world

How does it challenge the work of Stanislavski and realism

Key points

Brecht emphasises

• The message must be clear

• The audience must remain critically aware and not become emotionally lost in the tragedy of an individual character

• Stanislavski emphasises the inner feelings the inner soul of individual character

Similarities

Stanislavski

• Search for truth

• Integrity and a response to the modern world

• Ensemble playing Hard work and dedication

• Close reading of the text

Brecht

• Search for truth

• Integrity and a response to the changing modern world

• Ensemble playing Hard work and dedication

• Close reading of the text

Different Emphasis Stanislavski Emphasises

• the inner feelings the inner soul

• What are the characters’ motives

• He wants to know why something is so on a personal level

• How can we understand this character from his personal emotional experience

Brecht Emphasis

• outward signs such as in social structures of society

• He wants to know what are

this characters' social motivations

• What are the social conditions making them behave this way

• What conditions are prevalent in society and can we change them

What would you see Simple staging – clear white stage lights – few but well made props

Back projection of slides –with titles for each scene – that tells you what is going to happen or picture

Each scene is self contained

Characters are sometimes named but often archetypal – e.g. the peasant – the farmer of class or social grouping

There is a usually a narrator or chorus that tells part of the story as it progresses or comments on the action

What would you see

Actors playing multiple roles

Actors often speaking directly to the audience

The action is interrupted by a song that comments on the ideas in the play or moves the action on

Sometimes characters are in half masks

The blocking is very specific and emphasises the social and class relationships

The Subject Matter

(Epic)

Narratives are displaced in time and placePolitical parablesEpic story telling

The Political Purpose/Message and Dramatic Intention

Heavily influenced by political ideals of Karl MarxTo arouse in the audience a need for changeTo keep an audience thinking.

The Staging Style Adopted

The proscenium archEpic as opposed to dramatic( Aristotelian)Swiftly changing scenes

Design Elements

Realistic selective detailVery well made propsCostumes made to look well worn

Technical Elements

Hard white light that can be seen by the audience The half curtainThe revolve

Role Of Actors And Performance Style

Getsus

The actor is in role not a characterThe actor as demonstratorThe actor as the main source of distancingThe use of gestus

The Actor Audience Relationship

The role of the narrator/chorus. Direct addressThe isolating of songs as a form of commentThe abolition of illusionThe audience encouraged to smoke and drink

Audience Response

They be alerted to the need for changeTo observe rather than empathise

Epic theatre –is not realism

events and people are depicted within their social and political environment

GestusMontage Verfremdungseffekt (look at things /actions with new understanding)

Design Music

Directorial Interpretation/Production Style

( Gestus )

(Montage)

(Verfremdungseffekt)

The director as part of the team

The use of music to comment on the action

Very refined and specific detail

The blocking -clear and carefully constructed stage pictures that help explain the ideas and characters’ social relationships

THE PLAYWRIGHTStructured episodicallyPeople shown within their social and

political environmentMany scenes that tell a part of the story in

a self contained way Awareness of past eventsTell audience what's happening through

scenes titles or labelsUse of parables

Epic theatre is not realism so the Stanislavsky naturalistic acting style is not appropriate.

The actor must stand outside the character

The actor moves away from the inner life of characters towards the way in which society has taught them to behave towards each other.

The Actor

Gestus is about putting over a clear message

It uses a range of outward signs developed by the actor to show social relationships.

These include:

stance – and voice

physical body and facial expressions

use of gesture

Gestus- what is it?A style of acting in which the main focus is: The outward signs of social relationshipsThese include Voice physical and facial expression. The effect is to shift the focus of characters

towards the way they behave towards each other

Brecht wrote his plays so they would force the actor to adopt the correct stance

The movements are worked out in rehearsal and remembered by the actors for their performance

DIRECTOR

DIRECTOR

Blocking very important must clarify the structure and the character relationships in the play

Use all the stage and support the audience to develop a critical attitude

Bring out the social, political and economic ideas in the plays

DESIGN

No illusionsNo fourth WallMinimal propsSet changes in view of

audience Use of half curtain

Simple stage design with the half curtain and everything seen by the audience no illusions

Mother Courage

Music

Working with Composer

Hans Eisler

COMPOSERBrecht intentionally breaks interrupts the action

at key moments with songs and messagesMusic and songs should express ideas and

themes of the play and give a separate comment on the action and ideas

Music should help distance the audience by providing contrast

The word and the tune clash which will draw more attention to the words

Early productions influenced by expressionist art

Note how the walls, doors and windows leans at odd angles to demonstrate the distortion in the social structure.

‘Drums in The Night’

Mother Courage And Her Children

Use of a few well made props

The Life of Galileo

Why Epic is not realistic or naturalistic.

The action is constantly broken up in to episodes

A narrator interrupts to address the audience

Songs interrupt to comment on the action

All these are constantly breaking the dramatic tension

How• By analysing the play you determine the

basic story line.

• Break down the story into smaller elements until each scene becomes the expression of one simple basic action which you can put into a simple sentence

E.g‘Evil Step Mother Plots the death of Snow

white’

Montage • Short scenes of an image or an idea

• Draws attention to the content

• Emphasis on the visual-

• Each scene carefully arranged so all moments could be read and understood even by a deaf person

• The designer drawings of the stage ( like a film storyboard does today)

• Cut from one scene to another image subject/idea

• And a new meaning or understanding is created by both the different scenes and their ideas images having been placed next to each other

Verfremdungseffekt

Make things seem strange or different”.

Use the word distancing not strange

With the use of devices to make things appear in a new light,

so we consider them with intellectual objectivity, robbed of their conventional outward appearance.

challenge habitual perceptions

Verfremdungseffekt

Brecht gives the example of a child whose widowed mother remarries, seeing her, for the first time, as a wife.

In the plays a V-effekt may be produced by the comment of the Singer or narrator

In ordinary dialogue (as in Galileo's “now I must eat”: suddenly he is seen not as the great scientific innovator but an ordinary, hungry man

Production of Mother Courage

in Germany at the

Berlin Ensemble

Theatre

Traditional Barrel Organ

That would have been at the fairground entertainments

You tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpkCazstUhMRobbie Williams sings Mack the Knife

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3ih36zijZg&feature=related Commentary on epic theatre

Meryl streep as m Courage Tv show http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=mWApVvqM-W0

Extract Meryl Streep singing ( push comes to shove)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUSFRF1Pppo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJQlRmJvLA&feature=relatedThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at Nottingham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWsp7C5OfUThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at abbey theatre

http://www.thereallybig.com/marks.htm#cccRecent version of Caucasian chalk circle with new compositions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tw5w6JdwtcShort intro Caucasian