This is a video of me doing the 'Daily task' exercise. I'm breaking the fourth wall, letting the audience know what I'm doing by narrating my every movement and doing and not getting them emotionally drawn in, getting them to ask many questions.

Characters reveiled and Gestus

In today's lesson we learnt a new exercise that explained much more clearer the work of Brecht. This exercise started off with people getting characters with weird names or names that would almost tell the character's life before they could present themseleves to the play. Name's such as Harry Bumptious the Yuppin or Cedric Hore Hore the car salesman, already presents the identity of the character and by doing this, Brecht shows that stereotypical way of giving an actor a character with a name and presenting what kind of individual they are. I learnt that by doing this, an actor can present a character in many ways just by knowing the name.

I also learnt that being a character like Harry Bumptious could have a two way effect on the audience. Inviting them and also dividing them as the characters' name already tells them who they are and this doesn't get the audience emotionally attached. What this does is let the audience question things such as 'Why is this happening?' or 'Why is the character like that?'

To continue, we also worked on the exercise of' 'Gestus' which is the combination of gestures and attitudes, meaning if a character can do a gesture that shows the audience what kind of attitude they have towards someone or something. For example, the character of a soldier, firstly showing his gesture of marching and saluting which automatically makes the audience know he's a soldier. Then the picture of dead bodies and the soldier's new gesture of kicking the dead bodies shows his attitudes to the death of people at war, showing that he shows no remorse and doesn't care at all. From doing this exercise I realised that the little hints your character makes can determine how the audience view you and what their perception of you is and I feel this is a strong way for you and the audience to communicate mentally.

Mad picture

Pictures that let you and others question 'Why is he doing that?'

First Lesson Exercises

First lesson exercises:

Yesterday, we went over a couple of exercises which were Brecht influenced and I learnt many things while doing these exercises.
The first exercise, moody objects consisted of a group of two or more people in order to create a shape in form of a mood. From this, I learnt that doing this exercise ties in with Brecht's ideas and work of creating weird pictures making the audience ask questions as to what the performers/actors are doing and why. An example of this could be the formation an 'angry motorbike' with the wheels being scrunched and closed off with the body curved and the biker in a foul mood. This made me wonder and question why would performers create an angry bike? What does it symbolise? Could it be interpreted in a different way by someone else other than me?
I also learnt that creating objects with your body and the use of others' bodies show the basics of how physicality is used in Brecht's work and how it can create meaningful objects. The most important factor of this exercise is your facial expressions and how you shape/position your body.

The second exercise we done and I learnt many devices that were used in Brecht's work was doing a daily task. Doing something in your everyday life and saying each thing you do in contrast to doing something without speaking at all. Doing it myself, I learnt that once you're narrating everything you're doing you automatically disconnect from the reality of it all and it also becomes robotic in everything you do with no emotion what so ever. Whereas watching someone do their daily activity without saying anything brings back the reality with the facial expressions and the gestures they make to create this sense of belief and understanding. I felt as if with the seperate part of the exercise where you're not talking, just acting out your daily tasks, you as an audience member would automatically be emotinally drawn in. On the other hand, I learnt that when you're watching someone narrate what they're doing you're led to ask questions such as 'Why are they doing it?' and 'What do you gain from doing this task?'.