Brechtian Alienation in Community Performance
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, (b.1898-d.1956), known commonly as Bertolt Brecht, was a German poet and playwright. One of his major contributions to theatre history was the “alienation effect” (From the German, “Verfremdungseffekt”). Brechtian alienation requires the removal of the “fourth wall.” This is a term that describes the “suspension of disbelief” by the audience that takes place during a performance. It is often thought that the audience looks in on the play’s action through an invisible wall, just as the audience during a performance is focused upon a procenium stage. This is a literal and figurative term. The audience pretends that the characters in the story are actually alive, living in their own world instead of actors performing on a stage. In order for the fourth wall to remain intact, the actors must also, in effect, pretend that the audience does not exist, by staying in character at all times and by not addressing the audience members directly.
Brechtian Alienation reverses this effect. Brecht wanted his audience members to be critical of what they saw, remind them that the play is not a reflection of their world. He creates a paradox. He aimed to remove emotion, specifically empathy, from the production and distance the audience from the players. He wanted actors to disassociate themselves from their role, quite the opposite of method acting. Brechtian Alienation is the constant reminder to all involved that they are participating in a play and not acting within their own reality.
What motivated Brecht? Primarily it seemed to be his own political ideologies.Brecht was asscoiated with the Communist party. Influenced by the Chinese and the Russian theaters, he hoped to create a theater where the audience was not distracted by the plot so much that they missed the political truths embedded in the piece.
Keeping Brecht’s intent in mind, finding examples of Brechtian Alienation in community performance is not difficult when considering the breadth of activities that can be classified as “community performance.” For example, the recent 2005 United States election debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Those events can be defined as a staged performance for the benefit of the community. The audience gazes in on a conversation b...
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... a way for audiences and performers to connect on a closer level. They are both experiencing the surreal, disassociating themselves from the performance taking place. They both become more introspective. The performance becomes a vehicle for self-understanding, metacognition.
Community performance is an excellent venue for self-examination and expression. Brecht attempted to inspire his audiences to think about larger issues and for that reason, such a style is beneficial to a community. A community is a living organism that must ebb and flow with the tides of change. Performance is a way for new issues and ideas to be brought to the forefront, ready for discussion.
Community performance can include political debates, social commentaries disguised as autobiographical self-debasing monologues as well as Renaissance Faires with their celebratory and informative performances. Each example can be said to include elements of Brechtian Alienation, even if they are not, perhaps, the performances that Brecht himself had in mind. However, the performances are important in that they force us to examine our own place within both the world of the theater and within our respective realities.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
...re as same as the audience use in their everyday life. Easily connecting to the audience, with visual, audio and performer’s performance” one can imagine himself/herself in performer’s shoes.
Pause for a second and think about a play or musical that you have seen. Consider the plot, whether you liked it or not and if the experience was positive or negative. Think about the characters, the costumes, and the emotions that were emitted. The discourse community of theatre is unique in the way that it is so complex and there are many different parts that ultimately come together to create a dynamic whole. The term discourse community is rather broad, but John Swales in his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” gives six characteristics that define it. Swales lists them saying,
The triviality of melodrama is so often the theatrical scapegoat that boils the blood of the modern-day critic: the sentimental monologues, the martyred young lovers, the triumphant hero, and the self-indulgent imagery. Melodrama would seem the ultimate taboo; another failed Shakespearean staging or even worse, an opera minus the pretty music. Ironically, Bertolt Brecht, dramatic revolutionary and cynic of all things contrived found promise in the melodramatic presentation. Brecht examined and manipulated the various superficial and spectacular aspects of theatre, establishing a synthesis of entertainment and social criticism as his fundamental goal. Bertolt Brecht employs various facets of melodramatic technique in The Jewish Wife, ultimately reconfiguring the genre and conveying his central theme; a society rendered immobile at the will of a totalitarian regime.
Through providing a micro-level analysis of the “self” through theatrical dramaturgy, Goffman supplies an adequate account of how modification of the “self” happens via performance. Taking parallel theories and ideas, each author builds upon the arguments of the other and Goffman provides enough detailed examples of social development through performance to satisfy the treatises of Berger and Luckmann’s account. Therefore, the arguments of Goffman and Berger and Luckmann work best when combined, giving us the most insight into the “self.”
... performing, is about all the life-long memories, friendships, and skills you learn from this unbelievable experience.”
During the Splendid adaptation, it was clear that they mainly focused on style, using a Brecht as an influence. At the beginning of the performance, the audience was greeted
Societies progress can lead to intercultural similarities, and vastily obvious differences. These influences can be seen within the contemporary theatre of the times, explaining and progressing the status of community through storytelling and performance. The reactions to these changes are important, and help shape the society we have today. These elements are best seen between the medieval ans renaissance period.
...m, though they are quite safe behind a large facade of iron bars. This technique corresponds to the menacing way that the characters address the camera throughout the performance, and creates the necessary feeling, for the viewers, that no such barrier is available to protect them as they are drawn in uncomfortably closer to the inmates by Brook’s camerawork. We begin to question whether or not the soliloquies, spoken directly into the camera instead of to the protected aristocrats who originally played our ‘part’ of the audience, are still merely just a theater convention, or if the insanity of the performers is used as a catalyst for we, ourselves, to feel threatened directly by what is spoken. We also begin to question whether or not the inmate is even looking at the camera to address the audience, or is simply insane, and addressing the air around them, adding yet another layer to such complex characters. Creating such questions within the audience’s mind also seems to create, for most, the aura of discomfort and skepticism that Brook was aiming to achieve, and reached quite successfully.
Brechtian theatre, also known as epic theatre, strives to keep the audience members objective and prevents
Willett, John, trans. and ed. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986.
Applied Theatre work includes Theatre-in-Education, Community and Team-building, Conflict Resolution, and Political theatre, to name just a few of its uses. However, Christopher Balme states that “Grotowski define acting as a communicative process with spectators and not just as a production problem of the actor” (Balme, 2008: 25). Applied Theatre practices may adopt the following “theatrical transactions that involve participants in different participative relationships” such as Theatre for a community, Theatre with a community and Theatre by a community Prentki & Preston (2009: 10). Whereas, applied theatre one of its most major powers is that it gives voice to the voiceless and it is a theatre for, by, and with the people. However, Applied Theatre practitioners are devising educational and entertaining performances bringing personal stories to life and build
The point of this essay was to illustrate the key concepts of the Performance Theory, to show how to understand them and apply them on the actual performances and actions. I think that the most important thing to elucidate is that „everything around us is a performance.“ So after all, everybody is a performer and an actor in their own way. And life is a performance.
Theatre as we know it now was born more than two thousand years ago and has gone through many streams until it reached the current modernity. Among these streams is the avant-garde theatre. This theatre achieved a break in the traditional theatre and became the forefront of a new experimental theatre. Therefore it is necessary to ask how this theatre started, what impact it had on society and if this type of theatre is still common in our modern era.