BERTOLT BRECHT 1898 – 1956 Playwright Director And Actor

1. BERTOLT BRECHT 1898 – 1956 Playwright Director And Actor

2. 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

3. 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

5. Influences on his work

6. Admired Elizabethan theatre • An almost bare stage with the audience standing round it • Political and personal events unfolding in swiftly changing scenes • Gripping stories of Kings and their lives presented for a semi illiterate audience • Performance that would have taken place in daylight ( makes audience aware they are watching a play )

7. 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

8. Significant changes in performance from his ideas

9. He believed in people’s ability to change. • Theatre was about exploring the landscape ofsocietynot individual characters • He rejected the traditional theatre for it focused on the individual, their psychology their personal crisis

10. Theatre should be about exploring the political ‘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.

11. Develops EpicTheatre • 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”

12. 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 -

13. 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

14. How does it challenge the work of Stanislavski and realism

15. 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

16. 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 Similarities

17. 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 Different Emphasis

18. 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

19. 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

23. Epic theatre –is not realism events and people are depicted within their social and political environment • Gestus • Montage • Verfremdungseffekt (look at things /actions with new understanding) • Design • Music

25. THE PLAYWRIGHT • Structured episodically • People shown within their social and political environment • Many scenes that tell a part of the story in a self contained way • Awareness of past events • Tell audience what's happening through scenes titles or labels • Use of parables

26. The Actor • 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.

27. 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

28. Gestus- what is it? A style of acting in which the main focus is: The outward signs of social relationships These 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

29. DIRECTOR

30. 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

31. DESIGN • No illusions • No fourth Wall • Minimal props • Set changes in view of audience • Use of half curtain

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

33. Mother Courage

34. Music Working with ComposerHans Eisler

35. COMPOSER • Brecht intentionally breaks interrupts the action at key moments with songs and messages • Music 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

36. 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’

37. Mother Courage And Her Children Use of a few well made props

38. The Life of Galileo

39. 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

40. 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’

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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

44. Production of Mother Courage in Germany at the Berlin EnsembleTheatre

45. Traditional Barrel Organ That would have been at the fairground entertainments

46. You tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpkCazstUhM Robbie 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=related The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at Nottingham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWsp7C5OfU The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at abbey theatre http://www.thereallybig.com/marks.htm#ccc Recent version of Caucasian chalk circle with new compositions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tw5w6Jdwtc Short intro Caucasian