More about Bertolt Brecht

In this lessons we were taught the different types of techniques and devices that Brecht uses when directing I've also learnt that he fled from Nazi Germany and went to America to continue his work .
Brecht thought that when people came to see naturalism he wanted them to forget about their and also the wider world .

In naturalism there is no direct address , but in Berchtesgaden plays the actors tell the audience the characters they will be playing . Brecht also used different types of alienation effects and this is because he wanted the audience to feel aware of where they were.

Examples Alenation effects  

* Plays were performed with the house lights on so the audience remained aware
* Scenes were sung while placards were held . These were used to give the audience information .


Alenation techniques breaks the illusions of the drama.

At the beggining of a Brecht play the characters would come on stage and use direct address to introduce the characters they would be playing . If there was an who would be playing two characters Brecht always had the characters change on stage .

Usually Brecht would start of a scene bringing something unexpected . He describes this as a slap in the face or a wake up call . The characters would use placards to tell the audience what is happening. He didn't want the actors to play the roll realistically which is the opposite of naturalism.

The actors would remain physically and emotionally attatched and sometimes this would be used to make the audience think about their lives and life itself.

Bertolt Brecht

This is my research on theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht. I learnt that Brecht was born in 1898 and died in 1956 and that he was a play write, politician and theatre director. Brecht was a trouble maker at school and he was expelled for writing an anti war poem. When he was 16, the first world war broke out. Brecht was not very keen on taking part in the war and was ready to see his fellow classmates been killed. Bertolt Brecht had soon found a way of getting himself to not take part in the war, by registering himself to study a medical course and the Munich university he did not have to go to war.

Fearing persecution, Brecht left Germany in February 1933, when Hitler took power. After brief spells in Prague, Zurich and Paris he and Weigel accepted an invitation from journalist and author Karin Michealis to move to Denmark , where they settled in a house in Svendborg on the island of Funen. 


This became the residence of the Brecht family for the next six years, where they often received guests including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ruth Berlau. During this period Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, New York and London for various projects and collaborations.Brecht was also a Marxist. Brecht relationship to Marxism is extremely important and highly complex. From the 1920's until his death in 1956' Brecht identified himself as a Marxist. When he returned to Germany after World War II , he chose the German Democratic Republic, where his actress wife people Helen Weigel and he formed their own theatre troupe, the fame Berliner ensemble, and were eventually given a state theatre to run. 

Yet Brecht's relationship to orthodox Marxist officials and doctrine was often conflictual, and his own work and life were highly idiosyncratic. Of a strongly anti-bourgeois disposition from his youth, the young Brecht was also initially repelled by Bolshevism. He was also interested in social justice. 
Brecht created epic theatre in the 1920s. the main reason was because he wanted the audience to stop and think about what they were watching.In those times the different types of drama that there were are : mellow drama, realism and naturalism.