Theatre Workshop 1 - Exploring Brecht

Theatre Workshop 1 - Exploring Brecht

What is Gestus?

Gestus is a technique which combines exaggerated movements and actions to get across the emotion of a character. Gestus often uses stereotypical characters to allow the audience to disconnect from the storyline and focus more on the bigger implicit meaning of the piece of work. It is a very confusing technique as it ensures the audience that they are watching a play. They do this by breaking down the fourth wall, interacting with the audience and also use different narrative techniques to make the audience emotionally disconnected from the characters. An example of the gestic technique is the still image exercise. Creating an image of two characters with very little body language is not gestus. However, if the image clearly shows an exaggerated image of two contrasting stereotypes it will be gestus. Personally, I believe gestus techniques are very effective for a political piece as it addresses social and political problems and portrays them in a very confusing yet interesting way. Also, it doesn’t allow the audience to get connected to the characters; gestus and other devices used by Brecht forces the audience to face the views of the play rather than the storyline which is very peculiar and mind blowing to sit back and watch.

Gestus Exercises:

To begin this exercise you would find a partner and stand on other ends of the room. Next, one of the partners will begin to recite a nursery rhyme from across the room. As there are many other partners participating in this exercise, there is a lot of shouting and gesturing at the same time. For the partner to make the nursery rhyme they are singing clear, they would next use gestures to tell the nursery rhyme. This form of communication, along with singing the nursery rhyme is used at the same time. Personally, when my partner was shouting the nursery rhyme to me, I found it difficult to understand him as there was so much noise in the room the nursery rhyme was not clear. When they began to use exaggerated gestures however it was much clearer as their body language told the story as well as them singing it at the same time.

Another exercise used was creating still images; in groups, we are given scenes such as Romeo and Juliet, Cat and Mouse, Sweet and Sour, War and Peace and the Rich and Poor. When creating an image for the Rich and Poor, almost every group created a similar picture. The picture in general showed the rich character standing high whilst the poor character is lower than the rich character. The majority of the groups had the poor person begging for food or money from the rich character that was looking rather arrogant turning their head away or up high. I believe that the groups portrayed the Rich and Poor in this way to show the status difference between the two characters. Also, it emphasises Brecht’s use of gestus and stereotypes; it does this as the characters emotions must be shown through their body language and movements. Therefore, the actors must exaggerate the characters to show the audience how they are feeling but to an extreme point so they do not become connected to the character.

 

An exercise which is seen as a gestus technique is having an actor walk on and off stage as a soldier. They will do this another time but with several dead bodies on stage. The soldier will then walk on stage, react to the dead bodies and then walk off again. Observing the way that the actor walked onto the staged clearly showed they were a soldier. They came on stage with their chest out, head high and walking rather slowly to show authority and power. They also turned at attention to face the audience to ensure that they knew that they were acting as a soldier. When dead bodies were added on stage, the way in which the soldier reacted to the bodies gave the audience an opportunity to judge this character. For example, if the soldier kicks the dead bodies he is seen as a villain however if he salutes the bodies with passion he is seen as a hero or mourner of the fallen. The difference between the two scenes is that the character has a story behind it and a very strong personality to go along with the movement. This exercise is gestus as it consists of stereotypical character that has a social meaning behind his actions. The characters movements are also extremely exaggerated to get who they are across to the audience which is a gestus style of acting.

 

The last gestus exercise of the session consisted of the participants getting into groups and creating two still images. One image was of ‘War, the maker of heroes’ whilst the other image was ‘War, the taker of lives’. In this exercise we chose to show the first image as soldiers sending a salute to the fallen men at war. The contrasting image led mine as well as many other groups creating a still image of innocent people being executed by soldiers. I believe we did this because we wanted to show what our picture was trying to imply and to do so we had to create a much exaggerated picture to make our image clear. This exercise was gestic as the images created had an implicit meaning behind them and consisted of exaggerated images to make the meaning of the scene clear.

EXAGGERATION:

In the politics session we performed a scene with a patient and a doctor. The characters played were stereotypes of the people being portrayed and their movements had to be exaggerated physically and vocally. When playing the doctor I sat up with my chin high to show my higher status in the scene and my characters upbringing. We were then asked to switch roles so instead of playing the doctor I would then play the patient. This was done by the clap of the hands and we would have to change character instantly during the scene. When we did change characters the reaction from the audience was very comical as we exaggerated our movement and body language a lot more when we switched roles. Typically when the roles switched the scene became more eventful and active. I believe this was because when improvising we felt the need to emphasise the characters background which made the scene even more humorous for the audience. Personally, I believe that this was a good exercise to explore Brechtian theatre as the switching of roles disconnected the audience from the scene and allowed the, to look at the deeper message in the scene. Also, this exercise allows the actor to practice using body movement and gestures to communicate with other actors and the audience.

NARRATIVE:

In groups, we were asked to pick a fairy tale in which we would like to act out. We were then asked to add four different styles of narrative to the piece. These narrations were:

A narrator – our piece consisted of one actor telling the Fairy as we acted it out. This created the effect of walking commentary which disconnected the audience from the events in the play as the narrator describing what was happening made it rather un-realistic.

Actor stepping out of character to narrate – when two actors were in scene, we used this moment for one of them to come out of character and narrate to the audience how they were feeling at this moment in time. We did this as it made the scene quite humorous and made it clear to the audience that it was a show they were watching and it was not a true story.

Actor speaking in 3rd person – we interpreted this style of narrative by allowing the characters to say what they were going to do before they do it. This defeated the element of surprise and shock and replaced it with a comical moment which made the audience react in the complete opposite way in which the story expects you to.

Singing narration – to use the singing narration we took songs which are well known and replaced the words to them with lyrics which were relevant to the story we were telling as a group. I believe this aspect made the piece funny but also, it related to the audience as majority of them would have known the songs we interpreted into our piece.

Personally, I believe that Brecht used narration to ultimately to take away the emotions from the play which will cause the audience to become connected. In doing this, it allowed his work to portray deeper meanings which the audience could focus on rather than the storyline. Also, I believe the narration added the sense of humour to the piece which is a great way to disconnect the audience from the piece. The objective I believe is in place is to stop worrying about how the characters are and think about the issues and morals they lack or are challenging.

 

VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT:

The verfremdungseffekt is a German technique which simply means to make strange.

An exercise which we did included this technique; to begin, with a partner we created a scene which was extremely realistic such as an argument or bereavement. Once the scene was made, we rehearsed and memorised the climatic moments of the scene and practiced the specific stage directions in this particular moment. We then continued to use the dialogue and movement in the scene however the next step was to speak every stage direction used whilst performing the scene. I believe that this task was very difficult as an actor due to the speaking of stage directions being very un-natural. Saying every movement you do in the scene made it difficult to add emotion to the scene which is another way of disconnecting the audience. I believe that Brecht used this to disconnect the audience as it made them realise they were watching a performance. Often negative moments in a play are very climatic; taking away this moment takes away the emotion behind them allowing the audience to concentrate on other aspects of the play. Furthermore, this gave me a greater understanding of the verfremdungseffekt as the strange behaviour of the actors is communicating to the audience that is not real, making them emotionally disconnect.

After taking part in these exercises and been given information about Brecht and his practice it made the whole technique interesting. The way in which he chooses to portray his views are completely different to any other practitioner which makes his work even more special. I believe that political theatre and Brechtian theatre works well together as you are able to tackle your views and issues using different techniques which will make the audience actually think during your performance rather than just sitting and watching. The exaggerated and comical acting almost confuses the audience and once the true meaning behind the play is revealed, the devices used are appreciated a lot more.