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?'.