Applying Brecht to our performance #1

The first main points that we as a class learnt about Brecht and his work were that his work came at a time when naturalism was the norm and most common style if theatre.

Verfremdungeffekt loosely translates from German to 'make strange/alienate' an audience. 

This concept that Brecht introduced to theatre aimed to challenge the audience when watching a piece- the idea that theatre was and had to be comforting to watch and that mild emotions such as sympathy and sorrow were the limit of discomfort for an audience was changed completely with his style. I feel like there is a lot of potential for our class performance of 'TWOWC' to utilize these elements of Brecht's Epic Theatre.

As we learn how Brecht's work evoked reaction from the audience of his time because they were not used to it, I think to create a similar reaction, we really need to consider what our modern audience is used to, what will shock them and what they maybe haven't seen before. We also need to consider the family and friends our audience will be made up of- whether they know anything about theatre theoretically anyone from the general public of today has a somewhat tolerance of brechtian style theatre. 

3 minutes into this clip there is a prime example of  Miranda breaking the fourth wall by addressing the audience at home through the camera directly.

TV programmes like Miranda, Mrs Brown's Boys etc. aswell as the majority of stage theatre has a lot brechtian elements and this is something we need to strongly consider when aiming to create verfremdungeffekt for this piece.

Dictact

Brecht is a didactic theatre teacher