Between the two performances, in my opinion, our first
performance was received in a much more livelier and energised light. Reasons for this
are quite simple, (1) there was a large generation gap between the two
audiences, (2) out first audience are familiar with theatre where as an older
audience is less familiar. Because of the reaction we received from our first
audience I was reluctant to think that the second audience who were much older
would have the same reaction, but saying that I still went into the performance
and in my opinion I put in full energy and worked well with the cast I was
performing with.
In the performances we used Brechtian techniques to show characters
and scene changes. One example was the use of laminated cards that we put
around our neck, by doing this it changed the the character portrayal of the performance because
when we didn’t have the cards on we were ourselves but when put the cards
around our necks we became that character. Showing reality and imagination at
different times is a very interesting part of Brecht’s work, it draws the
audience away and just at the right moment it brings them back into the performance
we created, by seeing the worlds merge and mix it is possible to get the
message across with so much clarity than using a style like naturalism or
realism. Singing was also used in our production, which is also an attribute
that Brecht used. Our cast sung a parody of a Blondie song called ‘Call Me’; we
altered the lyrics so they fitted our piece. The song was purely there for
comedy reasons, which leads me on to my next point: the way Brechtian theatre
works is it uses entertainment then the act of change so it entertains
the audience with songs and magnificent performances but the back drop is to
get people to think differently about the times in which they live in, so by
our cast singing it was almost buttering the audience up before we hit them
with some rather life changing proposals.
In my opinion the performance I gave went well especially
when I played Margret Thatcher because I looked at videos of her on Youtube and
listened to recordings of her, obviously because I’m a man I could not exactly
present her physicality because, well, I’m a man, but I mainly used my voice and
from that I formed some type of physicality which matched my voice and the card
I was wearing. To improve my performance as Margret Thatcher I felt I could
have done some more research into the time when she fell into Alzheimer’s,
we could have possible added something with her husband if we had a longer slot
for our ensemble piece.
A group that stuck out to me was Paris’s ensemble because they
used comedy as a weapon of change by getting the audience to look at horrible events
in a more light hearted way as to emphasise the seriousness of the message. At the start of this term we had to answer the
question ‘Is all theatre political?’ and I am still sticking to my same answer:
yes. Yes, all theatre is political because I believe that politics is in every
aspect of our life, so if there is some form of message getting put across that
will affect the persons thought process which will then result in the person
possibly behaving differently in society makes all theatre political.
