Y13 BTEC Performing Arts - Caitlin Nicholas

Before we continued work on Our Country's Good, we looked into the Brechtian idea of gestus. Our teacher asked us how we would show -using props, set, costume, proxemics, characterisation and gesture- a political piece of theatre about the slave trade in the style of Brecht. The aim would be for the audience to understand the themes of the play and the key messages of the play by simply seeing a photograph of the action. Below is a quick brainstorm of our ideas: We were then asked to look at the following images and decide whether they were taken from Brecht pieces of theatre or not, we quickly came to the conclusion that they were in fact all from Brecht's plays. The use of song and stereotyped characters  are  key components of Brecht's work. The visible, believe and subtle emotion in this picture made us question whether it was from  a Brechtian play but we were reminded that Brecht wasn't opposed to emotion but simply wanted the overa...

After learning the basics of Brecht's genre of Epic Theatre, we looked at an extract of his play Mother Courage and Her Children. We were asked to identify aspects of Brecht's style within the extract that we could see just by skimming through the scene, we found: Placards - the contents of them shown at the beginning of the scene, outlining what happens in the scene, used to distance the audience, make them aware of the theatrical nature of the play and to remove suspense Song - used in the middle of the scene to comment on the themes in the play Generic names - all characters (except from Mother Courage and her children Kattrin, Eilif and Swiss Cheese) have names that simply define their roles in the play and the wider society e.g. Cook, Sergeant, Peasant  Gestus - Mother Courage always wears a money pouch that makes a noise when she walks, constantly reminding the audience of her character and what her character represents Large narrative - we noticed in the stage...

Bertolt Brecht was a German Theatre Practitioner and Playwright. He wrote between the 1920's and the 1950's. He lived in Munich during the Weimar Republic, moved to Scandinavia and then the US during the Nazi period and WW2 before returning to East Berlin after the war. Therefore, he lived in a very politically turbulent time which in doubt inspired his theatre.  Brecht is well known for his ground  breaking, avant-garde approach to contemporary theatre shown in the genre of Epic Theatre . Epic Theatre presents the idea that an audience must see, criticise and connect with the wider political context of the play rather than identifying and connecting emotionally with the characters and the plot. He thought it to be very important that the audience (or spectators as he liked to call them) be aware that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself by highlighting the manufactured theatrical nature of the play. He employed many different tec...