BRECHT WORKSHOP

HSC TOPIC: STUDIES IN DRAMA AND THEATRE

WORKSHOP TRANSCRIPT

DIRECTOR BRETT SHEEDY

PERFORMERS DREW FORSYTHE, CATHERINE MOORE, MATTHEW MOORE & WENDY STREHLOW

STAGE MANAGER DESA CVETKOVIC

THEATRE TECHNICIAN SIMON ROBINSON

20 & 21 February 2007

Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company

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Prologue: The Ballard of Mac the Knife
From The Threepenny Opera
Sung by Catherine Moore

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the STC workshop on Brecht and Epic theatre.

This workshop is focussing on the direction and staging of epic theatre – from an acting and directing
perspective.

We’ve worked on five scenes from four of Brecht’s works over the past week – one scene from each of: The
Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and 2 scenes from The Caucasian Chalk
Circle. We will today be presenting these scenes – you will note the Epic quality in the choices we have
made with these scenes – a gestic quality that is not only limited to the choices by the actors and director
but also in the blocking and the presentation of the work.

Throughout the workshop we will be illustrating, by way of exercises with the actors, different ways of
highlighting the Brechtian style. As spectators (Brecht like to think of the audience member as a spectator
likened to those at a sporting event), as spectators this will allow you to note the way actors make their way
into a Brecht scene – the actors have to detach themselves and not use their emotional vantage as a way of
approaching the text.

After the showing we will be opening up for questions to the actors and to myself.

But First I would like to give you some background not only to Brecht and his work but also to something
about this unusual man who is renowned for ingenuous work in theatre that was both explosive and unique.
His work is based on particular ideology that is sometimes political and always outside the usual.

Clearly everyone knows that Brecht is famous for two things in particular:

1. Epic Theatre.

2. Theatre of Alienation.

But how do we relatively simply define these two ideas:

EPIC THEATRE

Briefly Brecht saw epic theatre to be a form of theatre where the spectators don’t cry out “how true” but “I
hadn’t thought of that”. He didn’t want to drug the audience - he urgently wanted to tell them something that
they might not know. Not to PROVE but to DEMONSTRATE – not to explain but to state the thing that
needs to be explained - not to tie up ends but to expose the contradictions.

We must find a means of shedding light on the human being at the point where he or she seems capable of
being changed by society’s intervention.

The object is not so much to preach the political slogans of the moment as to query the rules under which
we live. Brecht often managed to shed an unfamiliar light on our moral and social behaviour – illuminating
that area where ethics, politics and economics meet / clash/ contradict.

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Life itself is inconsistent and that means that it is a great deal funnier and more complicated than either
poets or politicians will normally admit. It has to be viewed with humanity and humour – and so does
Brecht’s work. “God” he said “ spends all day long laughing at himself”.

Epic theatre aims for each scene to stand alone – the segmentation of the 3-act structure – for eg in Galileo
he broke it into 16 segments.

His epic theatre has structures within which a montage existed.

- The juxtaposition – the alienation – is there in early plays too but in a different way to the later
plays – so the notion of alienation can be seen to be evolving throughout his career.

THEATRE OF ALIENTATION

The notion of alienation is a strange translation and here it means a theatre of making strange – or making
foreign and seeing things in a new way. So that the life we lead is seen in a way that is not as we usually
see it. He used gesture as a way of making this happen. His epic theatre was his tool for creating ‘alienation’
– that is his epic theatre with its montage and destruction of the fourth wall allowed spectators to see things
as foreign, to be allowed to analyse the way things occur.

Fundamental to his theory of alienation is the juxtaposition.

In both epic theatre and the theatre of alienation there are inherent political notions that are often class
based – this is evident in most works of Brecht.

BACKGROUND AND IDEAS

A lot of what Brecht’s famous for came from other sources – eg: Russian Formalism; Meyerhold..

Importantly for Brecht was the use of GESTURE. Meyerhold and his biomechanics started this for actors,
but Brecht advanced this idea to GESTIC NATURE OF THE BLOCKING, LIGHTING, and MUSIC – all parts
of the production being GESTIC. HE also insisted upon more integration of the text and the music.

This means that his work has a clear and stylised expression of the social behaviour of human beings
towards each other. With Brecht he used this with the actors and also with the blocking, design and lighting.

Some writers on Brecht think he was a great Marxist writer – and others say he is a great writer IN SPITE of
Marx! His work is political – as sense of class is obvious but it is unclear if that is because of his reading of
Marx or not.

There are many contradictions in both his ideas and what he did. It is interesting to look at Brecht’s personal
life and what he derived from that. He stole ideas from all over when he worked on theatre but through his
poetry we can know him because he was originally a poet and it is his poetry that is elaborated into his
plays.

In 1898 he was born in Germany, his mother was a protestant and his father a catholic. Throughout his
childhood he was heavily influenced by: Verlain, Kipling, Shakespeare and the Luther bible.

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Brecht thought, “A man with only one theory is lost – one must stuff his pockets with them”. And this flowed
into his way of collaborating with many ideas.

In 1920 Brecht was fascinated by “what an extraordinary thing it is to be a human being”. This informs his
work, and is fundamental to who he is.

Fundamental to Brecht’s idea is that “We must not start with the him (the character) but ON him.”

Brecht felt it was too simple to make the characters fit the actions and the actors fit the characters. It was all
about tone, expression etc. – GEST which is GESTURE.

Each character should trade places so that the play has a whole – not a ‘star’ way of working. And each
actor/character knows how to get what they want.

Importantly ‘Alienation’ doesn’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. It’s not about separation -
It’s about seeing something ‘other’ setting up a juxtaposition.

This juxtaposition is terribly important – for eg in Galileo – there is the love of washing & food, and then
there is lust in two forms– an intellectual lust for knowledge – truth - and a physical lust that is afraid of
torture (and therefore betrays knowledge) – therefore setting up oppositionals.

With Brecht being both director and writer there is a conflict, therefore there is some opposition even at that
level of the work – does he and others listen to Brecht the director OR Brecht the writer?

He enjoyed using actors who were slapstick comedians because they have been trained to disregard the
fourth wall!

He also had a way of distancing the actor by allowing them to step back from the words and listen to the
narrative. This is an element of epic.

For example: Chaplin in the role of ‘Hitler’ shows how amazing that demonstrative acting could be.

In Brecht’s work - individual episodes within a piece are knotted together so that the seams of breaks can be
seen – this is of epic nature. A scene could stand up on its own.

An important element of Brecht’s work on gesture was that the actor rejected psychological truth – instead
looking for a visceral effect on the spectator.

For Brecht, GESTURE not driven by the subconscious but by the externalism of it. The actor must have
talent and an ideological perception of staging and also, very importantly an ability to judge characters.

In spite of this, acting, is not supposed to be mechanical acting – not clinical. He stressed the idea of
enjoyment, not taking it all too seriously. He does however make the point that it is impossible to be an actor
and not be emotionally involved – Brecht found that empathy was a problem. HOWEVER later he said that
the fight against empathy in his work with actors created the challenge between empathy and judgment and
that in itself was almost DIALECTIC, that is: the language or a particular class, and therefore good.

Brecht's main concern was that the work was not to be overcome by emotion.

It was important to find the contradiction of the story. Each position and blocking, are signs of the fable,
signs of the story. Brechtian style is to ‘play the fable’ – and the staging and the actors are all about gesture.

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In line with all of this Brecht had an EMPHASIS on REALISM. He believed that simplicity gave the
impression of reality. Like real people in a bus queue. Brecht didn’t go for physical types when choosing
actors and not for glamour – but for actors that look like the part. He liked to make sure that there was a
contradiction with ethical and moral types.

CONCLUSION

It’s exciting to be presenting this work with you today.

The actors and I have had an interesting and exciting time reaching into the depths of Brechtian theatre, and
have been rigorous in adhering to Brechtian ideology. In his day it was an amazing breakthrough to come
up with these ideas and our work these last week has made us aware of how often he informs the work we
see around us today – not often in pure Brechtian form but certainly in a sense of blocking and a sense of
juxtaposition of ideas.

THE THREEPENNY OPERA

This is the earliest Brecht play that we will be presenting today – it was written in the early 20s and first
produced in Berlin 31 August 1928. The Threepenny Opera is unique in that it has enjoyed a popularity
matched only by the best-known Broadway musicals or the most established operas. It has lead a protean
existence in commercial theatres, in subsidised regional and national theatres and opera houses. It has
spawned a film, a novel and countless recordings of its music by bewildering range of performers. Yet it is
clearly not an opera in any conventional sense; in fact the word opera in the title implies a parody.

Like all of his plays it is something of a montage, embracing elements from different sources and periods.
But far more than most of them it remains nailed to a particular moment in German history.

The second half of the 1920s was during a period just before the 1929 crash on Wall Street. A period where
capital was flowing into Germany. Brecht, at this point was trying to grapple with the problem of writing plays
about the modern world, with all its economic complexities and its wide ranging interrelationships – and this
lead to a more conscious development of the epic form.

The scene we are presenting today from Threepenny has a vaudevillian approach and this in itself is an
example of how Brecht’s epic theatre allied many elements of traditional theatre, including Elizabethan,
Chinese and Japanese; and the use of the Greek chorus; and the techniques of clowns, and cabaret
performers – together with a scientific approach which Brecht felt was appropriate for a modern age.

In this scene note how Brecht takes Polly out of the situation to sing a song.. This device of song allows for
her to offer some narration and to allow for alienation, a sense of ‘otherness’ to emerge in the work.

PRESENTATION OF THE THREEPENNY OPERA

Scene 3 – To Peachum, conscious of the hardness of the world, the loss of his daughter means utter ruin.
From
Mrs Peachum: Married? First you rig her fore and aft in dresses and hats and gloves…

To
Mrs Peachum: …Give us a couple of hours, and after that if he meets a single one of them he’s done for.

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EXERCISE:
Applying naturalism to this scene. We are going to do something unusual to emphasis how Brechtian theory
operates. We will apply a naturalistic stamp on this particular scene to show how differently the scene plays
from that theory.

We have removed the scene and played the emotions – the actors have invested their characters with an
inner life, which invites empathy. What will be revealed will be the same scene but this time it will be smaller
- played out as an intimate domestic scene.

SCENE REPLAYED IN NATURALISTIC STYLE FOLLOWED BY STUDENTS AND ACTORS SHARING

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES TO THE SCENCE PREVIOUSLY WATCHED.

THE LIFE OF GALILEO

This play is one of his later plays having been written in 1938.

This was around the time that Brecht was concerned with science and the idea that it is one form of
knowledge which transforms bourgeois consciousness, Brecht sought to view the contemporary world
“historically” and alienating – and from this scientific perspective the past and present are equally interesting
material for study.

So all Brecht’s plays are thus historical plays, but equally all history is contemporary.

In this play Galileo is the hero – he is the father of the new scientific age. Brecht likewise conceives of his
theatre as a Copernican turning point – the drama of the scientific age.

The Life of Galileo – is probably one of Brecht’s most popular single work, both on stage and in print.

The scene we have chosen today is the scene with the inquisitor and the pope:

The pope begins the scene as a simple figure but by the end of the scene has completely transformed by
the dressing of him. The notion of hierarchy and status is explored – the inquisitor despite being the lowest
in the hierarchy has the higher status throughout because it is the inquisitor who is manipulating this great
figure into doing what the inquisitor wants.

The costume transformation of the pope is an example of costume being gestic in form. For the costume of
the pope itself offers much to this scene, it is in fact fundamental to the scene.

Note the shuffling of feet in the background – this takes us out of the room and opens up the world. We
therefore see the intimacy of this room but we, as spectators, are always aware of the greater world outside.

PRESENTATION OF THE LIFE OF GALILEO

TWO STUDENTS ARE INVITED UP TO SHUFFLE WITH ONE ACTOR IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE
THE SCENE IS TAKING PLACE.

Scene 12
The Pope
Rome in the Vatican. Pope Urban VIII (formally the Cardinal Barberini has received the Cardinal Inquisitor.
In the course of the audience he is robed. Outside is heard the shuffling of many feet.

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From
The Pope very loudly: No! No! No!

To
The Inquisitor: Not the whole of it but its best part.

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN

The scene we are presenting here today is the one where: Swiss cheese is taken away and interrogated for
stealing the cash box. I am showing this scene because the stakes are so high – Mother Courage is trying
to save her son. She has owned the canteen for 17 years and without that she is worth nothing. Without it
she has no power, no bargaining power – but she has to give it up, she must sell it, to save her son. She is
in this scene haggling with the soldiers over the price but her son’s life is at stake.

This is an extremely challenging scene for the actors and director – because the stakes are so high and
Mother Courage does end up losing her son – it is interesting for the actors to learn how not to invest
emotionally and instead just play what is on the page, and present that on stage. And we realised in
rehearsal that if the actor does in fact just play what is on the page the message will come across anyway –
the emotional stakes will be conveyed even without the actors playing the internal emotions of the character.

PRESENTATION OF MOTHER COURAGE

Scene 3
From
Yvette pottier arrives with an extremely ancient colonel.

To
Sergeant: … Chuck him in the pit. He’s got nobody knows him. They carry him away.

DIRECTOR ASKS ACTORS TO REPLAY THE SCENE, FOCUSSING ON MOVEMENT. MOTHER

COURAGE IS NOT TO STAND STILL, WHILE YVETTE AND THE COLONEL EXAGERATE THE
COMEDY AND SLOW DOWN THEIR PACE, FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION WITH STUDENT’S ABOUT
THEIR OBSERVATIONS.

END OF THE SCENE IS REPLAYED. ACTOR PLAYING MOTHER COURAGE IS ASKED TO THINK OF A
GUESTURE FOR THE END OF THE SCENE THAT FOCUSSES ON HER AS A MOTHER HAVING TO
PRENTENT NOT TO KNOW HER SON. STUDENTS COMMENTED ON THE CHOSEN GUESTURE,
PLUS DISCUSSION ON EMOTION.

THE CAUCASION CHALK CIRCLE

Written between 1941 and 1944 during Brecht’s exil in the United States. The Caucasian Chalk Circle is
made up of two stories. Grusha’s, which starts in Scene 2 and Azdak’s which does not begin until Scene 5 –
the penultimate scene of the play.

These two stories converge in Scene 6 where the problems that had been posed at the outset and
highlighted through the sequences involving Grusha are resolved.

The two scenes we are presenting today are Scene 2 and Scene 4.

In Scene 2 Grusha has a short and oblique exchange with Simon form that it transpires that they are in love
and will wait for each other till the end of the war.

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In Scene 4 Grusha who has become Michael’s mother by deed meets up with Simon some years later. She
denies to Simon that the child is hers, despite previously having told an iron shirt that the child was hers in
an attempt to save their lives. So in this scene she is telling the truth but it is mistaken for a lie. Grusha and
Simon’s story is suspended in a whole host of paradoxes which, besides being necessary for the plot,
demonstrate the interconnection between individual actions and the social situations that give them sense
and meaning.

I chose these two scenes because again the emotional stakes are so high that the temptation is to make
emotional choices and invest those in the characters in this scene. But what Brecht has written in here is
that the actors are to demonstrate what the characters are saying and reporting the information in a given
circumstance.

They both are good scenes to show how very specifically each character relates the information to each
other. In Scene 4 Brecht again uses the device of placing poetry or song in the piece to take us out of the
work and inform us further, and allowing us to pectate with judgement rather than empathise. As always with
Brecht he is attempting to encourage the audience to think with their head than empathise with their heart.

Brecht occasionally employed a device he liked to call ‘Episierung’ (Epization) as a rehearsal exercise. He
had actors put the character they played into the third person, prefacing each line with “He/She said” before
speaking the text. Eventually he refined this technique by having them add adverbs or other qualifiers and
use more specific verbs, as in “He/She screamed, muttered, whispered etc..” Sometimes he asked them to
include the “other option” he so much tired to make an audience aware of in his Epic Theatre: they had to
prefix a line with, for instance: “Instead of accepting the offer he/she complained surlily”. This procedure
makes actors thing in narrative terms about their character’s conduct, and it channels their imagination away
from identification towards an objective stance versus their roles.

PRESENTATION OF SCENE 2
ACTORS DEMONSTRATE THIS DEVISE IN SCENE 2.
ACTORS THEN GO STARIGHT INTO REPEATING THE SCENE
ACTORS ASKED BY THE DIRECTOR TO IMAGE THEY HAVE WALKED PAST AND WITNESSED THE
SCENE. THEY ARE ASKED TO DESCRIBE WHAT THEY SAW. THE ACTORS REPORT DIFFERENT
OBSERVATIONS TO THE STUDENTS.
SCENE 2 PLAYED OUT A FINAL TIME FOR STUDENTS

PRESENTATION OF SCENE 4
ACTORS PLAY THE SCENE ON THE STAGE AND THEN IT IS REPLAYED ACROSS THE AUDIENCE.
DISCUSSION WITH STUDENTS IN REGARDS TO THE DEVICE TO THE STREAM, AND LOOKING AT
DISTANCE.

CONCLUSION

Presentation followed by question and answer session with the students.

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