Performance Workshop Lesson 3 Part 1

We were working on the techniques of Brecht again; using his written scripts to stage to form a scene and show different perspectives of a character. But before we started we played a game to warm up and get into the mindset of class and status. We played Servants and Snobs. This is where everyone starts off as a servant; cleaning, cooking, basically anything that revolves around that. Some people would get selected to be a snob and their objective is to walk about and then whenever they want  to show that they want to sit down. They would signify that by yawning or coughing, something that is noticeable to the servants and the servants would have to form a chair for them with their bodies. If the snob falls or doesn’t get a chair to sit on the other snobs have to turn and laugh at them. From this game it made me realise that there are specific classes and characters that can be spotted and people would go into stereotypical forms to show a certain class.

We also explored this in the exercise where we went into partners and we would have a pair of characters to physically present. I was with Matilda and we had to show a cat and mouse physicality, Romeo and Juliet physicality and a poor person and rich person physicality. We noticed that people started to fall into stereotypes and that they only did it so people would know exactly, at first glance, who you were playing and that was one of Brecht’s techniques for characterisation.

Afterwards we got into groups and used the synopsis of the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle written by Brecht to show a moment of one of the main characters The Governess. This specific moment we had to perform was the moment she packed her stuff, fled the scene and left the baby behind. At first we had to do a quick re-enactment of the scene and use that as our basis. Then we were asked to add in a couple of moments about the governess to allow the audience to realise her true personality. In our little scene we decided to have her rushing around clearly not interested in the baby’s needs and then let her get in her carriage to go. But before she leaves the is a moment of silence where she realises she left the baby behind and the baby is calling for her, but she quickly dismisses it and leaves. In this recreation of the scene you realise that with the Governess it’s truly what you see is what you get with her and she doesn’t care about anyone else. You recognise that message with the other groups that performed as well.

Lastly, we received a page with a scene from the play Mother Courage where we had to turn it into our own interpretation but using the techniques and tools Brecht has come up with for epic theatre. We decided on starting with the middle section and showing mother courage in denial and then for the middle section use the start point to show the daughter got killed then we went to the ending where I said the last line: “Hey! Take me with you!” and the others would respond with their starting line at the beginning of our scene  “No! This is all your fault.” This montage of the scene was still able to project the importance of the scene and the story line still made scene to the audience. We used Lloyd as an inanimate object to show strangeness in our piece.And also to represent the daughter we used a hoodie which was in contrast with our decision with Lloyd.