Applying Acting Styles

Bertolt Brecht

His full name was Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (February 10th 1898-August 14^th 1956), and he was born Medieval City of Augsburg, in the Bavarian part of the German empire. Baravia remained his place of living until 1924.

Bertolt’s mother was Sophie Brecht (Née Brezing) (1871–1920), a devout Protestant, whose influence meant that Bertolt knew the bible, and at a young age was exposed to Luther’s German translation. Sophie also suffered with breast cancer for much of Bertolt’s youth. His father was Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939), who was Catholic, but persuaded to have a Protestant wedding to Sophie when they wedded in 1897. Berthold worked at a paper mill at which he became managing director in 1914.
Bertolt had one sibling, a younger brother named Water who was born in 1900, and their family was middle class.

As a child, Brecht suffered with a congenital heart condition as well as a facial tic. For the purpose of relaxation, he was sent to a sanitarium. His health had another turn for the worse at age twelve when he had a heart attack, but he made a good recovery and was soon able to resume his education.

He had a good education, attending a Protestant elementary school Volksschule from the age of six, and then at age ten a private school; The Royal Bavarian Realgymnasium (Koeniglich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium).
There he was schooled in latin, humanities, and later learnt of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. It was during his time at school here that he began his writing, co-founding and co-editing “The Harvest”, a school magazine. By the time he was sixteen, Brecht was writing for a local newspaper at this point.
At age 18 Brecht was almost expelled from his education for disagreeing with the popular view that it was necessary to serve for your country in the war, but the threat of being expelled never came to fruition, and by the time he was nineteen he had left school anyway as he was employed doing clerical work in the war, the reason he was kept to clerical work being his health conditions.

It was in 1917 that Brecht resumed his path of education, now attending Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet in Munich, studying medicine. By the time Brecht was studying medicine here, his mother’s cancer was escalating to the point where she had to have heavy doses of morphine.
It was whilst attending here that Brecht wrote his first play, “The Baal”, which he wrote on the subject of the life of C.D Grabbe , after having read Hanns Johst's “The Lonely One” and insisting that a much better play could be written on the same subject.

Brecht’s studies were interrupted yet again in 1918 when he was drafted into the war to serve as a medical orderly, but 1918 was also the year that saw Brecht write his second play “Drums in the Night”, a tale of a soldier who, on returning home from war, discovers the woman who was is fiancé is now engaged to a war profiteer.

In 1919 Brecht joined the Independent Social Democratic party, and thus began his involvement with communism, which would continue for the rest of his life.

Subsequent to his to his interest in socialism, he began to write theatre reviews for an independent socialist newspaper, by the name of “Volkswillen”.

1919 was also the year which saw Brecht become a father, as his girlfriend at the time Paula Banholzer gave birth to their son, Frank. But, in 1921, he took his second trip to Berlin, where he met the actress and opera singer Marianna Zoff,  who he soon married and had a daughter with; Hanne Hiob, who in fact lived to become a famous German actress.
Brecht’s love life was far from the conventional and monogamous kind, as even married to Zoff and having a child with her, he was in many affairs throughout their marriage, one of which ended up bringing about their divorce. The said affair was with actress Helene Weigel, who had his son Stefan in 1924 and who he ended up divorcing Zoff for in 1927. Weigel and Brecht married in April 1929, and the year after their marriage, the couple had a second child; a daughter named Barbara. Interestingly, Barbara as well as Brecht’s other daughter Hanne, became an actress.
It should also be noted that in 1944 Brecht had a child with Ruth Berlau, but sadly it did not survive.

Brecht’s fuel for passion and sexual experience did not only extend as far as marrying several women, but it is also thought that Brecht never had ”no fewer than three mistresses at any time throughout his adult life”[1]. Moreover, from the young age of sixteen Brecht is also known to have begun regularly visiting a brothel for the purpose of gaining sexual experience.
Brecht was also no stranger to homosexuality, as he used to invite artistically minded male friends to his home on weekends to read “erotic compositions”[2], and in his diaries contained loose reference to his need for both males and females to satisfy his sexual desires.

Back to Brecht’s career however, it continued to blossom as in 1920 he became chief advisor on selection of plays at Munich Kammerspiele, and continued with writing his own plays; his works in the early 1920s being In the Jungle of the Cities (1923,)Edward II (1924,)The Elephant Calf (1925), and Man Equals Man (1926).
Drums in the Night was the first play of Brecht’s to be performed however, premiering in 1922 at the Munic Kammerspiele and winning Brecht the Kleist Prize. The first performance of Baal came the following year.
The flourishing success of Brecht’s writing throughout the 1920s was partly due to a move he made to Berlin in 1924, which he was insistent was a necessity to his writing career. In the years following the move Brecht also published his first ever book of poetry, named “Hauspostille”, which also won Brecht a literary prize. In 1924 Brecht also became a consultant at Max Reinhardt's Deutches Theatre in Berlin.
Though Brecht’s work was going so extremely well, it was actually politics which was fast becoming a large interest in his life, and his political views and opinions fast began to influence his work and became apparent in it. It is fitting then, as where there are opinions there is inevitably a counter argument, that some discord and unpleasantness slowly began to erupt around Brecht’s work.
In 1930 Brecht’s opera “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mohagonny” opened in Leipzig and caused a riot.

Two years later, a political film by Brecht named “Kuhle Wampe” after a place in Berlin were unemployed people lived in shacks, was apparently too controversial,  as after premiering in Moscow it was banned from theatres in Germany.

Despite the backlash against some of his work and his political position, Brecht persevered with both a literary and political lifestyle, writing even more plays such as He Who Says No (1930),The Measures Taken (1930), and The Mother (1932), and continuing to let his beliefs shine through in his material.

But, as 1933 dawned, Brecht began to fear for his very life. Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and Brecht fled with his family, living in exile. Brecht’s work was then banned in Germany, and in 1935 he was stripped of his German citizenship.
During his years of exile Brecht wrote Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (1940), Mother Courage and her Children (1939), The Good Person of Szechwan (1941), and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uri (1941), whilst living in many places such as Vienna, Zurich and Prague, until he eventually gained his Visa and went to the USA in May 1941. However, in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee called Brecht into questioning to testify about his alleged communist activities.
Fortunately Brecht managed to outwit those investigating him, but fearing that something else might happen due to politics in America at the time, he quickly fled the USA, flying out to Switzerland only shortly after his testimony.

One year later in 1948, Brecht’s long exile came to an end and he returned to Germany.
Once back in Germany, Brecht and his work were recognised and appreciated by the Communist cultural establishment, who happily provided Brecht with the opportunity to direct Mother Courage and Her Children at the Deutsches Theatre. Soon Brecht founded his own theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble, and in 1954 he was awarded his very own theatre; Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm, which he accepted, despite his differences with the type of Communism the German Democratic Republic practiced.

For the last few years of his life Brecht wrote few plays, the success and fame of which didn’t match that of his earlier plays. However, during these few years, he did write many of his most well-known poems, including Buckower Elegie. In 1955 Brecht was awarded a Stalin Peace Prize, just one year before his death. He died of a heart attack on August 14^th 1956.

For me, researching Bertolt Brecht’s life and contextualising his work and theories has really helped me with understanding what informed his views and opinions, especially politically, and how this affected his plays and the messages he was trying to send.  As Brecht was so politically minded I can see how he developed many of his theories and techniques such as Alienation in order to really get an audience to think, and through this try to make a real difference to society.

Also while working on Mother Courage I have been considering the time it was written in, what was going on in his life and how this impacted the actual content of the play. This has been really helpful for me, to think about the themes and social points of Mother Courage in relation to Brecht’s personal experience of war, and to develop an informed understanding of what Brecht wanted to do with this play; produce a war story which instead of glorifying war, sent out very anti-war messages and highlighted the corruption within war times and the ultimate futility of it.

I think for me as an actor working on and performing Mother Courage it is really important I’m able to understand what Brecht wished to achieve with the play, and by learning about him, his background and upbringing, his life and views, I think my interpretation of the play has strengthened and I also find it much more accessible as a result of this.

Epic Theatre

A concept primarily introduced by Bertolt Brecht, Epic Theatre is a way of viewing theatre which moves away from the norm. Brecht suggested through this that an audience viewing a piece of theatre should not be sympathising with the characters and being immersed in the story, but should rather be analysing, looking at objectively and even critiquing the actions and characters. Through this method of consuming theatre the audience should then reflect upon themselves and the real world in the same way, being able to look at things objectively and think clearly about morals, politics and external actions and relationships of and between people.
Brecht encouraged his actors to distance themselves from their characters, and to use their roles as a means of portraying how different characters behaved towards one another and as indications of social relationships. He told his actors to do this, not to think about their characters inner monologues and thoughts and feelings. Part of using the characters as symbols for different types of people is that when playing Brecht's characters, actors are often encouraged to use things like stereotypes and gestus (which I discuss in the below rehearsal diary) to tell an audience clearly what that character is like and what they represent quickly and easily without the need for deeper exploration of that character's psyche. 

This entire concept of theatre is very contrasting to that of Konstantin Stanislavski, who we studied in year one, whose whole theory was about the psychological aspects of theatre, an actor truly becoming one with their character, understanding their feelings, thoughts, personalities and empathising with them, and the situation on stage appearing as real as possible. 

“Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it” means what?

This quote could be interpreted to mean many different things I’m sure, but what it means to me is something very clear and, in my opinion, exceptionally relevant to any form of art or media.

When you read a book, when you see a play, or hear the lyrics to a song, you can be inspired. What you read, see or hear can affect you quite incredibly, even if somewhat subconsciously.
Our opinions, as individuals and as a society, are susceptible to influence from all around us, whether it be from the people we speak to, the goings on in the world, or the art we consume on a daily basis. What we absorb from all of this informs our views, opinions and ourselves as we evolve, and as we are always able to learn more and grow more, these things are able to affect the way we think and feel and our growth as a person or as a larger community.

And so when somebody or something is given a platform, a voice, it should be used to do well, to discuss important matters, express opinions, and inspire change for the better, because anyone that platform or voice reaches can be impacted by what they see, read or hear.
Now, what better platform could there be to speak from than a stage? What could be more expressive and inspiring than art; paintings, theatre, dance, music, film, television, poetry?
People do, and we as a society do listen to what is conveyed to us through the art we choose to surround ourselves with, and so, simply through spreading thoughts, ideas, and views through art to people, we can shape the world. An artist of any kind really can make a difference through their contributions.

Art is not something which simply shows us exactly what we see in our lives and in this world; it’s something which can display endless possibilities.
Sure, art can imitate life, much of real life is used in art, but then it is expanded, or analysed, even questioned, and what comes out of it is something more than just what went in, it is something which exposes and explores life.

And from this, this fascinating process of communication, sharing and influence through an infinite number of creative outlets, we find that art really can be used to shape the world and the people in it, and that it can be true; life really does imitate art.

I find this quote extremely relevant to our work in Mother Courage, as this play was intended to send out very strong messages, specifically anti war messages, and it is our responsibility performing it to keep in mind the influence our work could have and do the best we can to convey the social and political points the play makes.

Mother Courage and Her Children

This musical was written during the peak of WWII, during Brecht’s exile.
An important Brecht motto relating to this play is “war teaches people nothing”, the play is very anti-war and breaks past the tropes of normal war stories and plays, it portrays war as having no heroes and no possible positive outcome.

Synopsis

The setting is Seventeenth century Sweden, during the Thirty Years war of 1618 to 1648, a war between different European countries, in which they battled in an attempt to make one another either Protestant or Catholic.
Mother Courage (whose real name is Anna Fierling) is running a war time canteen. 

It is a wagon, which she carts around after the armies, selling stuff to local people as well as providing brandy to the people and soldiers. With her on the wagon, are her three children: her eldest son Eilif, her second son Swiss Cheese and her youngest, a girl named Kattrin, who doesn't speak after she was mate mute by an incident with a soldier early in her life. 

The children help their mother to run the wagon business.

We learn that Courage has travelled up north from Germany to make money off the war, and that the reason her children are helping her with the business is that she doesn't want them to be in harm’s way. She is stopped on the road however by a sergeant and a Swedish army recruiter, who recruits Eilif and takes him away with them.
Courage comes across Eilif again briefly as she passes through Poland following the army. During this encounter, Eilif is being commended by a Swedish general for fooling locals peasants and successfully stealing their cattle.

Courage continues her journey trailing after the army. Swiss Cheese becomes a paymaster, whose job is to carry the army’s money in a money box. We are introduced to one of courage’s friends, a woman named Yvette who works as an army prostitute. Mother Courage, the general’s cook and an army chaplain find themselves casually discussing politics, but they are abruptly interrupted by invading Catholics and are all taken prisoner. The group decide to pretend to be Catholic and blend in with the other side, and Swiss Cheese, fearing being caught with a Protestant money box, hides it in the river. But he is caught hiding it by S.C Catholic, and is apprehended and arrested.

Courage plans to sell Yvette her wagon in an attempt to make enough money to bribe the Catholics into letting Swiss Cheese go, but she is apprehensive as she realises this would then leave her with no money. She is not quick enough to make the decision, and sadly Swiss Cheese’s fate is sealed. He is shot eleven times. On being presented with his body for the purpose of identification, Courage pretends she does not know him.

Courage’s wagon is trashed by the Catholics and she is also fined, and she is going to complain to a catholic colonel, but decides against it after discussing with a soldier that there is no point fighting against the injustice. Courage does not give up entirely however, she follows the Catholic army along the road to Germany. On the journey they come across some injured peasants, who Courage reluctantly offers some of her shirts to use as bandages.

A little later on, at a Catholic general’s funeral, the chaplain tells Courage that the war will go on forever, and that she should stock up on supplies since there are low prices at the moment.
Courage does so, sending Kattrin to buy some supplies. On her way back, Kattrin is attacked by a group of soldiers and is given a gash on her face.

Due to stocking up as suggested, the canteen business reaches a height of success. However, it is just now that the Swedish king is killed, and subsequently peace is declared. Courage fears for the negative impact this will have on her business.
Yvette returns after being gone for a long time, and now her life is quite changed; she is widow to a wealthy count. She is unhappy however to come across the cook, who is an old lover of hers.

Courage is forced to sell her extra supplies to make money. Eilif attempts to repeat his earlier action of stealing from peasants, but now the war is over it is a punishable offence and he is taken away to be executed. Courage, busy with business still, does not know of his death, but chaplain does go to give his support to Eilif at the execution.

Only the cook and Courage are left together now as the chaplain has gone, and they are forced to beg for food. In a change of luck for the cook however, he inherits an inn from his aunt. He offers for Courage to go and run it with him, but on the condition that Kattrin is left behind. She declines the offer, refusing to leave Kattrin.

Courage and Kattrin take up residence with their wagon in a peasant town. While courage is out in the town doing business during the night time, the Catholics plan a sneak attack on the town. Kattrin, realising what is happening, bangs on the drums on the wagon to warn the townspeople. The Catholics try to make her stop, but as she refuses, they end up shooting her dead.

All three of her children are now dead, and yet Courage does not give up. She signs a lullaby to Kattrin and pays the peasants to give her a burial, and then somehow finds the strength to continue on her journey. She gets back on the road and leaves to continue her canteen business. 

Themes

• Society and class
• War
• Religion
• Rules and order
• Power and authority
• Innocence and guilt
• Justice/injustice
• Money and war profiteering
• Motherhood and family 

Rehearsal Diary

Wednesday 16th September 2015 

Today we started work on Bertolt Brecht. We watched a documentary called "Changing Stages" by Richard Eyre as part of our research into Brecht, his work, his theories and how he compares to other play writes and theatre theorists such as Konstantin Stanislavski and Samuel Beckett. 

After watching this and gathering relevant information on Brecht, we translated some of the theories we just heard about into practical work and further explored and learnt about Brecht's techniques. 

We looked at his technique called Gestus. 

Gestus is where you do a physical gesture or movement, usually paired with a facial expression, to indicate clearly who or what you are/what is happening. For example, if you were being a cleaner, you might pretend to be sweeping the floor, and simply through this one basic action or pose the audience would be able to immediately guess what you were. It does tend to use stereotypes, which is of course rather problematic, but the reason that gestus employs such a simple way of representing somebody is that Brecht wanted his actors not to be their characters on stage, but display what type of person their character was. 

Brecht did not want the actors to be thinking deeply about their character's inner monologue, nor did he want the audience to be thinking about that, and so by doing something so self explanatory as gestus, the audience are provided with a situation and/or people without the need for even having to know what those characters are thinking or feeling. 

We looked at gestus by a small group of us standing in front of the rest of the class. We were instructed or do a tableau of war. Melody and I sat down, freezing with me attending to a wound on her leg, Katy lay on the floor, Mara crouched over her and miming pointing a rifle into the distance, and Cache and Klodian froze with one of them supporting the other and helping them to walk. 

Just through this, the entire rest of the class were able to guess that we were at war, who each of us was and exactly what situation we were all in. 

We looked at this notion of simplicity explaining a situation by being given a simple environment in which to devise a short piece of three scenes. We were given an office as the setting. 

Working with Klodian, Mara, Didi and Melody we devised a story where two companies which were going under planned to merge with one another to save themselves, but one of the companies planned to let the employees from the other get sued so they could claim any surplus money from the lawsuit. 

Creating this is and watching the other groups' piece it became so clear how so much can be provided to the audience with not much at all. We didn't even think about our characters in depth, only what they were doing and what they were like. Just through these base things the narrative could still be served, the narrative being not a story for the audience to be immersed in, but a situation for the audience to observe and be able to pick apart objectively. 

Through these two exercises we also looked at Alienation, another technique of Brecht's. As in Brecht's work, the audience are encouraged to analyse objectively what they see instead of sympathising with characters or getting emotionally involved, alienation is a way of "making the familiar strange". The actors or a narrator can interact directly with the audience, breaking the fourth wall. The way we were told to use alienation in our pieces was by giving a title to each scene, and subsequently acknowledging that what is happening on stage is not real, but is in fact a contrived situation for you to judge and analyse. 

Brecht's theories and techniques are so interesting and now we've begun to scratch the surface, I'm looking forward to working on them further when we are given our scenes from Mother Courage and Her Children next week. 

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 

Today we sat together as a group and all did a read through of all the scenes we will be doing from Mother Courage and Her Children. We got a sense of the scenes and all had a think about which characters we might like to play. 

Rob cast the groups and assigned us all scenes, and I will be playing Mother Courage in scene two. 

I'm really glad I've been cast as Mother Courage, because I think it will be a real challenge and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to try something different. 

Wednesday 30th September 2015 

Today was the first day we started rehearsing our scenes from Mother Courage in our groups. 

First we had independent rehearsal, in which Cache, Klodian, Ria, Romaine and I read through our scene a few times and discussed our understanding of it. 

Our scene is where Mother Courage and the Cook are bargaining over meat she is selling, meanwhile inside the tent Eilif, the General and the Chaplain are sitting conversing while they wait for dinner. 

Mother Courage and Eilif are reunited, but she is very disappointed with what she hears he has been doing and she slaps him. 

When we worked with Rob, we set out the staging of the scene and went through it trying to add more flavour to it now, as well as taking direction from Rob. 

At the moment we are really just getting used to our scene and characters, and I think we're only scratching the surface so far, but we're definitely making a good start. 

In rehearsal we did look at the relationships between the characters in our scene and how these are supposed to be portrayed with clarity to the audience, and since I have also been reflecting on this while learning the lines. The Cook and Mother Courage have quite a funny, bantering and almost flirtatious relationship, as the Cook has a thing for her. 

Eilif and Mother Courage obviously have missed one another and love each other because they are family, but he thinks she should be proud of him and she is appalled at the way he has been behaving. 

Eilif is in the position of having to impress his superior the General, who is impressed with his service and seems to have quite a liking for him. The General is rather chiding however of the Chaplain, who he claims preaches so much it bores everyone. 

Mother Courage thinks the General is a bad General, which she explains to the cook in a little monologue, and the cook's relationship with the general doesn't extend much further than chain of command. 

Because Brecht wanted his characters used to portray different types of people in our society and how people treat one another, I think it's really important that we understand clearly their behaviour towards one another and how that can be used to make a point about how people behave in real life.

Wednesday 7th-Wednesday 14th October 2015 

Over these two weeks we have had a few more Mother Courage rehearsals. 

At the moment we're in the stage of the rehearsal process where we're stopping occasionally and discussing exactly what we think is going on, and I think this is good because it means we're all working together to fully understand our scene, and we're all striving towards the same goal. 

What we want to do with this really is pick out the messages and statements the text is intended to send out, rather than getting bogged down in things like what our characters are feeling. 

To try and achieve this, we've been looking at what we think Brecht was trying to say through this scene, as his work is so based on making social and political points. He wanted his audiences to be able to analyse objectively what was happening on stage, and so we are currently trying to work out just how to perform our piece that will make the audience think like this. 

The play Mother Courage is very anti war, and we need to try and make a constant connection with the audience, making comments to them on this theme wherever possible and really using our lines and the situation to convey the desired message that war is bad and achieves nothing. 

It really is quite a challenge, because it almost opposes so much we usually do in the process of developing a scene. Usually we would be thinking in great depth about our characters inner monologues and emotions, their objectives and their reasons for their actions. All of this however is very in the style of Stanislavski, whose work and theories were very much based on the psychological, and Brecht's theories and techniques are just so contrasting to this that we're having to learn almost a whole new way of performing. 

To help with this, we've been given the advice to almost make our characters caricatures, looking at using stereotypes and over exaggeration of their base personalities to make points about what their roles are and what people in society they are supposed to represent. 

For the first time we've had the chance to run through our scene in front of the rest of the group, and this was interesting. I found that because we knew they weren't already fully aware of what was happening in our scene because they're all doing different ones, it was a good opportunity to see how successfully we could portray the scene to them, and I feel like it was quite different acting it with an audience there who we could actively try to engage. 

After we all ran through our scenes, we sat down for a feedback session with Rob. 

Most of the notes he gave us to work on were general:

1. Technically, we all needing to be moving our voices a bit more, so as to really bring the text to life and make sure it doesn't sound one dimensional. 
2. There is currently a lack of cause and effect in the scenes, we really need to work on this. 
3. Put into practice more what we learnt in first year, even thought Brecht is different to what we've worked on in the past we can still apply skills we've accumulated so far to the development of this piece.
4. Dig deeper to really find out what's going on, and what the message is. Linking back to what I said before we were told we really need to be communicating these anti war messages to the audience as much as we can. 
5. To really work harder on portraying the characters, make them stereotypical, almost cartoon-like. Rob suggested we may even try playing them in a style of a comedian just to practice making them really exaggerated. 
6. Be much more over the top, as where we are now is not so much naturalistic, but just too flat. 
7. Moreover on this, also go really over the top with the story, make it as big as possible. 
8. There are a lot of large paragraphs in these scenes, but when we have a lot to say, don't throw the lines away or rush through them, really take our time. 
9. Overall, we have also all been told to really think more about how we can make these pieces Brechtian.

Specifically, the feedback I was given was to make my portrayal a bit more guttural. 

All of us playing Mother Courage as well as a few other characters were also told to look at the aphorisms in our lines and make sure we understand what the text implies and what these aphorisms are actually saying. 

Bibliography

‘Biography of Bertolt Brecht’ Grade Saver, <http://www.gradesaver.com/author/bertolt-

brecht> [16^th August 2015]

‘Bertolt Brecht’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Bertolt-Brecht>

[16^th August 2015] 

http://www.shmoop.com/mother-courage-and-her-children/summary.html