Solidifying the Legend (1947 – 1956)

Hail the Returning Hero? 

Due to political in-fighting between the East and West, Brecht and Weigel leave the US stateless, so…

•Swiss bank account

•Austrian passport

•West German publishing contract

•East German theater company

Final Acts  

•Starting a national theater: Berliner Ensemble

•Building an ensemble (collaborating again!)

•Practicing pure Epic Theater for first time

•Other people’s plays: are Epic techniques versatile?

•Championing others/training next generation

•Artists as builders of new country

•Government intrusion/tastes

Final Plays

•No time to write—too busy running theater

•Adaptations

•Model books

•The Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Caucasian Chalk Circlen

•From a 14th c. Chinese story

•bb’s first version about goodness of character better than pureness of race (Nazis)

•Can be played naturalistically

1956

Revelation of Stalin’s crimes

1956

Revelation of Stalin’s crimes

No speeches,

Too many wills

Politics even surround his death.

Brecht’s Legacy: Epic Theater

“…my plays have to be properly performed if they are to be effective, so that for the sake of (oh dear me!) a non-aristotelian dramaturgy I had to outline (calamity!) an epic theater.”

Bulletin notice to Berliner Ensemble members, 1955

“I have the impression—and not for the first time—that the Ensemble is misjudging the work of our young directors. …Not only have our young directors learned their so-called trade here with us; in addition, they are learning a very special kind of theatre, which is still in the process of development and gives me too plenty of difficulties. Thus every production is still an experiment and will, I hope, continue to be one.”

Yeah, but what is Epic Theater, really,

and how do we make it?

Common misconceptions
about Brecht’s Stagecraft

Everything he did was brand-new

He wanted to offend or alienate the audience

He wanted to wipe out on-stage illusion and emotion

He had a set of theories that he stuck to, and we have to, too!

“The aim is not how to avoid illusion—

everything is illusion… the illusion that is composed by the flash of quick and changing impressions keeps the dart of the imagination at play.”

ACTOR: Does getting rid of empathy mean getting rid of every emotional element?

PHILOSOPHER: No, no. Neither the public nor the actor must be stopped from taking part emotionally; the representation of emotions must not be hampered, nor must the actor’s use of emotions be frustrated. Only one out of many possible sources of emotion needs to be left unused, or at least treated as a subsidiary source—empathy.

“Feelings and emotions may well be a part of the experience for the audience, but… the activity will have a social purpose—perhaps to show who’s guilty, or how to avoid such an accident in the future… The purpose served must justify the effort made.”

Theories Schmeories  

·Sense of humor

·Love of America/Orient

·Love of fun/sport

·Shakespeare’s freedom, minimal sets & dual audiences

·Intellect/reason leading to action

·Emotion/empathy not endpoint

·If it works, it’s in!

“A man with one theory is lost. He needs several of them, four, lots! He should stuff them in his pockets like newspapers, hot from the press always, you can live well surrounded by them, there are comfortable lodgings to be had between theories. If you are to get on, you need to know that there are a lot of theories.”

  

Okay, but what are these theories and techniques, anyway?

DRAMATIC THEATRE

plot

implicates the spectator in a stage situation

wears down his capacity for action

provides him with sensations

experience

the spectator is involved in something

suggestion 

instinctive feelings are preserved

the spectator shares the experience

the human being is taken for granted

he is unalterable

eyes on the finish

one scene makes another

growth

linear development

evolutionary determinism

man as a fixed point

thought determines being

feeling

EPIC THEATRE

narrative

turns the spectator into an observer

arouses his capacity for action

forces him to take decisions

picture of the world

he is made to face something

argument

brought to the point of recognition

the spectator stands outside, studies

the human being is the object of enquiry

he is alterable and able to alter

eyes on the course

each scene for itself

montage

in curves

jumps

man as a process

social being determines thought

reason

Dramatic theater audience says:

Yes, I have felt that too.

That’s how I am.

That is only natural.

That will always be so.

That person’s suffering shocks me because there is no way out.

This is great art: everything in it is self-evident.

I weep with the weeping, I laugh with the laughing.

Epic theater audience says:

I wouldn’t have thought that.

People shouldn’t do things like that.

That’s odd, almost unbelievable.

This has to stop.

That person’s suffering shocks me, but there might be a way out.

This is great art: nothing in it is self-evident.

I laugh over the weeping, I weep over the laughing.

Epic Theatre Techniques

·Realism (no, really)

·Gestus, gestus, gestus

·Historicization/Cultural Distance

·Alienation

  Historicization = Alienation Effect

•History as like us

•History as not like us

•History is written by the winners

•Everything is political

Alienation Effect 

•Schlovski’s priem ostranneniya

•“scientific” or curious look at elements at play

•process by which we make the normal look strange and the strange look normal

•often achieved through contradictions or odd juxtapositions eg “Mother Courage’s scream” or through direct address

•“Things that make you go “Hmmm.”

•

“Alienation” is meant to awaken, not offend.

 

  It is an invitation to participate, to be curious about something.

Dramaturgical Alienation Effects

•Anything that reminds us we are in a theater

•Anything that makes us look at something afresh

•Changing rhythms

•Switching between verse & prose

•Contradictions or odd juxtapositions

•Dualities in character/actor (like Mei Lan-Fang)

•Narration/placards/projections

•Direct address to audience/breaking 4th wall

•“Commenting” through music or gestus

•And about 1000 more techniques…

“It was out of respect that Brecht introduced the idea of alienation… Alienation is above all an appeal to the spectator to work for himself… Alienation can work through antithesis, parody, imitation, criticism, the whole range of rhetoric is open to it. It is the purely theatrical method of dialectical exchange.”

—Peter Brook

  

“Alienation effects have long been known in the theatre and in other arts. The fact is that we always get an alienation effect when art does not sustain the illusion that the viewer is face to face with nature itself. In the theatre, for instance, the objective world is alienated by the convention of versification or by a highly personal style or by abrupt shifts between verse and prose or between the serious and the comic. I myself make use of alienation effects (including the old ones mentioned above) to show that the nature of human society is not all that natural… that is to say, not as self-evident or unquestionable as one might think.”

Designing for Brecht

  

·Spare sets

·

·Minimum images

·

·Configurable/transformable set pieces

·

·Practical props/costumes

·

·Normally-hidden stagecraft, including lighting instruments and set changes, revealed

·

·Placards/slides/video/narration and/or songs announcing what is to come or otherwise interrupting action

Directing/Acting Brecht

 

You might see:

·Characters that range from broadly drawn to naturalistic

·

·Actors stepping out of character for parts of show

·

·Direct address of audience/breaking 4th wall

·

·Unusual or surprising delivery of lines (many forms)

·

·Dialectical stagecraft—contradictions or “inconsistencies” in characterization/staging to get to greater truths

Break down scene into these parts:

·    Humor and irony

·

·    Political/social point/position of scene and character

·

·  Conduct of character—where is person wrong? Right?

·  Define the character by class, not psychology

·    Forget “consistency”—play relationship of the moment

·

·    How do you want audience to react?

 

“People don’t act on the basis of only one motive but always out of various motives that are in part contradictory.”

 

“[I] can not say that the dramatic writing which I call ‘non-aristotelian,’ and the epic style of acting which goes with it, represent the only solution. However, one thing has become quite plain: the present-day world can only be described to present-day people if it is described as capable of transformation.”

Rehearsal Techniques

•   Relaxation to create loose body

•   Give scene a title (like a newspaper headline)

•   Third person retelling

•   Past-tense telling

•   Speak stage directions or otherwise narrate

•   Translate verse into prose (or vice versa)

•   Translate prose into native dialect

•   “Marking” in rehearsal

•   Changing roles with other actors

•   Imitating others in their roles

•   “Not but”

•   Playing a scene “wrong”

•   Tap dancing while reading verse

•Playing the relationship of that moment only (may contradict with the next moment) or even better, playing contradiction within one moment

•   Creating and breaking patterns

•   Isolating moments

  

“When your work is complete, it must look light, easy. The ease must recall effort; it is effort conquered or effort victorious. From the outset of your work you must adopt the attitude that aims at achieving ease. You mustn’t leave out the difficulties, but must collect them and make them come easy through your work. For the only worthwhile kind of ease is that which is a victory of effort.

Observe the ease

With which the mighty

River tears down its banks!
The earthquake

Shakes the ground with a relaxed hand.”

 

“When your work is complete, it must look light, easy. The ease must recall effort; it is effort conquered or effort victorious. From the outset of your work you must adopt the attitude that aims at achieving ease. You mustn’t leave out the difficulties, but must collect them and make them come easy through your work. For the only worthwhile kind of ease is that which is a victory of effort.

Observe the ease

With which the mighty

River tears down its banks!
The earthquake

Shakes the ground with a relaxed hand.”

 

No Culinary Theater!

“The proof of pudding is in the eating.”

Was this “meal”  revolutionary, life-changing, and nourishing?

Or was it just a fancy-feast of nothingness?