Brecht

1
Brecht

• Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a
  hammer with which to shape it

2
Aims

• To provide an introduction to life and work of
  Brecht
• To give a brief overview of Brechts theories
• To provide opportunities for practical
  exploration of Brechts theory and practice

3
Brecht

• 1898 1956
• Art must not be consumed like a drug

4
Brecht

• Born in 1898 into a middle class family in south
  Germany
• Aged 16 when the WW1 breaks out. Worked as a
  medical orderly and was sickened by the effects
  of the war.
• Started writing at a young age - was a writer
  and director.
• After the war he moved to Berlin

5
Brecht

• His plays attacked German middle-class society,
  drew on Marxist principles, and criticized
  Nazism.
• Fled Nazi Germany in February 1933, his works
  were consigned to the flames shortly during the
  book burnings of 1933.
• Spent the next decade in exile, moving from
  Denmark to Sweden, and Finland. He eventually
  made his way to the US
• Also travels to Moscow where he sees Chinese
  actor Mei Lan-Fang in 1935 who performs with no
  make-up, costume or lighting. Was amazed that he
  could use pure movement to transform himself into
  a woman while he was dressed in male civilian
  attire. He also felt he stood aside his part
  he knew he was being observed.

6
Brecht

• Brought before the House of Un-American
  Activities Committee after which he returns to
  Europe
• Established the Berliner Ensemble with his wife
  Helen Weigel in 1949
• His work remains enormously influential

7
Dramatic form of theatre

• Draws the spectator into an event
• Man is assumed to be known and unalterable
• Linear development
• One scene makes another
• Theatre of illusion
• Feeling

8
Epic Theatre

• Brecht was reacting against this theatre felt
  it was deceitful
• Character less important than the message
• The audience must remain critically aware
• Not governed by fate have choices therefore
  power

9
Influences

• Georg Buchner
• 1812-37

10
Influences

• A German dramatist whose plays influenced a
  number of playwrights in Germany.
• Most well known play - Woyzeck had episodic scene
  construction the beginnings of montage
• Anti-naturalistic style which influenced German
  Expressionists (A term used to denote the use of
  distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect)

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Influences
12
Influences

• Frank Wedekind
• 1864-1918

13
Influences

• A German playwright
• Wedekind's work, which often criticizes bourgeois
  attitudes, especially towards sex (focussed on
  the double standards of sexual morality).
• Invented a new type of drama that was the
  immediate forerunner of expressionism and
  anticipated the epic and didactic theatre of
  Brecht

14
Influences

• Erwin Piscator
• 1893-1966

15
Influences

• It is the business of theatre to deliver a
  social message and this is as important as that
  it should be entertainingMere entertainment,
  art for arts sake, is not the reason for a
  theatre production

16
Influences

• German director and producer
• Experienced the horrors of war first hand in the
  trenches
• Started his career as a maker of agitprop theatre
  then moved into mainstream
• Collaborated on projects
• Piscator used complex staging including
  projections
• Shared the concept of epic theatre
• Brecht influenced by physical elements of
  Piscators staging Piscator more grandiose style

17
Influences

• Karl Marx
• 1818-1883
• The history of all hitherto existing society is
  the history of class struggles

18
Influences

• Karl Heinrich Marx born 1818 in Germany was a
  philosopher, political economist and
  revolutionary.
• Arguably the most influential socialist thinker
  to emerge in the 19th century.
• His works inspired the foundation of many
  communist regimes in the twentieth century.

19
Influences

• Marxism is a system of analysis, and a way to
  view the world. Communism, on the other hand, is
  a political movement,  a form of government, a
  condition of society.
• Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish
  a classless, stateless social organisation, based
  upon common ownership of the means of production.
  
• Around 1927 Brecht started to study Karl Marx's
  Das Kapital and by 1929 he had become a
  Communist.

20
Influences

• A deep distrust of capitalism
• Capitalism can only be defeated by alliances of
  workers
• Nothing is unchanging or fixed.

21
Collaboration

• Brecht formed a writing collective which became
  prolific and very influential.
• Elisabeth Hauptmann a writer listed as a
  co-author of The Threepenny Opera
• Kurt Weill a composer wrote Mack the Knife
• Casper Neher a set designer (TTO)

22
Lehrstück

• Teaching Plays, usually set to music
• Attempted to create a new dramaturgy for
  participants rather than passive audiences
  active involvement in the medium of musical
  theatre
• shaping a story or like elements into a form
  that can be acted gives the performance a
  structure.

23
The Berliner Ensemble

• Established in 1949 with his wife Helene Weigel
• Performed most of the plays by Brecht later
  expanded their repertoire
• The place where Brecht and Weill created many of
  their famous collaborations including The
  Threepenny Opera
• Still running today

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Theory and Practice
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Aims of Brechts Theories

• Believed that theatre should not only reflect the
  world but change it.
• Used his theories of Epic theatre to achieve this.

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Epic Theatre

• Narrative rather than plot 
• Arouses capacity for action
• Forces audience to make decisions
• Studies rather than experiences
• Argument rather than suggestion
• The human being is alterable
• Each scene makes itself
• Reason rather than feeling

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Ensemble

• Much of the preparation for a Brecht play is
  though working together as a group.
• In Brecht's theatre, the director, dramaturge,
  designer, and composer had equal authority in the
  production.
• 1st the group commit to a political standpoint
  and desire to convey a message or different view
  of society to the audience

28
Montage

• Came from the work of Sergei Eisenstein a film
  maker who used the technique in editing films
• Connecting dissimilars to shock people into new
  recognitions and understandings.
• Juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images draws
  attention to the content

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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Montage
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Music

• Music can reproduce the gestus that illustrates
  the incident on stageforcing the action into a
  particular attitude that excludes all doubt and
  misunderstanding about the incident in question

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Music

• Anti-naturalistic
• Used to comment on and predict the action
• Music and the action should make the other appear
  strange and mustnt reinforce the stage illusion
• Musicians on stage

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Music

• Clear division of songs from the dialogue
• No illustrative element in the music
• No psychological aspect to the music
• Emphasis on the didactic rather than the
  'culinary' element
• Songs clearly marked off from the dramatic action
  by the character coming to the front of the stage
  to address the audience.

41
Verfremdungseffekt

• Started to use the term after seeing the Chinese
  actor Mei Lan-Fang perform a number of classical
  female roles while dressed in a dinner jacket.
• Effect of making strange
• Alienation effect
• A distancing technique
• To encourage the audience to stay mentally alert
• Wanted his audience to be relaxed smoking and
  chatting like at a boxing match

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Verfremdungseffekt

• "it is necessary to drop the assumption that
  there is a forth wall cutting the audience off
  from the stage and the consequent illusion that
  the stage action is taking place in reality and
  without audience"
• theatre remains theatre

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Verfremdungseffekt

• Most theatre styles keep the mechanics of theatre
  hidden (lights, costume/set changes)
• Literally keeping the audience in the dark
• Brecht sought to remind audiences they were in a
  theatre
• Audiences are in the light both symbolically and
  literally
• Distanced not alienated wanted the audience to
  see more clearly

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Verfremdungseffekt

• Use of narration (including sung narration)
• Use of placards and projections (loss of suspence
• Talking in third person
• Masks
• Swapping roles (early plays later became a
  rehearsal technique)
• Casting against type

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Narration

• Straight narration from an appointed narrator
• Narration from members of the cast who drop out
  of character to take up the story and then resume
  character
• in character relation of thought processes from
  members of the cast either in first or in third
  person.
• Sung narration

46
Gestus

• Means gesture and gist
• Gesture with attitude
• Feeling to be externalised the essence of
  something is physicalised
• It means standing outside the character

47
Gestus Brechts Definition

• A group of soldiers marching across the stage is
  merely gesture the soldiers are not conveying
  anything to the audience other than that they are
  soldiers.
• Put a number of dead bodies on the stage and have
  the soldiers march over them and you have gest.
  
• The picture shows that the soldiers are uncaring,
  deadened to war and the results of it, so that is
  conveying attitude.

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The Brechtian Actor

• Clear in intention performance (gest)
• Detached from character - demonstrating not
  being, narrate not impersonate
• Committed to the social or political message
• Must see the audience no 4th wall
• Character is subservient to the message inner
  life not important
• Go beyond Stanislavski and incorporate a social
  attitude or judgement in the portrayal of
  character

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Subsequent Practice

• Has had a huge impact on 20th Century theatre.
• He opened up more possibilities of how the stage
  could be used and for what purpose.
• Contemporary design exhibits in many ways the
  influences of his staging.
• Berliner Ensemble became one of the most
  important and influential theatres in postwar
  Europe.
• Influence on the actor/spectator relationship
• Boal

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Brecht Vs Stanislavski

• B not an opposite to S does not want all
  characters to be stereotypes/unrealistic.
• B not a complete actors training
• B believes social situations change the way
  people behave
• S showed through his system people are the same
  the world over, sharing the same emotions
• S psychological realism, B social realism
• Epic theatre ideally formed to show characters
  over a wide span of years in a number of
  situations, responding to these situations, as
  the needs of the moment dictate.
• Changing Circumstances not Given Circumstances

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Conclusion

• Brecht was a poet, playwright, and theatrical
  reformer, one of the most prominent figures in
  the 20th-century theatre.
• First to give power of a rational kind to
  audiences
• Expected audiences to debate together, see things
  differently and perhaps eventually bring about
  change

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ConclusionOutdated?

• For
• Lost in the backwash of the sinking ship of
  communism

• Against
• His method works for any kind of
  forum/educational theatre where actor/director
  want to out over a point of view
• Has also given us some wonderful plays.

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Bibliography

• Cooper, S Mackey S. Theatre Studies,
  Cheltenham, Stanley Thornes, 1995.
• Mackey, S. Practical Theatre, Cheltenham,
  Stanley Thornes, 1997