16/11/16 - ‘The Visit’ Research and Preliminary Devising

‘The Visit’ was written in 1956 by Friedrich Durrenmatt, a swiss writer. Like many plays at the time, the script features morbid and surreal humour to discuss serious political situations. In this case, (arguably) the question to the audience is ‘Can you buy anything i.e justice?’, as we see the main character ‘Claire’ offer money to the poor people of her hometown in exchange for the murder of a man that wronged her years ago: the local family man Alfred Ill. Like a Brechtian play, the characters and the audience in turn are presented with a moral ultimatum: kill and be rich? Or be poor and morally correct? Additionally, the surreal character descriptions and situations leave room for lots of gestus, and creative direction in terms of establishing setting through physicality (actors as inanimate objects for example), or skipping back and forth in time in an episodic fashion to present the audience with the material they need to decide their opinion on the situation.  

At the time that the play was written, Switzerland had recently seen the end of a second world war in which it had retained its neutral stance. During World War II, Switzerland was an ideal country for fleeing refugees. However, Switzerland did not take in the large numbers of people fleeing wars, and of those granted citizenship, working was not allowed. In terms of context, the justice that Durrenmatt is questioning could be based on that which Jews were not given.

More research must be done on this context to further our ideas however.

Previously, we had a workshop with the creators of an adaptation of August Strindberg’s ‘Dream Play’, and their tip for devising with text as a stimulus was to note the landmarks of the play or scene chosen, which was also even more relevant to us because we too were adapting an old text. The ‘landmarks’ can be defined as the main events that happen in the play, and the parts of the plot that need to happen in order to propel the story. Like ‘Dream Play’, ‘The Visit’ is a classic and often revisited play, as well as being a frequently studied text in Germany.  Creating a fresh take on the story was consequently imperative, and working out the landmarks of the extract means that we can take our interpretations of the play and devise according to our own intentions as a political company whilst not going too far off tangent, as well as ensuring that a coherent narrative is still present. The landmarks that we have chosen are:

1.       Ill and Claire meet again + reminisce about youth

2.       Town Celebration of Claire’s ‘donation’

3.       Mayor thanks Claire for generosity

4.       Claire presents donation on the condition that Ill is murdered

5.       Butler presents Claire’s case

6.       Blinded witnesses confess

7.       Claire shares past – death of her baby and life of prostitution

8.       Mayor rejects Claire’s attempt to ‘buy justice’

From these landmarks we then sat down as a group and talked about what questions we wanted to present our audience with, as with Brecht and Durrenmatt also, the political theatre we have studied reflects on societal issues by prompting its audience with a question that the audience should answer by reflecting on their response to the play. For instance, in Brecht’s ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ the question is ‘Is a mother defined by her blood relation to her child, or her evidence of love and sacrifices made for them?’. As a result, we decided on three questions that interested us:

1.       Can you buy everything i.e. justice?

2.       Does a woman have to prove herself a villain in order to not be a victim?

3.       How has the justice system today changed since Durrenmatt’s time?

Taken from google images

These three questions for us would answer the ‘Why now?’ rhetoric posed by our teachers – Why is ‘The Visit’ relevant today? I would argue that the play is very relevant in terms of it contemplating how justice could be freely given to those willing to pay in some way, which for me echoes the ‘injury lawyers for you’ franchise, as well as the slightly more pop culture medium of ‘Jeremy Kyle’ doling out justice through paternity tests and embarrassing TV confessions.  Our second investigative question, which was highlighted by Claire’s abusive past compared to her cold blooded present appearance, resonates with the societal view of women today. As a woman, I see ‘myself’ (by that I mean representations of femininity) being killed, beaten by abusive partners that I won’t leave, and raped in the name of television entertainment. I am outraged by the cliché that a woman’s murder in a detective programme is usually down to a jealous partner or sexual predator, whilst a man’s death can be the result of a high espionage mission to take down a corporation from the inside, or a monetary dispute.

Taken from google images

This propagation of women’s sexual abuse in particular for entertainment has even come to the point that an entire television franchise –Law and Order SVU – is dedicated to it. This has dangerous effects, as it desensitises the public to sexual abuse, as well as women being victimised too often in the media. Therefore, it is easy to see a woman as fragile and weak, because of the stereotypes we have been fed, unless she is a monster. Lastly, our ideas of the justice system have evolved rapidly over the past decades. Court cases are now brought out into newspapers for the public to discuss and sensationalise, such as the ‘Amanda Knox Trial’ that has even led to the creation of a Netflix series. The justice system could be now seen as a means of entertainment, which we would like to further explore during devising.

Taken from 'The Visit' by Durrenmatt

We were then given the task of creating a rough sketch to encapsulate some of the work we’ve done on the play so far, and to do this my group decided to devise around the question ‘Can you buy anything?’, as other questions would have required research that would use up valuable devising time. As we have been given a lot of freedom about how much or little of the actual text we want to use, we have decided to take bits of the script that support the themes we think are most important to bring to light. For the question ‘Can you buy anything?’ we chose a section on page 36 of the extract, entailing Claire’s condition that her donation to the town acts as ‘buying myself justice’, followed by the mayor stating that ‘Justice can’t be bought’.

This extract goes after the staging of an advert titled ‘Justice 4 U’, complying with the modern day link to buying justice, which features a woman on her couch, phoning her friend and asking where she ‘can get a new cup of justice’. In this part, we use the Brechtian technique of actors creating the furniture by creating the physical resemblance of a sofa for the actress to sit on. The thing I think we need to work on is the reason why this technique is used, as our piece will only be truly effective if the techniques we use are meaningful instead of being included for the sake of ticking a box. Then, I hop onto the back of another actor, Sherene, to create the caricature of the mayor in the extract. The idea is that a) the gestus of a fat mayor is created by my legs around Sherene’s stomach acting as an enlarged belly, which in retrospect we could push even more with the smoking of a cigar and the constant inspection of a coin bag in front of the starving peasants, as well as b) I deliver all of the mayor’s rational lines, whilst Sherene delivers all of the dismissive, oafish lines in the extract. Therefore, I act in a way as the conscience of the mayor, whilst my body adds extra limbs to the character, pushing perhaps the idea that his obsession with money and corrupting the people could be best symbolised by him being a spidery creature.

Having the mayor’s conscience present also makes use of Brecht’s ‘Not…But..’  Technique, as the lines that prove him conceited are contrasted by him being considerate and even polite. Again, I think we need to refine our use of this technique by making the difference in our outlooks even more obvious, perhaps with added props like angel and devil horns, or added lines to enhance our personalities. Lastly, when the Mayor says that he still doesn’t understand how ‘Everything can be bought’, we transition into a restaurant scene, in which the dishes marketed by the charismatic maître d are actually women, sold as brides in the same way that Claire was sold in her past. This explores the age old saying ‘Money can’t buy love’, but with increasing use of mail order bride websites, such as the leading website ‘Anastasiadate’ having 2.6 million visits per month, this statement is close to being retracted. This section acts as an insight into Claire’s past, as well as providing social and cultural links to today’s society.

For our next session, I think we need to have some more research to help in creating work to answer the remaining questions, as well as working out (in the same way that was essential for our political protests) what we want our audience to do with the information. Do we want them to change the way they behave? Sign a petition? Stop buying a certain newspaper? After we know this, we can work out how we will make this clear, so that our audience can succeed in continuing our political plight.

22/11/16 - Protest evaluation

Today we performed our protest in front of our school. Overall I am very pleased with our journey from the first showcase in front of classmates, to the informed and considered presentation we gave today!

The actors playing patients were very successful at gathering crowds to play the game we had designed, and I was often quite surprised at how many people were lined up on the start line when we as Doctors turned around! This meant that we could build on the atmosphere of fun and community before the violent contrast of restraining the patients. Furthermore, in some feedback we were given, a participant confirmed that having audience interaction was effective and got people to really take in the whole protest instead of giving it a glance and moving on. The time we spent really synchronising our movements paid off to a great extent, as it added to the clinical feel of the performance and gave us greater ‘stage presence’ as a cast because our powerful movements turned heads.

Taken from Google images - The original 'Grandma's Footsteps'

In terms of the props we used - the tally chart and the postcards given out at the end - both were very effective in carrying out the final explanation of our cause, and helped people who didn’t quite get the gist from our physical routine. In fact, I even heard people say ‘Oh’ in understanding when they saw the three doctors add to the tally chart named ‘Number of Inappropriate restraints’ at the end of the piece. The use of black paint also confirmed my premonition that it would make the whole protest grotesque and visceral, and as the piece looped over and over, the patients became more and more tainted by the oily liquid and this foreshadowed the danger that the doctors were, as our hands were dripping with the stuff. After the protest, some groups said that they had realised that they hadn’t given their viewers a call to action in terms of what to do in response to the protest. I think in giving out postcards people could read the information present to firstly gain a wider scope on what our protest was about, but also to make us successful in deciding what we wanted to come out of the piece. Viewers could then have a clearer vision of the fact that face down restraint is a real thing; happening all the time, and they too can do something about it by signing the petition on the postcards.

The finished tally

On the other hand, there were definitely some things we didn’t plan properly for! The aesthetically pleasing technique we chose to use in order to restrain the patients became quite tiresome after only a few repeats of the protest, and coupled with slippery paint splatters on the floor, the technique very quickly turned into just falling on to the patients. Although I don’t think this detracted from the meaning of our piece, it put the people being restrained in danger of injury because the way in which they began to fall to the ground didn’t support them - I even found myself slipping as well - and landing on top of my patient, which could have caused serious injury. In the future I would do more rehearsal with the paint and in the actual location (which featured a hard concrete floor) to work out the logistics of a safe - yet attractive- maneuver to the ground.  We also didn’t plan for the sheer amount of people that would be interested in our protest, and so the postcards handed out at the end of each ‘cycle’ quickly ran out. This meant that many of the people watching our piece either didn’t receive the information that would have clarified our cause, or didn’t have a way to take matters into their own hands and sign the petition. This has taught me to plan for the best! Next time, I would plan for masses of people coming to see my piece, and therefore would be able to cater fully for whatever amount I receive on the day, so that no one comes away from a protest feeling that they are unable to do their bit for the cause also. Speaking of furthering the message, one of the actors in our group picked up on the fact that many viewers only got the message after their eyes were directed to the ‘Number of Inappropriate Restraints’ tally chart, and some didn’t realise that this prop was part of our protest because it was placed a distance away from where the action happened. Consequently, we could have placed this tally chart on a board in front of the doctors so that it was immediately received as part of the piece, and maybe viewers would even have the gist of the protest before it started instead of having to wait until they were given postcards and such at the end. I have learned from this that in any future protest, all the information that you want the audience to receive has to be immediately available to them, instead of revealing it in ‘bits’. This is due to the fact that the medium of a public performance means that some viewers may not stay to watch the whole piece, which could jeopardise all of the work the cast has put in to create meaning.  

When we began with our first showcase, our piece was clouded with separate ideas about mental health all squashed together, making a much too ambitious attempt to give the audience several different commentaries on the mental health system, including face down restraint, the prevalence of medication instead of therapy and government cuts. Today, our principle complimented our ability to channel just one issue within a wider problem - face down restraint - as a political theatre company has to trust that its audience will have some knowledge on the bigger picture due to them having an interest in politics already. I definitely think our concise explanation of the issue meant that our audience on the whole received the message. Therefore, I know now that not every detail has to be laid out, and political theatre is a genre that relies on its audience’s past knowledge of the situation, and in that they become part of the piece as well; unlike a naturalistic play that sets out all of the information ever needed in the two hour slot. The narrative of a political piece also carries on after it has finished, unlike the story that dies in a conventional performance after the curtain falls. In this world, the audience must go and seek more, so that they may carry on the initiative of the cast. With the power that our protest had overall, I think we have achieved this.

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht is heralded as the creator of theatre that was driven by a political message, which was controversial at the time because it was not widely accepted to criticize the government. In many ways, Brecht made people aware of their own power to spread change through speech. Born in 1898, Brecht experienced both world wars, at first from the perspective of a medical orderly, and then after his fleeing of Germany and hearing about his country's plight from the polished throne of America. This meant that Brecht both experienced war in its horrifying grit, and then from an alienated position where the idea of patriotism would seem truly ridiculous. Therefore, Brecht was shaped by his past as a director who challenged both the actions of the government, and the tolerance of its people. 

In terms of form, one of Brecht's inspirations was the English comedian Charlie Chaplin, who used slapstick and body language to create humour in his silent films. This explains firstly why political theatre is usually surreal and 'jokey', but also where ideas of Gestus came from. Chaplin conveyed character and sensibility solely through physicality, and thus Brecht's heavy use of the physical to indicate social standing, age, and gender can be pinned to his love of Chaplin's comedy through the body. 

Taken from google images

A Brechtian play will also have a skewed timeline, with 'episodes' instead of scenes in chronological order. This way the viewer can piece the story together in whichever way they want, meaning that the conclusion they draw from the play could be different to the person sitting next to them. As a feat in his career Brecht created the Berliner Ensemble, a company committed to performing only his plays, which meant that his political messages could be broadcast without having to seek permission from the government in terms of being allocated space and 'air time'. Instead, the Berliner Ensemble could create, show and tour their work whenever they pleased. 

I am very thrilled to be studying the techniques of such an influential practitioner, and further research can be found in my diagram below: 

Protest Update #3

We got started straight away on how to make sure that the audience had a connection with the patients, which would firstly inspire them to watch the whole of our protest, but also create more of a shock when the people they have seen on such a human level are treated like animals with the use of face down restraint. The answer was simple: they would get onlookers to play ‘Grandma’s Footsteps’ with them! Whilst the doctors were marking on their tally how many times they’d restrained patients, the actors playing patients would ask onlookers if they’d like to play the game, and then they would really be up close and personal to the issue, and they are experiencing it instead of being shouted at by us as angry protesters.

After getting a few people to play the game as well in order to test this theory, our results were positive, although all agreed that the speech we were using - a mix of the patients saying ‘get off of me’, and the Doctors telling them to calm down all at once- was hard to pick out and form a message out of. From this, we came up with a set script of patients saying ‘I can’t breathe’ until this noise builds and becomes desperate, and then the doctors in unison saying ‘I can’t let go of you until you calm down’. Then the doctors will stand up, and the patients, sitting up will say ‘Face down restraint is a dangerous practice’, to which the doctors will reply, pointing to the start line, ‘It’s for your own good’. The piece will then begin again as doctors mark off their tally chart and patients gather more players.

In this session, we also solved these questions that we set for ourselves:

How will we stop the audience playing with us from being harmed if they are so close to the action? - We will have a point in which the patients instruct civilian game players to ‘wait here’ and not cross a certain line. After this, only the three patients will cross to touch the backs of the three ‘Grandma’s’, and this way there will be no way that an audience member can be caught in the crossfire between the doctors and patients, or be restrained by accident because they won’t have the opportunity to touch the doctors themselves. This will also mean that the view of the restraining will be better because people won’t be clumped around the actors at this time.

What will the back of the doctors’ coats say? ‘The Mental Health System’, which both specifies exactly what our protest is about - mental health - and that it is attacking the ‘system’ and not the workers. In the same way that actors represent social groups in Brechtian theatre, so will the doctors in this case, which reflects on it being a broad, expansive protest about society in terms of mental health as a whole.

How will we draw on the advice of our principle and prompt the audience to do something about the political issue after the protest? Some of our members requested that the cast of ‘Tomorrow I was Always A Lion’ provide us with the same postcards they hand out at the end of their shows, which are petitions that can be signed and mailed to local districts requesting address on the issue. The cast very kindly did this, and so our 7th member will act in arguably the most important role, of moving along audience members that have played the game after the end of each ‘cycle’ saying ‘There’s nothing to see here’, whilst handing out these postcards. This very effectively urges them to find out more about the issue as well as acting as clarifying the subject with the information on the postcard.

I am very excited to perform this protest tomorrow, and think that whatever happens, we have become more socially aware actors because of it. Furthermore, our knowledge of politics in my opinion is one of the sharpest tools an actor can have.

Protest Update #2

When we started devising this time, we worked out that to grab attention, we would stage this idea of restraint being ‘unfair’ through the guise of playing a game, and therefore those that used restraint inappropriately were ‘playing dirty’. The game that looked most similar to our blocking was ‘Grandma’s footsteps’, and once a patient touched the shoulder of a Doctor, the idea of a fun game (firstly attention grabbing as it intrigues an audience that are expecting to see an angry protest), would be flipped on its head as the ‘Grandmas’ (Doctors) would turn around and aggressively use face down restraint on the patient. This gave way to all three doctors having ‘The system’ on their backs instead of having ‘A doctor’ in the middle, and this was also due to the fact that after several runs of this idea, it became clear that the distinction between ‘A Doctor’ and ‘The System’ would be unclear to people potentially only paying a passing glance to the protest. However, we would further highlight the idea that we are protesting ‘inappropriate’ use of the restraint by having a big tally chart stuck to the wall that we are performing near, with the headline ‘Inappropriate use of face down restraint’, that we would add to with black paint in a nearby bucket after every ‘round’ of the game. Having the black paint dripping off our hands and dirtying the clothes of the patients adds an element of the grotesque, foreshadowing how the lines will be blurred between ‘game’ and ‘abuse’ later in the in the protest as it marks the end of each ‘cycle’ and therefore also acts as the beginning of the protest. Our final work for our last session of refining was condensed into the questions: How can we make use of the personal connection that the actors made with audience members in our showcase of the protest (which was praised in feedback)? Can we use certain speech to further clarify the message?

Protest Update #1

After our feedback, we really stripped back the idea to focus on one main issue: face down restraint. As we all agreed after our showcasing of the protest that abstract work is less impressive and more confusing in a protest that will have viewers coming and going regularly, we first talked about how we could create our protest in the simplest, yet most interesting ways. As we were inspired by another group’s drumming on objects like bins to make an attention catching rhythm, we took from this to create a visual rhythm; one where the restraint, pulling up of a patient, and resetting of the cycle clearly follows an imaginary beat so that it reflects something clinical and robotic. Our idea was then fleshed out by having three doctors standing with their backs to three patients, both in horizontal rows with at least a 5 foot distance.

One of the people in our group discussed how her relative works in the mental health sector, and she herself has to use face down restraint; not because she wants to, but because the system set out in mental health care facilities leaves the staff with no other choice when a patient is threatening. Therefore, to show that we were sympathetic to workers who do not use the face down restraint inappropriately,  and that the fault lies in the system, which can be abused by some to restrain when it is clearly not the last solution, we decided that this clinical, fast paced beat of restrain, pull up, reset, would be carried out by the two doctors either side of the doctor in the middle. The doctor in the middle would have ‘A Doctor’ in black on the back of their medical coat, whilst the doctors either side would have the words ‘The System’ inscribed on their backs. Whilst the two doctors would be robotic and harsh in their restraining whilst their patients were clearly not causing any trouble, we contrasted this by having the doctor in the middle only go to restrain their patient when they begin to push and shove the other two patients. The patient would then push the doctor, and then be restrained, but afterwards be calmly helped to their feet and guided back to the ‘starting line’. This ‘Starting line’ would be present in relation to us securing a big banner saying ‘Coping’ to the tree behind the doctors - the idea being that these patients are trying to get to a place where they are able to cope with their mental health issues, and the inappropriate use of face down restraint isn’t cohesive with this plight. Therefore, these patients are set back in their treatment, or sent to the ‘starting line’. At the end of our session, however, we discovered that another group were planning to use the tree in question, and so our challenge for the next time we would devise was how to work around the lack of a big piece of ‘set’ in our piece, and how to convey the message without the use of a banner that would take a lot of time and funding to make. Additionally, how could we make our piece more attention grabbing? How could we enforce the idea that our protest is about the ‘inappropriate’ use of face down restraint, and the system, not the NHS staff?  

15/11/16 - Gestus and ‘Not...But…’

Today we learned about two more key techniques used to distance the audience when faced with Brechtian Theatre. The first of these two tools was ‘Gestus’, which is the term for making a gesture pertaining to a certain archetype (therefore indicating a kind of person) - like chewing gum and rolling eyes as a teenaged girl, or having a harsh focussed stare and rigid pose as a soldier- for the audience to have an attitude towards. For example, we were asked to represent the relationship between rich and poor in pairs, and the Gestus created by one pair was done by the ‘rich person’ inspecting an imaginary coin, and in doing so, turning his back on the ‘poor person’ huddled on the floor. The gesture he made was holding a coin up in the air for all to see how rich he is, and turning away from the person in most need of it. The audience could then have a negative attitude towards him - thinking of him as a smug, selfish capitalist. This Gestus could have been pushed further by him having a cigar in his mouth and holding his fat belly with his free hand, as the Brechtian archetype of a rich person includes someone opulent in their mass as well as money (obese), slow moving to indicate having enough status that they’d never need to rush anywhere, and being particularly obnoxious towards the poor (as most political theatre in the time of Brecht featured class divisions). Gestus is used in Brechtian theatre because it allows the moral to be the focus instead of establishing several characters in depth. This way, the audience know exactly what kind of person they are dealing with, and use their own perceptions of each archetype to decide who’s ‘side’ they will take in the political boxing match.

The other technique is called ‘Not...But…’ in which things like freeze-frames where one character speaks their thoughts aloud allows for the attitudes that the audience have towards a character (established by Gestus) to be contradicted by having an insight into the thought process behind their actions (including gestures). We put this into practice by devising a short scene based on a moment in Brecht’s ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’, in which the Governess leaves her baby behind in all of the chaos of packing; Grusha being the one to find him. At first, when we performed the scene without showing the Governess’ thoughts, the woman looks self centered, snobbish, and completely unfit to be a mother, as she appears to leave without a second glance at Michael. When we were asked to perform again with the ‘Not...But…’ technique added, I was startled at my own opinion of the Governess changing as groups showed her to have a thought process where she was of course unaware of where her baby was, which isn’t a good maternal trait at all, but she had been so groomed by the moneyed lifestyle that she’d been separated from her baby by always having a nurse taking him off of her. Therefore, the Governess is ‘Not’ a bad mother, ‘But’ one whose motherly instincts had been conditioned out of her by the childcare system at the time. This technique makes the performance even more political because it makes the audience reflect on how they too are part of society’s rigid system that discriminates against certain people, as they themselves are so quick to make either a positive or negative opinion of someone solely by their first impressions of them.  

Then, we were given an excerpt of another Brechtian play -‘Mother Courage’- and had to use the script as a stimulus for creating a scene using Gestus, the ‘Not...But..’ technique, and other Brechtian tools that we had learned about in past sessions including use of placards, song, and reworking the order of events to make them episodic. The scene was about the death of Mother Courage’s daughter Kattrin, after she tried to warn the town of an encroaching army. Mother Courage is then blamed by the peasants for her death and then told to leave as the peasants will give her a ‘proper burial’. As the mother gets her wagon rolling again, she begs the soldiers, marching through the town and singing a song about the harshness of war, to take her with them. My group were especially interested in the use of song in the scene, first when Mother Courage sings about her daughter's death, and then when the soldiers sing during their march. We thought that on both occasions, these songs could be used as a ‘Not..But…’ exercise, first because Mother Courage is blamed for Kattrin’s death, and her song sheds light on her remorse, and then because the soldiers, the men that killed her, sing about their own fear of being slain in battle. We then wanted to use the Brechtian technique of multiroling, and as a cast, planned to begin as Mother Courage with her song, then go into the soldiers and act out the killing of Kattrin, and then into peasants telling Mother Courage that Kattrin ‘is not asleep’ and then back into soldiers preparing for their next battle. By all playing the victim and then the enemy, we would have showed the blurred lines between good and bad. The only person remaining as one character would be Kattrin, with a placard to show this and to highlight her almost as a catalyst for the clash between light and dark. We also wanted to perform Mother Courage’s song as a rap, in the same way that lots of rap today is about the brutality of society, which would aid in making the piece current as well.

I think we could have realised all of these ideas if we had used our time more effectively to step back and reflect on why we have added each element. Why have we decided to make the scene episodic and make the piece primarily musical instead of scripted? What does keeping Kattrin as the same actor throughout say to the audience? What is the relationship between the mother and the soldiers? If we had answered these questions and refined the scene based on our answers, I think our performance would have been much more effective, and therefore I have annotated the script with what the ideas could have been if we had answered those questions.

It was also very helpful to watch the scenes of others to work out what was effective from an audience perspective. One group showed the switching of characters through simply removing the placard of one actor and giving it to another on stage. This way the audience are not invested in the journey of mother courage and learn not to be sentimental about the actor they have grown to like, instead, they learn it is about the representation of Mother Courage, and what her part is in her daughter’s death. Songs used by other groups were quite upbeat in relation to the sombre nature of the scene, and they became quite ironic in their delivery. This made the whole experience surreal as the scene was switched abruptly from Mother Courage’s weeping to a chorus line singing about the effects of war, and as a viewer I had to choose which representation of society I wanted to believe. The song’s delivery - upbeat and chirpy-  also commented on the way we view war; as something heroic and golden when we don’t know the half of a soldier’s misery. The juxtaposition in this case between the grim lyrics and a happy-go-lucky all smiles chorus line was a very effective political tool, and relates to the surrealist nature of Brechtian theatre. From watching other pieces I could also reflect on the fact that our piece would have been improved by more use of Gestus and dialogue to hammer in our message, because I think our performance may have been more experimental than Brechtian due to minimal use of the techniques we’ve been studying. Taking this into account, I think placards and the use of song as a disorientating break from the action as well as Gestus will fortify the political message of the scenes we are given in our next session.

07/11/16 - Creating Brechtian Characters

Today we studied and put into practice the ‘Verfremdungseffekt’, which translates loosely into ‘distancing’ your audience, or in more abstract terms ‘making strange’ - a technique at the heart of Brechtian theatre, making it completely different to naturalism. In a naturalistic play, all of the set would be sourced from the exact same time period as specified by the playwright, as well as the tiniest detail of set dressing being present so that the world created on stage was almost as familiar as the one that we live in. However, in ‘making strange’, the world created is like a silhouette of our own, and the details that are altered are the ones that highlight the message of the play. The audience then cannot take any detail for granted, and must compare and contrast each element of the two realities, leading them to analyse the situation and their own responses deeply.

We workshopped how to make these silhouettes by exploring the popular Brechtian style of creating the set using our bodies, and had to make chairs, tables, motorcycles, beds and escalators by manipulating our bodies into shapes that resembled the objects. This on stage presents the audience with the question: is everything we see a construct of mankind? People make tables, chairs and beds - things we rely on to live nourished lives - and therefore what do we have that is real, grounded and unaltered by man’s hand? Therefore this exercise is very useful in creating political theatre because it pushes the audience to question the constructs of society.  We then went deeper with this idea by making the objects first out of our bodies, and then giving them an emotion, for example a ‘sad chair’, or ‘angry motorcycle’ and we really had to work out how something as small as holding our arms in a slightly different way would influence the entire representation of the object. In doing this, you can also create an atmosphere on stage, whether it be gloomy, treacherous or romantic, without the expensive use of set dressing. The atmosphere created also can convey things about characters that audience hasn't even met yet, including things pertaining to their social standing. For instance, a ‘sad chair’ might have legs close to breaking, a seat that’s worn down so much that it is concave, and a slumped back. This image could lead the audience to conclude that luxury is hard to come by in the life of the chair’s owner, and they may be low in class due to the fact that they can’t afford cushy new furnishings. This character may also be very unhappy, as the chair could provide a visual metaphor for this as it slumps under the emotional weight of its owner. These feelings could be conveyed by the facial expressions of the actors, as well as keeping close to the floor in height to show the slumping nature of the chair, and in this they create subtext around a character without the script having to express their social background or temperament.

In terms of creating Brechtian characters, we furthered our exploration of ‘verfremdungseffekt’ or ‘the V effect’ by all creating postures of characters firstly, and then working out the internal thoughts of our characters in relation to how their movements made us feel.  In one part of the activity, we began by imagining that a string was tied to the tips of our noses, and another was fastened to our tailbones. We then had to physicalize what it would look like if someone pulled on both of these strings at the same time, which, for most of us, caused the flattening of our backs and a position resembling being in an ‘L’ shape; with our legs straight and stomachs at a right angle to our thighs. Next, we had to walk around the room like this, and consider which parts of our bodies lead the movement, and how this could be used to create character. In my case, I found that my forehead lead the way and my arms swayed from either side in my movements, which gave me the image of being someone of little intelligence, as each part of their body is a little bit delayed behind their forehead. In other words, I ambled around the room looking a bit like an aimless ape . The animalistic quality of my character led me to conclude that I was somewhat like the village idiot, and this is perfectly valid as Brechtian characters are usually created to fit a stereotype that the audience can relate to and interpret as a commentary on a ‘group’ of people as opposed to watching the emotional plight of an individual. As stereotypes are usually imbued with social standing as well as age and gender, this method of creating characters is especially suited to communicating exactly where in society each character fits, and one could, by using the harshest terms, assume that my character was a middle aged, lower class male, and therefore before I have even spoken the audience are aware of exactly who I represent. Additionally, whether my actions either rage against of confirm my stereotype also conveys a message - are we more than what we appear to be?

I took from this method of creating characters the new understanding that a Stanislavskian method to approaching character is to establish all of the wants, needs and inner motives of a character before creating the external; the physicality. Whereas the Brechtian technique inverts this idea by using physicality to decide on personality. This is especially tailored to political theatre because a character with no clear inner motive forces, and that is two dimensional in terms of having little depth is of course strange and distancing to an audience; thus making use of ‘the V effect’ perfectly.

07/11/16 - Protest Feedback

Today we performed what we had created so far for our political protests, and received peer feedback in order to make the most effective piece for the public. From the one rough rehearsal we had, we began with three actors dancing, and then as one reaches out to interact with a viewer, another four of us (as doctors) lift her over to a table and carry out a physical theatre routine of restraining her and feeding her pills. The actress then slumps over a doctor and is carried back to her starting position to begin the sequence again. All the while the other two dancers perform their physical theatre routine using Skittles in plastic cups to indicate taking pills. The only words we used were the doctors saying ‘You want to get better’ and the patients replying ‘I want to get better’, so the whole thing was very surreal and open to interpretation. Upon getting feedback, the surrealism in fact was one of our protest’s weaknesses.  In fact, the absurdist nature of the performance led to the subject matter being lost, and instead of people thinking it was about the ill-treatment of patients in mental health institutes, it was perceived as being about drug addiction. This was due mainly to the use of pills and it being seen as the central focus of the protest as the only prop. Secondly, with two separate physical theatre pieces going on at the same time the audience didn’t know where to look, and with poorly synchronised work, it was messy and bits were concealed from the audience by actor’s blocking at times. The pill cups were also kicked over and trampled - this was vital to know ahead of time considering we will perform in a busy school ground, and as they also distracted from the message, they were an entirely ineffective prop. However, we managed to create a routine that could loop successfully and could therefore be repeated for a changing audience, and I do think we have some good core ideas that just need to be refined slightly.

It was also really helpful to watch the protests of others and analyse what was effective and what wasn’t. Specifically, I realised that the use of signs in a protest is a rather uninspiring technique because sometimes your audience won’t be paying attention for long enough to read every single slogan. Secondly, live action will always be more eye catching than words; we need to consider this as we compete for audience interest on the day. What really stood out to me when I watched other groups was the use of ordinary objects like dustbins in making music. One group in particular did this by drumming on the side of a bin, and as well as it creating a solemn beat that was very atmospheric, it also grabs attention without invading the personal space of viewers by shouting or touching them. Stillness and slow-moving were also really effective, especially when coupled with moments of pace beforehand, so we all agreed that slowing the pace would improve our protest due to the feedback we received.

After this experience, we sat down and decided that by stripping our idea down to a very simple form, we could have a better and more concise protest. We then all acknowledged that this should be done just by focussing on face-down restraint instead of incorporating ideas with medication. This is especially because we have lots of research on the former, but nothing concrete for the latter, which could compromise the credibility of our protest! We want to stay with the use of one actor making a personal connection with an audience member and then being whisked away (as we did by carrying them to the table), as our feedback confirmed this was powerful in creating confusion for the audience. We want this confusion however to be the right kind, and for the audience to understand that we are showing people with mental health issues to be just like anyone else, except that the treating of them can be dehumanising. We will move forward with this idea by keeping to a core theme, that shies away from being abstract so that we can convey our message. This can be done by deciding on a few ‘frames’ or images of people being restrained and others saying in unison something like ‘I’m not a threat: I just wanted them to stop watching me’ mirroring the story of the women who was restrained after trying to leave the toilet. I think the repetition of the words ‘I’m not a threat’ could be really important because it highlights our focus on saying that the people using face down restraint are threatening; not the people being restrained. This way we can work with the stillness that we discovered was so effective, and we’ll have one visual ‘focal point’ that the audience can draw information from. The main thing we have to change is making our message clear, and this we will do in the next session by really stripping back our idea and keeping what was effective. All in all, the showcase was extremely beneficial to our group as we got the constructive criticism we need to devise with direction.

01/11/16 - Political Protest Notes

A screenshot taken from
the mentioned BBC article

Our political protest was inspired by ‘Tomorrow I was Always a Lion’ by the Belarus Free Theatre, seen by some of our group members, about the aggressive face down restraint used to sedate patients that are seen as being ‘threatening’ to others and staff in mental health wards. Countless news stories have been published of the restraint being used on patients that are in no way a threat, highlighting the unhealthy methods used to treat mental health in the UK. In a BBC news article, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37417132) an ex patient details being ‘very distressed that there was this male nurse watching me use the bathroom’, and upon wanting to leave her room she ‘was forced to the ground, her underwear removed, and she was injected in the buttocks with medication.’ The face down restraint can cut off oxygen to the patient, and in the article given to audience members by the Belarus Free Theatre detailing the technique, there are an average of 183 restraints made every day.

Belarus Free Theatre article

We were all very passionate about this issue and in devising our protest we touched upon other aspects of ill treatment in mental health institutes that we have heard of happening, but as of yet lack the research that will give our protest conviction and credibility. These practices include the supply of anti-depressants and other drugs instead of the therapy that may be enough to alter behaviour instead of drugging patients. We heard a second hand story also of a woman with bipolar disorder being told that she is unable to receive unpaid support unless she physically harms herself, whereas before the cuts were made to NHS services, she was able to obtain help before and during a low point, regardless of ‘how dangerous’ her disorder appeared to be. Therefore, although our piece features reference to these issues, we must convene next week with the necessary research to solidify these points otherwise they must be cut from our protest.

The way we want to present our idea so far is to have a table covered in a white cloth, with four of us at each corner in lab coats. These lab coats will have statistics about the harmful effects of face down restraint or lack of therapy in bold black writing on the back. The other three members of the group will be dancing in the foreground, and seeming totally unthreatening. The moment that one of the dancers goes to touch or interact with an onlooker, the doctors will bring them to the table and restrain them face down, as they are seen as a threat. The other two dancers will then say in monotone at regular intervals as if to a beat ‘nothing to see’, to mirror the lack of public attention to what happens to patients under these conditions. On the table, we will create a physical theatre routine to illustrate the topics we wish to bring to light, which will finish with the patient slumping over a doctor, and being carried ‘fireman’ style back to their original dancing position. The doctor and patient will then switch characters by the patient taking the coat and returning to the table as a doctor. This way our protest can loop, and people passing can receive the message regardless of what point they are introduced. As a new patient starts to dance, the tablecloth will be smoothed over, this time with the doctors having blood on their hands. The idea is that as the protest loops, our white clothes and tablecloth will become more and more blood soaked.

The petition given out at 'Tomorrow I Was Always A Lion'

After talking to our head master, he suggested that pieces are most effective when they motivate people to take action. This can be done by presenting them with a petition to sign, or something that they can do afterwards so that our protest can make a difference. I think it’s imperative that we include something along the lines of this, and we can take inspiration from the postcards handed out at the end of ‘Tomorrow I was Always a Lion’, with a petition on the back that the audience could sign and then post to their local council, so that they become part of the resolution as well.  

01/11/16 - Breactian Technique Introduction and Epic Theatre as a Political Tool

“Because we live in times that are so mental, we can’t tell a story without it feeling political.” Kate Tempest

‘What is the purpose of theatre?’ was the question that started our first session studying political theatre. No one could find a definitive answer, because they ranged from things like ‘To entertain’, or ‘To give insight into the lives of others’, as well as ‘To educate’ - an answer I dislike because although it is very true, something as poetic and entrancing as theatre cannot merely be given the slightly banal intention of ‘educating’. In my eyes, theatre does all of the things mentioned, but its purpose is rooted in the idea that characters are not people, but spirits that the writer is calling upon to create a shadow of life. Consequently, we transcend our bodies, our social casts, our own routine desires and engage with theatre on a spiritual level in a melting pot of souls. The duty of theatre is to allow us to share that and be bonded by it.

Additionally, political theatre is especially important in bonding us to create empathy around prevalent social issues. Bertolt Brecht is seen as the instigator for the creation of performances involving politics, through the movement of ‘Epic Theatre’. In my research of the practitioner, I am particularly intrigued by his belief that the audience must not relate to the characters emotionally in order to receive the social message of the play, and to ensure this they must be constantly reminded of the fact that they are not viewing real life. This is done through techniques such as actors changing costume on stage for multiple roles (this way the characters are seen as facades representing an issue instead of real people), and breaking of the fourth wall to pull viewers out of the action and into self reflection. All of this comes under the term of ‘Distanciation’, which is a key Brechtian feature: the audience are distanced from the emotional content in the play in order to assess the situation morally as well as applying it to themselves.

We then looked at the differences between Dramatic Theatre - propagated by the practitioner Konstantin Stanislavsky- and Brecht’s Epic Theatre. The main difference we found was that with Stanislavsky’s system one ‘becomes’ the character: learning how to move, think, feel and talk like them in the most intrinsic way. However, with Brechtian acting, one aims to ‘represent’ a character, often drawing on stereotypes to present the audience with a commentary on a group of people that the character symbolises instead. Dramatic theatre produces plays ‘about’ something, for example Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ is ‘about’ people’s dissatisfaction with life, but it does not make a viewer think about their own approach to living per se. Meanwhile, Epic Theatre ‘reveals’ something about society - for example, ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ by Brecht reveals attitudes to war, and can make the audience review their own policies on conflict in doing so- and so the two differ in function completely.

We put our understanding of the differences to the test by creating firstly a piece of Dramatic and then Epic Theatre about a current affair found in the news. Our group chose the story of President Hollande of France deciding that the squats set up around Paris by refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict must be removed, stating that ‘those who have the right to claim asylum will go to reception centres and those who don’t will be shown the door’.


Our performance of the dramatic piece included myself and another actor playing middle class house owners protesting about the refugees camping on our street, whilst there were two actors playing the said squatters as well as us having a policeman and news reporters. The outlines of creating this naturalistic piece included being told not to make our scene intentionally funny, as it could then be seen as farcical, which is more an element of epic theatre in this case. We definitely used more coherent and extensive dialogue, as well as clear relationships between characters and narrative. Next, we performed a second time whilst applying Epic Theatre techniques, and there was a huge difference in form, as we took a far more humorous approach to the story to make fun of policy instead of mourn the injustice of the refugees - this felt much more empowering in terms of fighting in the political corner. Our characters also said slogans at times instead of developed speech to negate subtext and display how social groups felt about the refugees, making the political message easily communicated. For instance, in the previous performance I talked with my wife in the piece about how the squatters were causing unease in the neighbourhood, which we did through the norm of a back and forth conversation. In the Epic performance, we stood hand in hand, shouting to the audience in unison ‘Bonjour, we hate immigrants, now fuck off back to Calais!...Oh wait, it’s gone.’ This speech was used instead to represent the generalised opinion of the european middle class, and we showed ourselves to be ‘represent’ groups by all holding signs detailing our place in society. Mine said ‘Am I a… Rich White European?’, whilst the newsreader’s read ‘Am I a...Media Pig?’.
The Brechtian piece was therefore so much more surreal, and in this we identified that it must be so to highlight how absurd a political situation is. In doing this we question why it is accepted as the norm, complying with Brecht’s belief that the purpose of theatre should be ‘not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.’