hello welcome to organic acting i'm chris conway and this is brecht exercises
so bertolt brechter was a playwright activist and political writer he was also a marxist now
in terms of a potted history uh marx basically said that um capitalism was broken that while
the landowners and the bosses had all the money all the workers that were doing the work
had nothing they were in abject poverty so marxism marxism was about throwing off your chains as a
worker and rising up to the point where an ideal world everyone is equal when everyone has the same
amount of land same amount of money in terms of brecht he really was a product of his environment
so he was a young man in germany after the germans lost the first world war and had to pay
extortionate reparations to the allies he was also there while germany was affected by the
wall street crash in america so he saw poverty he saw inequality first hand he was also present
as his country experienced great change moving over to national socialism and the nazi party
ultimately brept ended up being banned his writing was banned his theater was banned so he moved over
to other places in europe like zurich and paris eventually moving over to the usa where he really
started to develop what he called his epic theater so as we look at brecht's epic theater
we really have to look at the term verfremdong's effect such a long word i almost couldn't fit it
on the title card and their frame domes effect has been translated into the alienation effect
now a lot of people including myself have trouble with that translation because alienation makes it
sound so cold brett didn't want to alienate his audience he wanted them to be able to objectively
rationalize what they were seeing on the stage he said that actors and audiences experiencing
naturalism and naturalistic acting were in a trance they were so caught up in looking through
the fourth wall experiencing a slice of life on stage and this includes the actors that they were
asleep they were no longer able to take in the themes of the piece to understand the social
commentary brecht ultimately wanted an audience to watch his piece of theater and then to go out
into the world and make change that was the number one goal so that's why he used the ver fram dung's
effect or making the familiar strange and verfram dung's effect really is an umbrella technique it
affected the way he worked with actors the way he directed the way he presented his pieces on stage
so the first technique we're going to look at is the way brecht worked in rehearsal so unlike
naturalism where actors would spend so much time working out their characters backstory and
any way they could live and breathe that character brecht wanted his actors to be um
objective about everything he didn't want them as i said before to be in a trance while playing
their characters so one of the things brecht would do is he would get his actors to speak
the story in the past tense and the third person if i were playing a character called john
let's say for argument's sake who goes into a shop in the scene and steals something
at the very beginning of rehearsal i would speak the following john entered the shop put the bar
of chocolate into his pocket and walked out of the door i am no longer trying to play
this character naturalistically i am getting an overview of what is going on in that scene
moving on from this brett would get his actors to speak all of their lines with the words he said
she said or the character said after each line so for example going back to john i would speak
i am going to steal that chocolate and no one will find out john said straight away i am
able to be more objective i'm paying attention to what is going on paying attention to perhaps
any social themes or commentary that's there very effective very different from naturalism
but it works next we have music and song now music and song in brechtian theater isn't for
entertainment's sake it's used as a narration tool it's used to highlight the themes of the piece
also it interrupts the action it allows the audience to have a fresh look at what is going on
and it also addresses any emotions such as any any sentimentality or horror towards the characters
or the situation brecht said that any of those responses like sentimentality or horror were
stock responses and they should all be addressed objectively they should be able to be argued
that the argument should be able to be torn apart and looked at objectively next we have placards
now i personally love placards i love the whole idea behind it brecht would make his actors show
placards pieces of card paper wood with the message of the scene or the play as
a whole written on them now if you're trying to educate your audience and highlight the themes
or give social commentary what better way than writing it for the audience to see
a sergeant and an officer find a new recruit mother courage sees her children's fate
that he would literally say this is what is going to happen in the scene this is
the title of the scene this is what you are going to see um pay attention to this
so simple so effective not very naturalistic we're getting away from naturalism in theater but very
effective in terms of epic theater now we move on to multi-role and costume so again moving away
from naturalism we have uh actors multi-role in so different actors would play the same character
this would give more of this kind of making the familiar strange this ver fram dung's effect
so an audience knows they're not looking through a fourth wall onto a slice of life
they are seeing different actors playing the same characters and this goes into the costume as well
there would be a suggestion of costume there might be a waistcoat or a military hat um
or a or a threadbare jacket for a beggar just to give a suggestion of the character so the
audience can straight away see that that is the character that's being represented
but that person is not that character it's not a slice of life on stage
next we have guestus and archetypes so guestus is a stage picture basically it can be an attitude
it can be a piece of body language it can be the space between the performers and
the space between the performers and the set and brecht basically wanted
these stage pictures this kind of body language this this picture as a whole to clearly represent
a moment or a message to the audience so the the audience could really see this this stage picture
like a photograph that would be burned into their brains so imagine if you will the image
of a landowner uh demanding rent payment of a out of work tenant and the body language that
would be there and uh perhaps the levels in power that would be there so imagine mother courage and
her children if you know that play well by the end of the play you have mother courage
on her own pulling her cart after the war has completely robbed her of everything yet she's
still trying to keep her business going still trying to profit from the war that picture of her
pulling her cop perhaps defeated you know it's it's a it's basically a clear concise uh
image or stage photograph if you like teaching the audience helping them to understand what
is happening in that moment thank you so much for joining me if you enjoyed this video don't forget
to like comment subscribe hit the bell icon i will see you next time i've been chris conway bye bye