For the first lesson under the style of contemporary theatre (which stems from the early 20th century to the present day), we looked at Bertolt Brecht. I have commented before on Brecht in earlier blogs so my interpretation of his style can be found in those.
Chipp wanted to approach Brecht again for various reasons. The first was because the first time we looked at Brecht was at the very start of the year so our understanding was under the level that would be expected for BTEC. Moreover, the understanding that we had of Brecht was not entirely correct and so we would not be able to apply this to Director's Challenge in Y13. We were informed that Brecht didn't use Epic Theatre, instead Epic Theatre is the name of Brecht's style which does make more sense. We discussed what Brecht would expect from a performance as well as what Brecht would be excited about in the theatre today.
From a performance, Brecht would expect that nothing would be hidden from an audience, that the actors would break the fourth wall, and that technology would be used to express views that the characters would not be able to express themselves. In the past, Brecht's technological influences would be limited to placards, lighting, and sound that. Now, however, Brecht would be vastly excited about the technology on offer such as the ability to project onto the back wall of a stage as well as the use of mobile technology to create complete interaction and the breaking of the fourth wall would be much more possible. Mobile technology could be used so that the audience can suggest via polls what they think about the character's, their actions, or what they think the performance shows about society.
Chipp wanted to approach Brecht again for various reasons. The first was because the first time we looked at Brecht was at the very start of the year so our understanding was under the level that would be expected for BTEC. Moreover, the understanding that we had of Brecht was not entirely correct and so we would not be able to apply this to Director's Challenge in Y13. We were informed that Brecht didn't use Epic Theatre, instead Epic Theatre is the name of Brecht's style which does make more sense. We discussed what Brecht would expect from a performance as well as what Brecht would be excited about in the theatre today.
From a performance, Brecht would expect that nothing would be hidden from an audience, that the actors would break the fourth wall, and that technology would be used to express views that the characters would not be able to express themselves. In the past, Brecht's technological influences would be limited to placards, lighting, and sound that. Now, however, Brecht would be vastly excited about the technology on offer such as the ability to project onto the back wall of a stage as well as the use of mobile technology to create complete interaction and the breaking of the fourth wall would be much more possible. Mobile technology could be used so that the audience can suggest via polls what they think about the character's, their actions, or what they think the performance shows about society.
The definition of the Verfremdungseffekt that I was using was to distance the audience from the action, but this is not what Brecht wanted to do. The translation of this has been butchered. The definition given by Chipp that it actually means to tilt the audience's perception is much more fitting in my opinion. This would mean that the audience would see another character's perception of the story and mean that they leave the performance with a better chance of questioning what they've seen and how it applies to society (in some way, this reminds me of the Gecko performance of The Wedding that I saw earlier this year - this can be seen in another blog).
We looked at a play called Our Country's Good which was written in 1988 by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, adapted from the Thomas Keneally novel The Playmaker. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales, in the 1780s, who put on a production of The Recruiting Officer. It was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 10 September 1988, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. It ran on Broadway in 1991. The scenes that we looked at are as follows:
We looked at a play called Our Country's Good which was written in 1988 by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, adapted from the Thomas Keneally novel The Playmaker. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales, in the 1780s, who put on a production of The Recruiting Officer. It was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 10 September 1988, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. It ran on Broadway in 1991. The scenes that we looked at are as follows:
Below is a video of Bella, Lauren, and I performing a section of Scene 3:
The main thing that we tried to do for the staging of this was to show the status of the three characters and how they related to each other. As we had to be more than one character as we were missing an actor to play one character, we didn't stick as much to the status given by Wertenbaker. We still managed to show status by having different heights which altered the proxemics of the scene. If we had more time, I would have liked to make the status more obvious in some points and subtler in others which would make the piece more rounded.
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