Learning about Bertolt Brecht

Today we had a double lesson for Drama, and today we started to learn about Bertolt Brecht. Here are some information that we got taught and learnt earlier:


Born: 1898 in Germany where he have a middle class family
Studied: He studied Drama and Theatre Studies

              He became a playwright, poet, and a director

Also, he had his own Production company which is called 'Epic' that started in 1927.

In 1935, Brecht started to use the term Verfremdung in Moscow.

This is his work:

His work is called Brecht, which is a reaction to Stanislavsky's 'Naturalistic' work

• Stanislavsky's work - Naturalist - it is when the play is very realistic and with emotions.
• Bertolt Brecht's work - Brecht - it is when he makes his audiences THINK about the play rather than feel.

Brecht is mostly targeted to political views, he wants to use this tool to communicates to the society, and also to send messages to the politicians.

His works looks at War, Poverty, Injustice, etc.

Also, we wants to freed the theatre contraints (melodrama and naturalist)

• Verfremdungseffekt
• It is a term used in 1935 and backs up Brecht's ideas
• This term means 'to make strange' or 'to alienate'
• He wants to alienate his audiences and distances them to be aware of the performances
• He wants to connect the audiences and the performance and to judge the events
• They want to make them be aware of the whole performance, just like in the news
• He wants to show you how bad certain events are

Brecht HATED emotional plays

Plus, we learnt about Brecht's techniques and they are:

• Breaking the forth walls
• this is when the actors/narrators would sometimes address the audiences directly- to make them metally involved
• to use 'half curtains'- so the audiences see the changing of costumes and scenes, and to show that they're really watching a play
• Narrating
• when the narrator tells the story, makes comments, and breaks the reality
• can tell a moral story after the performance and speak the stage and directons
• Speaking in 3rd person
• an actor would use his technique helping the audience not to become emotionally attached
• Explanatory Placards
• placards are used to indicate the place, time, comments on events
• to show the emotions of the characters
• Masks
• to put certain masks to fit into the role/emotion of the character
• scary mask -  evil characters
• it is also a good way for hiding emotions
• Song
• songs, poems to interpret the situations