Brechtian Performance- Second Reflection Essay

1. What Brechtian techniques did you use in your group? Myself and my fellow group members used many different Brechtian techniques in our peace of Epic Theatre. Firstly, we decided on a social issue to base our peice of theatre on, our final being the issue of gay marriage. We then set this issue based on the story of The Three Muskateers, and changed the name to Three Muskaqueers.This word play and the theme of gay marraige continued on throughout our peice of theatre. Also, to continue the theme of homosexuality, we used Brechts idea of introducing Gods who pass jugdment on the play and the characters, Hamzah was our God of Gays. We also used a popular song the YMCA and changed the words according to our social issue and story. Other Brechtian techniques we used were scene cross cutting, gestus and greeze frames and we also had a narrator who introduced our play. 2. How well did you think you used them (Popular audince reaction/engagement/understanding. Critical; opinions of other practitioners & Self; personal targets you may have set yourself) I think that our group used most of the techniques very well. We were able to explicitly use the Brechtian techniques we chose, such as using a God to pass judgement and using a narrator, however i feel we could have improved on other aspects of Brechtian theatre; such as including the characters saying stage directions. If we had added more of these techniques our peice would have become more Brechtian and would have been more obvious to the audience that our performance was a peice of theatre. I think we used our social issue and story well as we cleverly created a play on words from the original story of the Three Muskateers to the Three Muskaqueers. I feel that overall, from the reaction that we got from the audience and how i feel about our peice of theatre from the targets i first set myself that we used the techniques very well. 3. How well did you ‘synthesis’ your content (what you were saying) with the form (how you were saying it) What did you think was effective and why? I think that we had quite a fair amount of synthesis in our production as we kept the theme of â€Å"homosexuality† and â€Å"gay marraige† running throughout the peice. We incorporated this theme into our chosen theme song, and into puns and jokes we made throughout the peice of theatre. I feel that we could have, towards the end of the peice kept the theme running more as we changed the story by making one of the main characters turn straight, and our teacher and fellow students did not fully understand this choice, so i feel that we could have made this mroe obvious or changed this. 4. If you were not happy with aspects of your work then what alternative approaches might you have pursued? Mention at least 2 aspects of your peers work that you thought was effective and why, as you consider alternatives. 1) I feel that we could have used the use of stage directions more because we did not include this as much as we could have, and this part of Epic Theatre is a very important part of Brechts work as he uses it to break the â€Å"fourth wall† between the actors, the play and the audience. 2) I feel that we also could have used either mime or mask in our theatre. Although none of the other groups did this, it is a very well known Brechtian technique, and would have made our peice of theatre stand out much more through the use of nboth Mime and masks.