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.
No comments:
Post a Comment