Le Coq: Physical Theatre

Tristan is reading an interview
Element to work with: rust (stops working well, gets slower and freezes at some point)
Suggestions from the class: stiffen up gradually, contrast (opposite of rust and then make a dramatic change)

We need to explore dynamics
Using elements to help you such as water, fire, rust, earth, wind

Exercise

Flash - Scene 1 - Flash - Scene 2 - Flash - Scene 3
Starting a story at the end and working forwards in time.
You can use projections, signs, a narrator

You need to give the audience the language they need to understand it
What is it about Brecht that you're using to 

Augusto Boal

South America - Brazil


continuation of Brecht


Forum Theatre
Theatre of the Oppressed (for the oppressed)

• He would choose one issue and you would have the actors, the joker and the audience
• The joker is the connection between the audience and the actors & play
• Present something and then remain neutral - he does not force an opinion on the audience
• Example: One protagonist who makes all the wrong choices and gets negative consequences
• Joker goes out to the audience and says "enjoy the show etc" and lets the audience watch the play
• Joker comes back and asks audience if the protagonist could have done something to change - audience makes suggestion - actors takes directions from audience member
• Audience member is engages with choice

Invisible Theatre

• Goes into a restaurant (they were not allowing people to walk in and ask for a glass of water)
• Two actors go in and order a meal --> Another actor goes in and asks for a glass of water, challenges restaurant owner
• Audience are the people in restaurant
• Impact is to raise awareness 

Apprentice: Andrienne Jackson http://www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk/

looking at stories and structures
     Go a little 

Brecht

Attacks bourgeois and opera of theatre
He wants to make theatre political
Singing shouldn't replace an excess of feeling (I cannot speak, so I'm going to sing).
Wants the actor to always be aware that he's being watched
Wants to bring the audience in emotionally, then kick them out (always watching, thinking, observing). Thus, the actor also always has to be in that position.

Stanislavsky - Piscator - Brecht
Removing oneself

Lecoq

Three Penny Opera

Title in German - Die Dreigroschenoper

Kurt Weil (music)
Bertolt Brecht

Actors in Three Penny Opera
Kurt Gerron

• Berlin trained actor; Jewish; sent to Terezin - concentration camp for propaganda purposes; directed many plays in the camp

Lotte Lenya

• Bertolt Brecht's wife; inspiration for many female characters

Adapted from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera

Bertolt Brecht: Epic Theatre

"The dramatic theater's spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too-- Just like me -- It's only natura -- It'll never changer -- The suffering of this man appall me, because they are inescapable. That's great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world-I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh"

"The epic theater's spectator says: I'd never have thought it -- That's not the way -- That's extraordinary, hardly believable -- they are unnecessary -- that's great art; nothing obvious in it -- I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh."

• Breaking down of the fourth wall
• actor - audience
• connection
• conversation
• interaction
• Poster boards/panels/projections (announcing)/narrator/placards or signs "telling", "underlining", "framing" the scene:
• where 
• who 
• what

Today:

• video
• live streaming
• actor asking advice from the audience
• projection, angles, backdrop
• actors within the audience
• use of the "house" for stage effects
• mics
• bringing an audience member into the play
• minimalism - Dogville
• only using what you really need

New York Post Headlines - Brecht

"Drunken mom arrested for mistreating child"

"Corrupt politician released after years of prison"

Goals:

1. Remind audience that they are watching a play
2. Political statement ("arouses action") REASON
3. Montage/jump sequences
4. Point out the picture

Epic Theatre vs. Dramatic Theatre

Pre WWII

GERMANY
Bertolt Brecht: playwright, director, actor and practitioner (putting theories into practice)

Playwrights shifting dramatic writing into realistic writing:

• Frank Wendekind --> wrote Spring Awakening
• Ibsen
• Strindberg
• Pirandello (later)

Moscow Art Theatre

• Stanislavski --> Father of the method (new way of acting); living truthfully under imaginary circumstances
• Stanford Meisner --> Esper --> Uta Hagen (LIVING THEATRE U.S.A.)
• Constantin 

All looking for TRUTH, REALISM, BELIEVABILITY 

BACK TO BRECHT!

NEVER MIND!

Cabaret (short, political pieces) - Yiddish Theatre (Jewish humor)

Black humor: cutting, powerful, satyrical 

BACK TO BRECHT NOW!

DRAMATIC THEATRE: Brecht's vision of what it is

plot

spectator watch in stage situation

no capacity for action

"experience"

human being taken for granted (this is the way it is)

unalterable  

one scene makes another

growth linear

thought determines being

Feeling (appealing to our emotions)

EPIC THEATRE: What Brecht emphasizes

narrative

spectator is an observer (does not aim to pull you in/ you always remember that you are in a theatre)

arouses capacity for action (wants audience to stand up and react) 

"picture of the world"- looking at life, but really looking at the picture

human being is an object of inquiry 

alterable (life can change)

each scene for itself (in terms of the writing of it)

montage - jumps (time)

social being determines thought --> socially awareness of reality will change thinking

Reason (the mind, not the feelings)