Hello everyone, I am your director, Bronson Toghill and today we will be presenting the conventions of Bertolt Brecht and how he may apply his style of dramatic theatre to King Leah, a play written by William Shakespeare. The purpose of this is to demonstrate what a play that does not use brechtian conventions turns into when these conventions are applied.
Now before I show off these features I will go through a brief outline of who Bertolt Brecht is and how his life influenced his style of theatre. Brecht’s style heavily focused on the message that the production was trying to present to the audience. The characters were merely crutches used as a tool to present Brecht’s theme and were no means the subject of the performance. The message that Brecht would try to exhibit very topical ideas, ideas that were challenging and showed real world social and political meaning and it was quite challenging.
This concept of focusing on the social context lead to strong alienation within the performance, you weren’t supposed to become invested in a character, you’re not supposed to suspend your disbelief. What you see in a Brechtian style play is not realism. So many of Brecht’s techniques involved this concept of alienation and the features I will be discussing Narration, stereotypes, episodic structure, signs and song. Alienation is an important word to remember as all these features that I have brought up all revolve around it.
Now in this workshop, I would like to demonstrate how Brecht may apply his theatre techniques to the Shakespearean play; King Leah. I have chosen this play to demonstrate Brechtian features because it has very strong overarching themes that are quite hard to grasp onto because unless you truly dissect it, themes, themes such as injustice and blindness to the truth will be what I will be hoping to emphasise today. The characters are what the audience latches onto however with a brechtian style we characters lose focus and we become involved with the the commentary of the play.
Example 1: Narration
The first Brechtian technique I would like to show is narration. Narration is a commentary that directly tells the audience what is happening, it may provide contextual understanding of the setting, maybe give us some insight into what the character is thinking or just literally saying what is occurring in this very scene. Narration is a useful Brechtian tool to enhance the idea of alienation because it constantly reminds us that we are watching a production, we are not to empathise with these characters, we are to observe them for the message of the play. I have chosen this feature as I believe it to be the pinnacle of alienation. I’m going to demonstrate two versions of the same scene. I would now like to ask my volunteers to come up and help me demonstrate this. One version of the scene will be acted regularly using realism and then the second version will be performed using Narration the way Brecht would and hopefully this will help us to understand what a piece may look like with a Brecht style. Here we have a scene where in the play, King Lear is asking his daughters to express their love for him and the most loving daughter will receive the greatest amount of share in the kingdom. Upon asking Cordelia, his most faithful and honest daughter, the interaction goes as follows;
KING LEAR
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interess’d; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
KING LEAR
How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech a little,
Lest it may mar your fortunes.
Alrighty, now that we’ve seen how this have been performed normally, now coming up we will see a tweaked version of the same scene of the play, here the volunteers will have the same script however between lines I will be narrating everything that happens.
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King Lear stares eagerly at his most beloved daughter, ‘Cordelia.’ After hearing the “grand” praises given to him from his other two daughters, he can only imagine what Cordelia might say
KING LEAR
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interess’d; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
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Cordelia stands there disgruntled, knowing how false the worlds coming from her sister’s mouths were. She feels disappointed in her father for having to need her approval this bad.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
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Nothing? Lear is shocked to hear this. How could she be so stubborn? Little does he know that by Cordelia not exaggerating her love, that she is actually being the most loyal and genuine.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
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Cordelia straightens her posture and boldly reinforces her point to Lear as she does not want to hide her true feelings:
CORDELIA
Nothing.
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Internally, Lear knows better of Cordelia. He doesn’t want to dismiss her so quickly. He really wants to know how much she loves him. Part of him would prefer if she was dishonest, if it were to boost his ego
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
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She must be honest, there is too much deception in this world. She gracefully explains to Lear why she feels this way
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
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Lear just wants to give Cordelia the opportunity to rule some part of the land even though now, he realises it’s futile
KING LEAR
How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech
Lest it may mar your fortunes
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Now thank you for that volunteers, now that you guys have seen how those two scenes have played out, I want to discuss how this technique changed the extract to become more Brechtian. As we discussed earlier, we really want the audience to feel disconnected and alienated from the piece and by adding narration to the extract all of a sudden we lose immersion, we become strongly aware that we are watching a play. All of a sudden, a theme like ‘being blind to the truth’ becomes exemplified. With the use of this tool, we are more perceptive into how these characters think, now the play is telling you that, now the audience is focusing less on the character interaction and more on the themes surrounding them. The idea of Lear being blind to the truth is obvious as the narrator is constantly reinforcing it. This should also hopefully highlight Lear’s Hamartia or Fatal Flaw which is his excessive pride because in the narration, it is claimed that he would be okay with her being dishonest if it inflated his ego, and that is truthful to the original play, we just care less about Lear as a character and more of what he is preaching. The narrator was literally telling you what was happening, even though there was already realistic character dialogue. The characters feel less relatable and you detach from them however in doing so, the theme is presented to you more full on. In a normal viewing of King Lear, it’s so easy to get lost in the plot and characters, that unless explained to you, the themes can easily fly over your head.
Example 2: Stereotypes
The next feature I will be discussing is stereotypes. Stereotypes can be explained as overgeneralization of certain groups of people. This can be displayed through movement mannerisms or dialogue quirks. A lot of the time that you hear about stereotypes in the real world, they are used negatively however Brecht turns stereotypes into a very effective tool to (once again) alienate the audience. Once again we are detaching ourselves from the characters as they feel less realistic and individual characters stop feeling imports and this results in the audience better understanding a theme. Now once again I will get my volunteers to demonstrate how this scene looks normally versus with Brechtian features, the volunteers will be doing their best to exemplify how a Stereotypical old senile man would talk and how a stereotypical noble woman during the elizabethan times would act.
KING LEAR
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
CORDELIA
And so I am, I am.
KING LEAR
Be your tears wet? yes, ‘faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
CORDELIA
No cause, no cause.
KING LEAR
Am I in France?
Using stereotypes makes these characters feel so unrelatable and distant. The mannerisms used are meant to make audiences feel as if this were unrealistic and that the writer had never met a women and just made up a role based on his knowledge on society. I believe that this application of stereotypes in this scene strongly highlights the injustice that has occured in the play. The fact that Lear’s old and senile acting is more apparent makes us realise how easy it was for his other two daughters to manipulate him, even though it’s Lears fault for having excessive pride, we can see through the stereotype of ‘old men all being clueless’ how easy it was for the people around him to leech onto his own flaws. For Cordelia, we can also see that she experiences injustice by being a victim of her time period, where by being honest and loyal, her sex limits her to being able to really have a place in the world. Only by dishonest means were her sisters able to obtain the land/power that they did. Stereotypes also help display injustice because they within themselves are injustice. What I mean by this is that although the tool highlights that theme, the tool itself is a metaphor for injustice because by portraying these characters in such a way is a disservice to the group of people that identify in a similar manner. The audience better understands the injustice in the play because the portrayal of certain groups of people is injustice in its own right.
Example 3: Freeze frame
It was not uncommon for a Brechtian performance to just go still. This is known as a freeze frame and it was a convention used to highlight a certain moment in a scene that’s particularly important or symbolic. This could be an opportunity to get a character to break the fourth wall and talk to the audience or it could just be a still that really makes the audience reflect what is going on. Freeze frames really break the flow of the piece and is another reminder to the audience that they’re just watching a play. It’s very difficult to become attached to the characters and world of the play when it is starting and stopping. If you were to do a freeze frame on a particular moment it can be quite powerful and makes any theme obvious. The way I will be presenting this is during the final scene where Lear enters with a deceased Cordelia in his arms. At the end of Lear’s harrowing speech.
Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms;
KING LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’ld use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives
Now that we’ve seen that, we can see how powerful a still image is. The intent of making this extract a freeze frame acts as a reflection of the events that we have seen. We have a moment to just sit and think about the pain Lear is in right now. We reflect on the innocence lost and what the world has come to while we just sit and observe the grief in Lear’s expression. We may feel distant from the play but the themes hit us harder than ever. The theme of injustice could not come across more perfectly than it does there. And then later after this King Lear dies of grief. This freeze frame can be a symbol of how cold and ‘frozen’ his heart becomes.
Example 4: Signs
Another Brecht concept I will investigate is how he used ‘Signage’ in his plays. Signs are messages/words that were used to tell the audience what something literally was. Like a character might have “farmer” attached to him. Or a scene would be named and an actor would be holding the sign until the next scene. Sign is a very effective tool for alienation because in realism, characters and scene wouldn’t just be wearing a piece of playcard that told us who they were or where they were. We become disconnected by being constantly aware that we are watching a play. I will now bring back my volunteers and I will display a scene where Lear is in the wild during a storm with The Fool and he is taking off his clothes, in this scene I have labelled Lear as “King” but with “Senile old Man” hidden under it. While the Fool is labelled as ‘Truth Wielder” and while this happens there will be a another sign telling the Audience the setting.
KING LEAR
Ha! here’s three on
‘s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare,
forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings!
come unbutton here.
Take’s off Sign
Fool
Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night
to swim in. Now a little fire in a wild field were
like an old lecher’s heart; a small spark, all the
rest on’s body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire.
Now that we’ve seen that we can see how unnatural it is to have characters with signs on them that tell us their role. Now the reason why I think that this scene is an excellent application of signage is because of how it portrays the characters. King Lear hides behind his title of King but as he strips his clothes off, he symbolises how he has fallen down the Great Chain of Being, which is essentially a hierarchy of power, once a king now the same worth of a peasant. In the real play Lear would have taken his clothes off but here the sign tell us the symbol directly. This is the alienation effect.
Example 5: Song
The final Brechtian tool I would like to show off will the the use of song. Song is traditionally used in theatre as music to help convey emotion, establish a mood or as a storytelling device and Brecht did use song in this sense however when he included it in his work it was used a bit of a more unique way. If you were watching a play that was discussing various social issues that plagued society than all of a sudden the actors burst out into song in dance than that would be extremely alienating, this is what Brecht intended to do however he would add an extra layer of alienation by making the song feel so out of place in the actual context of the play, like maybe if it were a really sad scene he would play cheerful music and then all of a sudden you once again realise you’re watching a play. This can often bring out the message as well through irony or critical thinking. To demonstrate this feature, I have created a video where in the play, the Earl of Gloucester is getting his eyes plucked out and the song “I can see clearly now” by Jimmy Cliff
Now that we have seen that, I will now discuss how this feature changed the narrative of the scene. If we had been watching this play through its entirety we would’ve felt very estranged and then once we had heard the positive sound and lyrics ESPECIALLY during the climax of the play, it would actually be quite humorous. But there’s a reason why I chose this song in particular, is that the lyrics state “I can see clearly now” and in the scene Gloucester is literally having his eyes plucked out and it’s really offbeat to hear during such a serious and disturbing scene. However this tool helps us delve deeping into the meaning of the play. Earlier I talked about how Brechtian features may enhance themes and one of those themes was “being blind to the truth” well in this part of King Lear, the plucking of Gloucester’s eyes is a symbol for how he can finally see the truth and that’s ironic because he can only see now that he’s blind. Originally Gloucester cannot see the deceitfulness that his son Edmund until he full on plucks his eyes out and he realises that his other son Edgar, who Edmund claimed was plotting against him was loyal the whole time. Another lyrics from the song is “gone are the dark clouds that made me blind” and this further highlights the irony that the song gives to us and a once disturbing scene now becomes more impactful and more obvious to realise the themes. This lyrics is particularly insightful as in the parallel plot line with Lear, the storm symbolises his ongoing insanity, the dark clouds for Glocester could be his internal gullibility and now that he is no longer gullible he can see.
Sources: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html