Theory Into Practice

BERTOLT BRECHT

Theory into Practice

are required to demonstrate your appreciation and theoretical understanding of Brecht to modern theatre practice as shown in specific aspects of a production either seen or participated in (Mother Courage/ Caucasian Chalk Circle). You should show understanding of the following:

· the subject matter

· the political purpose or message or dramatic intention

· the actor/audience relationship

· staging form adopted

· directorial interpretation/production style

· design elements

· role of actors and performance style

· technical elements

· audience response

Brecht: 25 Essential Points

Brecht Believed:

· the stage should approximate a lecture hall

· Aristotelian/dramatic theatre is obscene because it induces trance and confirms fatalistic attitudes

· Spectators must be made aware that they are sitting in a theatre, learning lessons from the past

· The theatre should destroy all illusions of reality as they arise

· The ‘Epic’ dramatist must tell a story which illustrates social truth

· By adopting Marxist principles, theatre could be used to ‘change the world’

Brecht’s Epic Theatre – The theory:

· Epic theatre is intended to educate the audience about social inequalities

· In Epic theatre, characters are defined by their social function, not by their personalities

· Brecht coined the term ‘verfremdung or ‘making strange’ to describe the effects he wanted to create for his audience

· Brecht’s early plays were called Lehrstucke; later he abandoned didacticism for dialectical theatre

· Brecht introduces the idea of creating Spass in his drama, ‘social criticism through fun’.

Brecht’s Epic Theatre – The practice:

· Epic theatre is loosely knit and episodic in structure

· Epic drama uses montage: all aspects of the production – décor, music, choreography – are autonomous and work independently

· The stage designer is not expected to create a realistic setting for the action but a credible environment built around the actors work

· All props used should be authentic

· To destroy the illusion all the workings of the theatre, such as lighting rigs and event he musicians should always be visible onstage

· Epic drama uses gestic means to deliver its message

· The social relationships within the play are shown gestically both by individual actors and through their stage groupings

The Brechtian Actor

· The Brechtian actor is acting in ’quotation marks’ narrating the actions of a certain person at a definite time in the past

· Actors perform in a spirit of criticism

· The actor externalises social attitudes through gestic acting

· The Brechtian actor shows in each action his alternative choices – ‘fixing the not…but’

· The Brechtian actor steps in and out of role in full view of the audience

· Brecht introduced rehearsal exercises, such as speaking in third person and speaking stage directions aloud to help his actors create distance between themselves and the role.

· Brecht invented the ‘The Street scene’ model for actors.

PEOPLE AND IDEAS THAT INFLUENCED BRECHT:

EXPRESSIONISM:

This was a movement in art and literature which originated in Germany before WW1 and ended around 1924. It influenced Modernism in England and America; and Surrealism which developed in the period between the wars.

Expressionists tried to break through accepted notions of reality to try and find a deeper meaning underneath. Its style is not smooth and linear. It is erratic and explosive rather than descriptive. Reality is distorted and heightened and is sometimes grotesque.

Expressionist playwrights of the time included Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller. They wrote in the years immediately after WW1 and attacked Capitalism in industrialised societies. The characters were only referred to as titles, so in Gas, by Kaisre, The cast list includes: The Engineer, the girl, the Gentleman in white, the billionaire’s son.

In his essay, On Experimental Theatre, (1939) Brecht said of Expressionism:

It represents arts revolt against life; here the world existed purely as a vision, strangely distorted, a monster conjured up by disturbed souls. Expressionism greatly enriched the theatre’s means of expression and brought aesthetic gains that still have to be fully exploited, but it proved quite incapable of shedding light on the world as an object of human activity. The theatres educative ability collapsed.

Brecht on Theatre – Willet pg 132

BRECHT AND MARXISM

In the late 1920’s, while working on Joe Fleishhacker, Brecht began to study Marxism. He started to read Das Kapital and took lessons from Karl Korsch at the Karl Marx school in Berlin. Brecht’s relationship with Communism is a complex one.

He took from Marxism an essential understanding of society and a sense of historicism and materialism. This much is clear in his plays and theoretical writing. And while there are many theoretical and practical differences among the various forms of Marxism, most forms of Marxism share:

· an attention to the material conditions of people's lives, and social relations among people

· a belief that people's consciousness of the conditions of their lives reflects these material conditions and relations

· an understanding of class in terms of differing economic relations of production, and as a particular position within such relations

· an understanding of material conditions and social relations as historically malleable

· a view of history according to which class struggle, the evolving conflict between classes with opposing interests, structures each historical period and drives historical change

· a sympathy for the working class or proletariat

· and a belief that the ultimate interests of workers best matches those of humanity in general.

His relationship to the Communist Party is less clear. Brecht’s teacher, Karl Korsch, was a leading Marx scholar and was also one of the most active militants in the Communist movement. In 1926, he was one of the first victims of Stalinism in the German Communist Party and was expelled from the movement to which he had always been committed. He then moved to the forefront of the Left Opposition and developed a sharp critique of Stalinism in the USSR. This was the man Brecht called ‘my teacher of Marxism’. Brecht, although a supporter of Communists, never became a Party member.

When he eventually moved to East Berlin after persecution in America, he retained Swiss passports for himself and his family – an understandable precaution perhaps by somebody who had seen totalitarianism before and had spent much of his adult life as a refugee.

The political purpose or message or dramatic intention:

When writing about Brecht you need to be aware of the political climate at the time in Germany, as well as Brecht’s own political beliefs. Brecht supported Marxism which was diametrically opposed to the Nazi, fascist regime. Brecht wanted his work to appeal to the masses, the worker (or the general public in a Marxist sense). He sought to educate and entertain, wanting individuals to form their own opinions regarding the drama they were watching.

CHINESE THEATRE

Brecht saw the Chinese actor Mei Lan Fang in Moscow, 1935. He watched him perform without make-up, costume or lighting and saw an actor who seemed to stand aside from his part ‘and make it quite clear that he knows he’s being observed’. There was a lack of illusion or empathy in the performance. By standing outside of the character the actor forced the audience to look more closely at the mechanism of acting. In the absence of ‘the fourth wall’ and the techniques used in Chinese theatre, Brecht saw some of his own ideas of ‘epic theatre’. Brecht wanted simple and uncluttered action. He was reacting against the melodramatic bourgeois German theatre that he witnessed around him.

JAPANESE NOH THEATRE

Noh plays are often morality tales and require the audience to make a judgement on what they see. Brecht’s play He who said yes/ He who said no, is based on the Noh play Taniko Again, in the techniques of Japanese theatre performance, Brecht saw the use of ‘alienation’ (verfremdungseffekt).

SPORT, BOXING AND TRAVELLING FAIRS

Early on in his analysis of theatre, Brecht drew a comparison between the theatre audience and the audience at a football or boxing match. Firstly, he wanted his theatre to have a mass appeal, to be able to draw the live crowds that a sporting event would. Secondly, he noted that these sporting audiences were always wide awake, in bright light and engaged in a dialogue with what hey were watching. Whilst following a complex match or game, they could still chat to friends and be relaxed and critical. Brecht wanted to encourage this attitude in theatre audiences.

Brecht also had an interest in the sports hero. He wanted to understand the boxers mind and he had a relationship with the great German boxer of the day, Paul Samson-Korner, with whom he collaborated on a play called The Human Fighting Machine, which was never completed.

Brecht was heavily influenced by the fan-fairs of his youth, street entertainment and political cabarets. His fascination with travelling fairs –

· A singer/narrator

· Stories with a moral purpose, underscored by pictorial illustrations.

· Accompanying music on a barrel organ

· A performance in daylight

· The audience free to smoke and drink and come and go as they please.

There were no illusions in the performance and Brecht wanted to demystify the mechanics of the performance.

ERWIN PISCATOR (1893-1966)

Piscator was a German theatre director whose left-wing policies and house-style were of great interest to Brecht. It was with Piscator at his theatre that Brecht first worked on Hasek’s novel The Good soldier Schweik. Piscator worked in Berlin in the 1920’s. His plays involved large casts, often complex stage machinery and the use of film and back projections. His pieces were motivated by politics. In April 1930, he wrote: ‘Never was it more essential than now to take sides; the side of the proletariat. More than ever the theatre must nail its flag fanatically to the mast of politics; the politics of the proletariat. The Theatre of Erwin Piscator – Willet pg 121

John Willet observes, ‘Meyerhold was surely right when he complained in 1928 that Piscator has built a new theatre but makes old actors perform in it’. The concept of epic ‘gestic’ acting was independently elaborated by Brecht in ‘The Theatre of Erwin Piscator’ Willet pg120.

DRAMATURG; Piscator was making political theatre before the Ausberger (Brecht)…Though Piscator never wrote a play himself and hardly even wrote a scene, the Ausberger claimed that apart from himself, he was the only competent dramatist. The actual theory of non-Aristotelian theatre and the development of the A-effect should be credited to the Ausberger, but much of it was also supplied by Piscator, and in a wholly original and independent way. Above all, the theatres conversion to politics was Piscator’s achievement, without which, the Ausberger’s theatre would hardly be conceivable.

Trans. Willet pg 68-69

CASPAR NEHER (1897-1962)

Caspar Neher was Brecht’s stage designer. He was also born in Augsberg. Brecht and Neher met at school in their early teens. With a common interest in theatre, they became friends. Like Piscator, Neher fought in WW1 but unlike Piscator and Brecht, he was not politicised either by his experiences nor his contact with radical friends such as Brecht. Indeed, Neher was able to continue working in Germany throughout the Nazi period, while Brecht, Piscator and many other were forced into exile due to threats to their loves.

Neher was first and foremost an artist. He did line drawings and was interested in stage design from his teens onwards. Brecht and Neher collaborated in many Brecht productions in their early and later lives, despite a separation of over ten years while Brecht was in exile. Brecht showed no resentment at Neher’s apoliticism. Fritz Korner once said of Neher, ‘he never had any (convictions). Not even in the Nazi period.’

Nevertheless, Brecht and Neher’s friendship lasted and survived the separation as is attested to be the following poem, written by Brecht in about 1948:

The Friends

The war separated

Me, the writer of plays, from my friend the stage designer.

The cities where we worked are no longer there.

When I walk through the cities that still are

At times I say: that blue piece of washing

My friend would have placed it better.

The Playwright’s speech about the Theatre of the Stage Designer Caspar Neher (from Willet pg 84-86)

With what care he selects a chair, and with what thought he places it! And it all helps the playing. One chair will have short legs, and the height of the accompanying table will also be calculated, so that whoever eats at it has to take up quite a specific attitude, and the conversation of these people as they bend more than usual when eating takes on a particular character, which makes the episode clearer. And how many effects are made possible by his doors of the most diverse heights…There is no building of his, no yard, or workshop or garden that does not bear the fingerprints of the people who built it or lived there. He makes visible the manual skills and knowledge of the builders and the ways of the living inhabitants. In his designs our friend always starts with ‘the people themselves’ and ‘what is happening to or through them;’. He provides no ‘décor’ frames and backgrounds but constructs the space for ‘people’, to experience something in.

He (Neher) often makes use of a device which has since become an international commonplace and is generally divorced from its sense. That is the division of the stage, an arrangement by which a room, a yard or place of work is built up to half height downstage while another environment is projected or painted behind, changing with every scene or remaining throughout the play. This second milieu can be made up of documentary material or picture or tapestry. Such an arrangement naturally gives depth to the story while acting as a continual remainder to the audience that the scene designer has built a set: what he sees is presented differently from the world outside the theatre.

This method for all its flexibility, is of course, only one of the many he uses; his sets are as different from one another as the plays themselves. The basic impression is of very lightly constructed, easily transformed and beautiful pieces of scaffolding, which further the acting and help to tell the evening’s story fluently. Add the verve with which he works, the contempt he show for anything dainty and innocuous, and the gaiety of his construction, and you have perhaps some indication of the way of working of the greatest stage designer of our day.

KURT WEILL – MUSIC

Brecht saw music as essential to his theatre. They are a feature of v-effeckt and spass. A musical score could include songs which commented on the action and gave the singer/actor the opportunity to address the audience directly. (They could also be sung like a chorus, which could address the characters with advice and warnings or take on the function of telling the audience the characters unspoken thoughts). He used songs to wake up the audience. The music and the songs were treated as separate elements. Brecht used cheap and expressive music that was popular – cabaret, jazz, folk, ballads and contemporary. Songs could comment on characters feelings as third person narrative, and thus were far from naturalistic. The songs allow for the distancing effect to take place as well as emphasising the message of the story and often undercutting the emotional element of the scene. The style of the music is often recitative and repetitive. The emphasis is on the words and the parable being put across, not on the melodic quality of the music. (eg: Mother Courage). Songs should be directed to the audience. Brecht did not like sentimentality. He liked music that dealt with real life issues. Sentimentality breeds false issues and statements. BUT it should be fun.