With Signature Theatre's fast approaching production of The Threepenny Opera, we thought it would be useful to explore some influences on the man himself and just what
Brechtian Theatre is and how it will no doubt influence the upcoming production.
From a young age, Brecht had strong opinions about
the ideas, art, events and politics that significantly affected Germany in the
first half of the 20th century. Brecht was constantly questioning
authority in his plays and forcing his audiences to critique the established
order too.
Marxism
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| Karl Marx |
While
researching economics for a play in the 1920s, Brecht began studying Marxism. He
started developing his “alienation” theory for theatre based on Marx’s ideas
about production. Under capitalism, Marx contended that since everything is a
product for sale, all human lives, relationships and values become products.
The workers become de-humanized and are incorporated into the machinery of
production. Brecht applied this idea to theatre, both in content and style.
Many of his plays deal with socio-economic problems of capitalism and power, but
Brecht also applied Marx’s ideas about production to how his plays were
performed. He wanted audiences to see the literal production process of the
play, such as the lighting grid or the action backstage, so that they would
have to think about the process, not just the final product.
Theory
To appreciate Brechtian theatre, it is necessary to
understand two of Brecht’s key theoretical terms:
1.
Epic
Theatre - Form
of didactic drama presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid
illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly
with analysis, argument, or documentation; associated particularly with the
German theatre movement led by Bertolt Brecht in the 1920s
2.
The
Alienation Effect - Technique
designed to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play
through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance.
In his book Das Kapital, Marx argued that, in modern industry, commodities seemed alien because capitalistic production did not reveal the signs of
its production. We see the final product without knowing where it came from. The
pervading world view of capitalism, where products confront workers as
something entirely separate from their makers, was to Marx a false one,
perpetuated to the political advantage of the wealthy ruling classes.
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This production of The Threepenny
Opera uses Brechtian
techniques such as exposing the sides of the stage
in addition to commenting about capitalism with the Coca-Cola design.
|
Brecht
reinterpreted Marx's concept of alienation
as a theatrical ideology, in order to displace realism and to show
up the hidden agenda of the theatre of the time. Brecht's theatre aimed to
provide its audience with ways of looking at bourgeois reality as an unnatural political
ideology produced in the interests of profiteering. He wanted to alienate or estrange the
audience from everyday reality so that it could be reinterpreted in a new
light.
In his essay The Modern Theatre is the Epic
Theatre, Brecht stated that his theatre work is based on a
"radical separation of the elements of production,” rather than the unity
of action seen in Realism. Brecht found this supposedly realistic illusion to
be dishonest, in that it seduced the audience to accept subliminally its
representation of reality as an unchangeable and apolitical view of the world.
By distancing his audience from
the world within the play, Brecht wanted to make audiences aware that stage
realism, like life outside the theatre, is made, not given.
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Brechtian techniques in The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
The stage is mostly bare; the child is clearly a toy |
The
German description of Brecht’s alienation effect literally translated means “to
make strange.” This concept requires the audience and actors to retain a degree
of critical detachment from a play and its performance, to be objective and not
empathize or identify with the characters or the events that take place in the
play. Some of the techniques Brecht used to create alienation included changing
the scenery in front of the audience, projections, treadmills, hoists and
musicians on the stage.
Through using these
techniques, Brecht aimed to involve the audience in the process of the play's
production and what it was communicating. The audience of Epic Theatre is
invited to consider and enjoy how the theatre fabricates its fiction, rather
than passively accepting an illusion of reality onstage.
Although Brecht criticized capitalism, he was also criticized by the Communist Party for not enforcing social realism and providing solutions in his plays. But Brecht, of course, didn't want to immerse his audiences in “reality” and then tell them what to do. Instead he wanted them to "cry tears from the brain," to absorb messages that they could interpret on their own and then make their choices to act.
Characteristics of Brechtian Theatre
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Example of Brechtian Technique: Recent London West End
performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus had
the actors sit in chairs onstage and watch each other perform instead of
disappearing offstage when they have said their lines.
|
Structure: Audience should construct their own
interpretation of events.
·
Episodic,
disconnected montage of scenes.
·
Often
not in chronological order.
·
Purposefully
open ended so that the audience needs to arrive at its own conclusion of how
the events are linked together.
·
Events
are narrated on a grand scale, unrestricted to time and place.
Staging: Audiences should see what’s happening “behind-the-scenes.”
·
Often a bare stage to prevent the audience from
being absorbed in the fictional reality of the play’s setting.
· Exposed stage “machinery” such as the lighting grid
and exposed wires.
·
Back wall and wings of stage exposed.
Design: Intentionally shatter the feeling of “realism.”
·
Use of technology to project words and film onto
the stage that comments on the performance.
·
Historification
– projecting news clips to make the audience put the play into a
historical context.
·
Placards that announce when the scene will begin.
·
Design looks mechanical or industrial (i.e.
conveyor belts, pipes, wheels)
Music:
Meant to comment on the action, not add to the mood
of the scene.
- Discordant
with the action onstage.
- Musicians
are onstage with the actors, not “hidden” under the stage.
- Incorporating
popular culture in an ironic way.
Acting
& Characters: Keep
the audience critical of the play’s heroes.
- Actors
should not be 100% connected to their character.
- Actors should present their character instead of be their character.
- Even
the “hero” of the story has flaws.
Bretolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera runs from April 22nd - June 1st at Signature Theatre. Call 703 820 9771 for tickets and showtime information. 
Over the past three weeks, we in the Education Department at
Signature Theatre have had the distinct pleasure of doing a teaching residency
with the advanced theatre class at 
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