Brecht Day 1

Research:

Name: Brecht
Born: 1898
Died:1956
Nationality: German

• Lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression. 
• Worked as a medical orderly in WW1, therefore must've witnessed horrific injuries and deaths of fellow Germans at a young age, possibly making him susceptible to the idea of extreme views towards war, life, death, justice and politics.
• Became a Pacifist
• At the end of the WW2 he was an established figure, he was out of Germany during that time and was able to witness the war at a greater distance than the immediate countries that were directly involved, he was able to see the domino effect that the war brought. Looking at something at a critical difference echos his techniques in the theatre. 
• Reparations for Germany to pay minimized the armed forces, and increased the bills they had to pay as well as humiliating the Germans as they had to take the full blame. Out of this dark time fro the German people it made space available for Hitlers rise to power, creating space for radical and extremist views to grow. 
• This is relevant globally at this very moment as UKIP and and Isis really display the need for power at such a economically hard time. 
• Brecht as an intellectual in the 1930's saw facist views grow and looked for alternatives, the only other extreme power being communism. 

communism

• ˈkɒmjʊnɪz(ə)m/

  noun

  1. a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

  
  

• The Reichstag Fire caused commotion and danger for communists as they man "blamed" for the cause of this attack on parliament was communist, enabling Hitler to eliminate the communist party from power and position. Brecht was able to leave Germany the day before Hitler became Chancellor.

Practical Exercises Completed:

As a practical exercise we were asked to get into groups of however many the teacher called out and produce a simple stationary inanimate object physically. We created a chair using five others and were asked to go from a happy chair (without changing physicality) this was strange as we had to really concentrate on how we display this tension in our bodies without moving and really release a particular feeling without internalizing it, we just had to create an external and universal sign for happiness. We then went to become a sad chair within a frame of five seconds. This was effective because then we witnessed other peoples work and created scenarios on who's chair this might be, for example, as a sad chair people had ideas on whether it may have been the furniture of an obese person and therefore it is characterized as sad because of the constant burden of being a heavier persons resting space. This was very interesting because I feel that as a Brechtian exercise it really makes the chair poignant and rather than highlighting the story line or the plot the audience is able to speculate and actively decide what occurred to this chair and why the director may have suggested it be made up of humans. This could possibly expose an idea of oppression,(although the person may or may not literally use people as a chair) they may use people for their own benefit and disregard their discomfort. It created in my mind an idea of politics within making a chair physical as could be a sign of oppression of a higher class using humans as a chair, echoing a sense of authority power and excess of human labour, this makes it strange and unique for the audience as they are able to spectate and maybe explore a sense of the chair being a metaphor or representation for something much bigger than the chair. It really externalizes a lot of ideas, rather than keeping them hidden Brecht shows the use of power through deliberate physical activity. 

Using the idea of a string being pulled from your nose drawing it forward and also a string pulling out coccyx. This simple exercise, through finding a place to lead and creating points of tension in the body created a narrative in itself, this simple motion made some of us appear to look like elderly and previously hard working coal miners, or sassy old women, or possibly even sleuths. Through the way we accessorized our bodies and the way we placed our other limbs it altered the character immensely. We then lead from our knees forward, some of us appeared to look like geezers, or real "jack the lad" type characters because the tension in our knees caused us to fall backwards in our upper body and created a laid back character. This juxtaposed the elderly character and gave an interesting idea on status and possible class ranking of the characters through the externalization of their personality. Through performing the character outwardly emotionally we were much less drained than a previous term in Stanislavsky, our outward emotion reverberated into us and really pushed us to appear as we wanted to without thinking about the characters mindset but rather their physical alterations in certain circumstances. 

News Stories YouTube Clips: 

In this clip it really gives a sense of Brecht's work emerging into modern day theatre and they converse about the alienation technique, and how it is used in their play. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-828KqtTkA