Lesson 3: Brechtian Technique continued

This lesson we continued to develop Brechtian technique. We began by exploring the idea of Spaß, or 'Fun'. We did this by doing an exercise called 'Servants and Snobs' where we were assigned the role of "servant" or "snob". The servants had to go about their daily lives, while also making sure to attend to the snobs. the snobs could decide when they liked that they needed to sit down, which they announced with a yawn. They then go to sit, and the servants must catch them. The most playful part of this exercise was the creation of characters and the difference in levels between the snobs and the servants. It taught us more about the use of stereotype to convey clear character, and that, much like in last term's Stanislavsky style, playfulness can sometimes be the best way to create interesting new scenes.

We took this idea of Snobs and Servants further when exploring gestus. Gestus is a technique that shows the audience a side of a character's personality in a way that is easy to absorb and understand. We split into pairs, and our tutor gave us various scenarios that we had to freeze in and find a way to show the power struggle. We ended with the rich versus the poor, and there was an obvious use of different levels throughout the room, which was interesting.

We then got into groups and explored a third Brechtian technique - the "not but" moment. This is a breakdown of a text or scene that shows a different course of events by exposing a new perspective on the scene. To test this, we used a part of Brecht's 'Caucasian Chalk Circle' and played the opening scene twice, first as it was depicted in the play and then afterwards from a perspective that allowed us to see the mother's moral dilemma regarding her lost child. This allowed the audience to empathise more with the supposed antagonist, distancing the audience and causing them to spectate instead of watch.

We then put all of this into practice as we toyed with a scene from 'Mother Courage'. The text was irrelevant but the story of the scene had to still come across the same. We used Spaß is my group as we had songs throughout the scene, and they followed the genre/tune of songs from the present day. This is also V-Effekt as it pulls the audience out of the setting and makes them compare to present day.