Lesson 1

The Verfremdungeffect (The V effect)
The V effect was the technique that Brecht used to alienate and defamiliarise the audience, to make the audience sit up and listen. The aim is to get the audience to see something strange and question it. The V effect reminds the audience that they are watching a play and are watching real life. It makes something that would usually be normal, into something very strange, so that the audience look again and question it. The audience will ask why the thing that is normal,  has been changed into something that it shouldn't be. 


The Moody Objects Exercise 
This exercise involved the cast walking around the space , then getting into groups to create an everyday object, such as a chair, toilet, motorbike etc... Once we had all created the shape with our bodies, we were given an emotion that our object should be feeling. One example was that the motorbike was feeling sexy, which would never happen in real life, but would be the sort of thing used in Brecht's play. The reason this is strange is because objects don't have emotions and being sexy ins't normally associated with motorbikes. Brecht would do this because the audience wouldn't understand why this emotion was being linked to the object, so they would question it. 
This exercise helped me understand how the V effect can be applied to performance and how strange it has to be, to be able to get the audience to sit up and listen. It helped me understand the logic behind Brecht's techniques, because although it may seem silly, it is very effective. 


Exaggerated Gestures- The 'hi' Exercise 

In this exercise we found a normal, every day gesture, such as waving or stretching and exaggerated it so that it was really strange and unfamiliar. We chose to do a wave and say 'hi'.  First we did it how we would normally, then we changed it so that the action was made larger and more surreal. Once we changed the action, the change in voice came naturally. Then we separated into two groups, one half doing the gesture normally, the other doing it strangely. This helped us to see the huge difference between them and showed how effective the exaggerated action is compared to the normal one. It is similar to the moody objects exercise because it shows how something odd and unfamiliar happening on the stage will make the audience pay attention and question the strange things that the actors are doing. 



Brecht's plays 

The actors in Brecht's plays would play more than one character. They would play multiple roles so that the audience wouldn't get too attached or become too invested in one character. There was minimal costume, set and lighting, so that the character could mainly be shown through their physicality. The small amount of costume was only meant to give a hint of the character. All costume changes would happen on stage for the audience to see, as a constant reminder that they were only seeing actors on stage, not real characters. Unlike conventional plays, the audience are lit, just the same as the actors. This means that the audience aren't taken out of the real world and are kept alert and don't feel the actors are in any way different to them. 



Brecht's Characters Exercise 
This exercise was used to help us understand why and how Brecht made his characters into very stereotypical, caricatures. The exercise involved us getting into pairs, one becoming an old man, the other an old woman. We were given their physicality (legs spread and bum out), then as we walked around in our pairs, we decided on what class we were going to be. We used exaggerated physicality to show the class of our character and the story behind our them. This helped me to understand that the reason Brecht used the exaggerated physicality, was to make a bold statement or comment on certain people in society. It also showed me how Brecht used comedy to grab the audience's attention and add fun to such serious subject matters. 

For the next part of the exercise we looked more closely at how physicality reflects status. We split the class up, half of us becoming a male factory owner, the other half a pregnant woman who works at the factory. The given circumstance for both characters was that the factory was being shut down, however the owner didn't care, but the woman did, because she wouldn't be able to provide for her child. Through these two very different reactions, the male character and female character came up with two very different gestures and lines. This highlighted that through voice, gesture and physicality, it is possible to convey a characters status, class, personal story, emotions and outlooks.