Tuesday, 4 November 2014

HOMEWORK TASK: Is Brecht still relevant today?

Watch this video and write a personal response to:

 Is Brecht still relevant today?

Consider:
  • Should we still study him?
  • Is Epic Theatre out of date?
  • Do audiences want to watch this style of theatre?


A video interview with Dr Laura Bradley exploring the context in which Brecht was writing, the significance of his work for a contemporary audience and techniques such as Epic Theatre and alienation.


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2 comments:

  1. Unknown5 November 2014 at 17:23

    Brecht is still relevant today as his plays and concept display political issues using theatre. Political Theatre is all about having a structure or form during the performance. The first concept was epic theatre, with an audience watching a story being told whist being narrated. This helped cause alienation as the audience felt more engaged and involved and engrossed with the performance. The plays included a confusion to the way in which it was being delivered which allowed audiences to think as often a change of characters, change of scene, change of location did cause a reaction out of the audience. It also forces the audience to be watching from a critique eye and learning from the performance and seeing to perspectives to the story being told. Sometimes it had the effect of a character and audience response e.g. (character cries on stage) audience response is to cry. His plays had the content of the state of society, bank and financial crisis, which are all topics people of todays society can relate and thats were Brecht ideas becoming more apparent.

    I believe that Epic theatre can still be used today and the performance can be engaging with the audience however this style of theatre is less mainstream as typically people purchase sitting or standing seats at the theatre. Depending on circumstance e.g. you go to London dungeon and actors are used to help create a sense of eeriness, audiences can become very involved and engaged with that however audiences may become less orientated when with a performance if it was in a Normal seated Theatre.

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  2. Unknown5 November 2014 at 17:58

    Todays lesson we were introduced to the idea of political theatre. Political theatre differs from naturalistic theatre. Political theatre displays a specific issue and raises these political points up and causes the piece to progress whilst characters explore the different aspects of the issue throughout the performance. An example of out political outbreak of 10 fire stations being shut and London protesting against it, or the ebola outbreak. All this issues and dressed and performed in a style of epic theatre.

    As the lesson went on we created short scenes in which us actors told a story whist two others would narrate the actions and thoughts through out. This allowed the audience to view this from two different perspectives and allowing then to watch critically instead of watching for entrainment, essentially the information delivered within these pieces is just a way of passing knowledge to audience in the style of dramatic theatre. 4.11.14 part 1

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