The Win

Okay so we've already heard a lot about Bertolt Brecht. Today I'm going to focus on Epic Theatre. And some different type of effects that Brecht developed. I'll also talk about Brechtian Acting, Gestus and some production techniques Brecht used.

The term Epic theatre was first coined by Erwin Piscator, a German director who was involved in the creation of new theatre forms. Many concepts in epic theatre had been around for years; however it was Brect who unified them, developed the style and popularized it.

So in a nutshell Epic theatre is when a plays purpose is to present ideas and invite audience to make judgments on them

Some different effects that Brecht developed and used were the A-effect, which we already learned about and the Historification effect. But to create the A-effect Brecht used the Historification effect. That is where there's a use of materials from different times and places. He did this because he wanted to dramatize the pastness of events rather than to make it feel like today. Setting the action of the play in the historic past drew parallels to modern events.

Brechtian Acting

In order for his plays to work, his actors practiced Brechtian Acting. And according to our book, that is socially and politically aware performing where the actor doesn't disappear entirely into the role. Basically he encouraged his actors not to empathize with the character. His view was that the actor should narrate and not impersonate the character. His actors also show a more demonstrated form of acting, presenting the character not necessarily wrapping himself in it as Stanislavski would have preferred. See, the Stanislavski actor would work at identifying the character he/she portrays; where as the Brechtian Actor works at expressing social attitudes in a clear and stylized way. The actor also has to be aware of the audience.

The demonstrated form of acting can also be said as Gestus like Dr. Louis talked about. Gestus is a combination of facial expression and body language deliberately used to create meaning and send a message to the audience.

Some Production techniques that Brecht used were: Simplified nonrealistic set designs. Announcements and visual captions. Music that would conflict ironically with the expected emotional effect and