Overall, I
believe that our performance went really well, however it certainly did not
come without any complications that had to be resolved. In the piece, we aimed to apply a
range of Brechtian theatre techniques to create a thought provoking piece of
political theatre that did not emotionally engage the audience.
As
stated in some of my previous blog posts, as an ensemble we had decided to
perform our piece in an outside venue on a grassy hill and obviously we had
spent several hours over a long period of time rehearsing our piece "In the
Beginning" by Neil Labute in this specific area. However it was
extremely unfortunate that half an hour before
we were due to perform our piece, we were told by site staff that our
performance could not go ahead because no risk assessment had been carried out
and the weather at the time was very cold, windy, and icy. Therefore we had to perform an
adaptation of our rehearsed piece in a classroom that was a complete different
layout of the space we had been used to rehearse in, and also less than half
the size. These few factors teamed with the utter shock of a last minute
location change definitely left me and I'm sure all the other members of my
ensemble slightly bewildered. Without our original location, as a group our initial reaction was that we
would not be able to create the same impact indoors that we would have been
able to create outside, and some members of the group believe that our
piece would literally fall apart. However we all pulled together and collective
Bertolt
Brecht often gave names like ‘Single Parent’ or ‘Good woman’ to his characters
to help with the defamiliarization of the audience so that they could make
their own individual judgement on the situation. ‘In the Beginning’ is perfect in this context for use of
Brechtian theatre technique as the character names are simply their status:
Child and Parent.
In
the final performance of our piece I personally believed that for about 80
percent of our lines that were spoken I unison were spot on in terms of clear articulation, volume and
projection as well as emphasis on our consonants. However I specifically
remember one section of the text where quite a few members of the ‘CHILDREN’
spoke out of unison and the lines merged into on another:
“...And
I believe in these people, in helping give voice to all of them, in any way
that I can. THAT is what I wanna do! THAT is what I wanna be a part of!”
Despite
this our choral speaking in the final performance was very clear and
consistent, and as an ensemble we felt very proud afterwards.
At
one point in the final piece I stood up onto one of the blocks and held up the
sign that said “STOP BEING SO EMOTIONAL”. I did this in the section of ‘In
the Beginning’ where Shannon and Dajay had a very heated argument whilst
the rest of the CHILD and PARENT ensembles literally held the back from each
other. This was another obvious use of Brechtian style theatre because Bertolt
Brecht believed that his characters should be representations of roles in
society and not actual characters that you should not emotionally engage with.
My holding up the sign to indicate that the audience should not be emotionally
attached to the current situation onstage between Shannon and Dajay was aimed
to detach the audience from the scene and look at it in a critical judgemental
way. The way that as a group we had a clear and distinct division between who
was a PARENT and who was a CHILD exemplified the non-individuality of every
member of the ensemble. These are clear evidences of our use of Bertolt
Brecht’s theatre techniques such as the defamiliarization or alienation effect.
The distancing
effect, more commonly known (earlier) by John Willett's 1964 translation the alienation effect or (more
recently) as the estrangement effect (German: Verfremdungseffekt), is a performing
arts concept coined by playwright Bertolt
Brecht "which prevents the
audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created
by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously
critical observer."[1]
Shannon
then stepped out of the action at the climax of the argument between her and
Dajay, the moment where in naturalistic theatre the audience’s hearts would be
racing. Shannon did this to then clarify to the audience what she has just said
by repeating it all again very calmly. In the outside rehearsals and in the
original staging of our piece Shannon came to the very front of the raised
platform to do this, however in the final performance because of the different
staging and layout of the room we performed in Shannon literally stepped off
the stage and came right up to the audience to recite her lines again. In my
opinion this was one of the better improvements in our work from the dress
rehearsal to the final performance because it grabbed the audience’s attention
more and it was very effective in terms of taking the audience out of the situation,
alienating them to what they have just witnessed and questioning their first
observation of her lines and what she was saying in comparison with their
second judgement of her calmer more emphasized delivery of her lines.
Overall,
I believe that our performance went really well despite the piece being extremely
difficult to pull off in the final performance; however it certainly did not
come without any complications that had to be resolved. In the piece, we aimed to apply a
range of Brechtian theatre techniques to create a of political theatre that did
not emotionally engage the audience and in my opinion a wide variety of
Brechtian techniques were used effectively to create a play that was thought
provoking as well as not emotionally engaging for the audience. It is clear
that in the very end we did create a successful piece of political, Brechtian
style theatre for the individual interpretation of each audience member.
