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.