Berkoff - Introduction

Over next few weeks, the practitioner that we are studying is Steven Berkoff, a British playwright and director with a unique style of writing and performance which completely opposes the style of Stanislavski. He was born on the 3rd of August 1937 in the East End of London which has influenced the type of plays he has written, some of which focus predominantly in the East End such as East. Moreover, he has a Russian heritage as his grandparents fled Russia in the 1890's due to their religion of Judaism which will again have affected Berkoff's upbringing and will have influenced the plays he has written. Berkoff began his theatre training at Her Majesty's Theatre in Barrow-in-Furness before studying at L'Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 1965 where his main styles were naturalism; after this, he moved onto non-naturalism. His plays include the verse plays East (1975), Greek (1980), and Decadence (1981). He has written many more plays and has appeared on many TV shows and films, often playing the villain as he finds it "flattering" to play evil characters, saying that the best actors assumed villainous roles. His work is best described as in-yer-face-theatre coined by British theatre critic Aleks Seirz; this describes work by young playwrights who present vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on stage as a means of involving and affecting their audiences - Brecht and Artaud could also fit under this description.

Berkoff's style is not natural and is unrealistic. It is not meant to be realistic in terms of form (which can be seen in his play East where the dialogue is reminiscent of Shakespeare but with added colloquial phrases taken from the East End of London hence the title of the play) and composition - this was something that he struggled with at first as he had studied naturalism before so his style was something completely new to him originally. Berkoff takes inspiration from physical theatre such as mime in order to create exaggerated facial expressions which is something called Externalisation. This aids the audience's understanding of who the character is, what feeling they're trying to show, and what their intention is without words. In some ways, this is similar to Brecht and gestus. Any words that are said (which are often many as Berkoff writes in a Shakespearean type manner but with more Cockey colloquialisms) should be pronounced properly so that they aren't lost to the audience - this is called Definition. Additionally, Stocatto is where an actor's movements are detached from one another so that they are defined. Berkoff uses Total Theatre which is where every part of the performance from lighting to where an actor places their foot is used to reinforce the key aims of the performance. Much like Brecht, Berkoff breaks the fourth wall in his performances which increases the audience's participation and emotional investment, making them more easily manipulated.

Berkoff has many influences. These include Edmund Keen (who performed Shakespeare in a melodramatic way much like Berkoff), Jacques Lecoq (physical theatre and mime - Berkoff attended his school in Paris), Artaud (physical theatre and shocking the audience), and Brecht (intention/message and the Verfremdungseffekt).

Lesson: Monday 14th May 2018

In this lesson, we were introduced to Berkoff and his exaggerated style. I feel that I need to let go of some of my inhibitions about physical theatre because I felt that at the beginning of this lesson I didn't exaggerate my movements a lot. I think this is due to a lack of confidence. Also, we have been heavily focused on naturalism in Anatomy of a Suicide which means that I feel slightly out of my depth. I think that in the following lessons, I will overcome these inhibitions and become much more confident with this style of theatre.

Face Swapping 

Much of the lesson consisted of exaggerated facial features. In this activity, someone would make a weird and overly exaggerated face and show this to the class. They would then "remove" this face and "throw" it to another member of the class who would then have to "put on" this face - they would create the same face back. This person would then "remove" the previous face and create a new face which they would then "throw" to another person and so on. This links to Externalisation. Moreover, with the faces, our whole bodies began to change with the changing faces, often changing stance. As I have mentioned previously, in this lesson I held back due to lack of confidence which meant that I didn't participate in this activity well, to begin with. However, as we understood the activity more, I found it easier to engage in the activity.

Fight 

This was a pretend fight where we understood definition and staccato. The physical movement of the fight should have a clear start and end hence why we paused after each movement. After getting the initial ideas of the physical movement, we added words to this. The words were simple at first and described the movement that we were doing. We ensured that the words, much like the movement, were defined and pronounced correctly. After this, we added some larger adjective words which linked to how Berkoff uses extravagant language in his work as shown in East. I feel that the combination of language and physical movement is hard for me personally because I found that I forgot the simple words during the physical movement. This will be something that I feel may have a negative impact on me throughout this unit.

Nose Circles

An invisible circle, as big or as small as we wanted, was attached to our noses which we had to follow around as though it was attached to our nose. This meant that our bodies got into strange, weird and exaggerated positions. Chipp told us to stop at a specific point in our circle and then told us to walk around in the position we'd been stuck in and adopt a facial expression for the 'character' that we had then created.

First Date 

We were told to create an improvisation using the stances and facial expressions that we were stuck in following the previous activity. During the improvisations, I found that the stance and facial expressions determined how I would speak. It also influenced the topic of conversation that occurred in the first date.

Laying the Table



The above video shows a staccato and definition practise. Mine and Bella's piece is the first in the sequence and, in my opinion, I don't feel as though it was much of a success as other people's in the sequence such as Lauren and Joel's shown at 3.47 in the video. There's was much more static and their movements much more defined when compared to mine and Bella's. thei actions were also much easier to understand.