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20^th November 2012

In today’s we lesson we looked more at the ensemble essence in theatre, doing exercises that get us to engage with the skills that we will need to be part of an ensemble and the problems that we might face. We also began to put our political theatre piece together, being given and our individual parts, and starting to block the piece and put it together.

In the script we used many of the Brechtian styles of acting; this helps us to engage with our theatre practitioner and the ways that we should be engaging with our characters and the piece of theatre. This is shown in our piece where we have a number of sections where people are talking about who they are voting for in the elections, and during this time, instead of having set, we the actors become the set, in the form of objects and people. For example in the bar scene, I am the bar, in the office, I am a filling cabinet, in the benefits office, I am in the queue and in the common room, I am a hippy student. These all set the scene to the audience and give the atmosphere of all the different areas of society. Brecht also thought that set and staging should be simple, so by using ourselves as the set we aren’t using complex scenery that constantly has to be moved, also we are reinforcing the fact to the audience that they are watching a play and that everything on stage is a representation not real people or situations. 

Also we are using narrators in our piece of theatre to describe the action on stage and to break down the forth wall between the audience. We are using different types of narration, for example we have the traditional narrators that set the scene and give the audience the information that they need; for example we have some narrators give the audience a background on general elections. This is effective because it gives the audience the information that they need on elections as not everyone is politically aware, but also it gives them the sense that they are part of the an election happening at the moment, because they will be voting and this is the type of information that is given out to people while elections are in place to boost voting numbers. We also are using narrators in a big speech that Blondie does, where she is giving the winning speech outside number 10, the narrators are going to be describing all the stage directions that Blondie makes, for example pushing her hair back or licking her lips. This is a very specific type of narration that Brecht uses as it disengages the audience from the emotions of the play and allows them to know that what they are watching isn’t real. This is really effective for our own piece of theatre as we are presenting Blondie in a really glamorous way in the start, however we don’t want the audience to connect with her because she turns out to be a mass murder. Also she is just a representation how people get into power, how little we can know about them and what they can turn out to be.

Also we are using singing narration were we montage the election campaign to Blondies Song “Call Me”, but changing the lyrics to “Vote Me”, not only is this telling the background of the story in a quick way, it is also putting humour into the show, as Brecht always through that theatre should have humour in it and it puts that in even though our piece has a very serious subject matter.

Then we have the scenes from our play that we are doing: “Blondie” and in between them we are putting the piece of theatre we devised last week on the leaders that have committed crimes against humanity, this allows all of us to play more than one character, so that we don’t get attached emotionally or connected to the characters that we are playing because we should only be representing them. Also it reinforces the message of our piece of theatre because it shows how we, the public, elect people but then we allow then to do horrible things to our country because we believed the facade that they presented. It also builds up to the audience the idea of what Blondie might have done to Britain.

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13^th November 2012

In the first part of this lesson we had a workshop on ensemble work. In this workshop we had to do a number of exercises that explored the different skills you need to have to be successful in an ensemble piece and the issues that might be presented.

In the exercises we learnt about the concentration that you need in an ensemble piece of theatre as we learnt that a lot could be happening at one time, and you need to be aware all the time and to be in contact mentally and engaged with one and other, so that the performers can all be in sync with each other, creating a stronger, more focused and more powerful piece of theatre. This was really interesting for me as it showed me how much mental work needs to go into being part of an ensemble, because people can often think that being in a group you can just go along not really being involved in the piece and thinking that you aren’t important. However this showed me how powerful a piece of theatre can be if everyone is fully involved and dedicated to it.

I also learnt how powerful and visually effective being in an ensemble piece of theatre can be as it can emphasis a point or a message, as before I always thought of acting naturalistically get messages across the best because you can be connect to the emotions and moved by them. However from doing these exercises I learnt that breachtian style of acting, where gestus is used and in fact an ensemble can be as powerful on sending a message to the audience as it grabs the audiences attention and by having everyone engaged can show the audience how meaningful and important the message is.

We then went back to the play that we are using as our stimulus, “Blondie”, and we looked at the list of people that she listed as have engaged in crimes against humanity, for example Bin Laden, Hitler, Blair, we each had to pick a person and create a piece of brechtian theatre around that person. In our group we picked to do our piece on Thatcher, in this piece we highlighted the main things that stood out in her lifetime and in her career as the prime minister, we pick the hype that surrounded her being the first woman Prim Minister, then the shutting down of the mines, the IRA and the taxing of milk. These were just some of the most heard of things that Margret Thatcher did, and some of the feed back was that we could put in more things about her childhood, or something to make us know more about her. We then made her really exaggerated and unbelievable because this unconnected her to the audience and also it made her seem more of a representation of people in government than her as a character. We also made the other actors play more than one of the character this made us not connect to the characters that we were playing, even though some of the subjects could have been quite emotional. However I think that we could have elongated the scenes that we do, because we went over some of the subjects, such as the IRA, to make them more effective and to show more of what happened and the crimes against humanity that she committed. We also used humour, in the form of song, in our piece of theatre because Brecht always liked the use of the humour to send messages in another way. This also uses the idea of alienating the audience as they become very aware that they are watching a piece of theatre with a very distinct message to it.

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6^th November 2012

In today’s lesson we explored the Brecht style of acting, and some of the techniques that he uses when putting on a production. We did exercises that explore the use of Gestus, exaggeration, narration and verfremdungseffekt. These exercises all explored the ideas behind Brechtian acting, for example: we looked at the use of stereotypes, narrators and disconnecting ourselves as actors from the characters and learning how to represent them but not be them.

This lesson helped me to learn and understand more about epic theatre and to understand how to get into the mindset of an epic theatre actor. I learnt more about how to alienate the actors and the audience from the characters and to make sure that they know that what they are seeing on stage isn’t real but a piece of fiction being shown to reflect society and political issues. I learnt that epic theatre is more about what it is trying to say to the audience rather than creating a different world from the audience, this is why narration and verfremdungseffekt is used, so that the fourth wall is broken down and the audience are aware that a message is trying to get across to them. Also for the actors using narration and having to play more than one character helped me to understand more about epic theatre and about Brecht’s style of acting because it made me become less attached and connected to the one character as I couldn’t become them because I would have to step out of that character into another one in a fluid movement, without having time to connect or get into the mindset of that character, so by using techniques such as gestus really helped me to understand how gestures and attitudes can portray a character without having to be them.

I found Brechtian theatre at first to be unnatural and slightly strange, as when I normally act or approach a character I find that I want to connect with them, I want to be able to understand them and I find that my view of good, strong acting is when I see someone and I don’t think of them as the actor but as the character and I am absorbed into the world that is being shown to me and the massage should be shown that way. So when I came to approaching characters and the exercises that we had to do, I found that a lot of them felt forced or unnatural for me, especially when we had to do the verfremdungseffekt exercise and had to take a very serious subject and make it strange by saying the stage directions. I found that it didn’t feel right when I was acting it because suddenly I felt disconnected from the character. However the more exercises that I did I could see and start to understand why Brecht would want to alienate the audience and the actors from the characters as he felt the message of the piece of theatre was more important and that the audience should leave the theatre with something to think about. This is why Brecht and the political theatre goes so well together because it is about the message and trying to effect the audience and make  a change in the world through the use of theatre, which is something that I think is very important in theatre and I believe that theatre and the arts can be very powerful and have a large effect on the world and current issues.