B00825799 DRA330: Issues in Performance 3

Bertolt Brecht proposes a new approach to acting in his essay ‘The Street

Scene’ (Brecht on Theatre. John Willett (London: Methuen, 1964), pp.121 -

129). Explain what he proposes the actor should do, and explain how this

approach might fit a text like He Who Says Yes. What advantage does this

approach to acting offer, over a more naturalistic approach?

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” is a quote
attributed to the Bertolt Brecht by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard in their book Paulo
Freire A Critical Encounter in 1993, and although its true origin has been debated on, it
nevertheless elegantly phrases what Brecht’s vision of the theatre was. Brecht sought to
challenge concepts engraved into society, to force his audience to think critically on the
issues he addressed. In an effort to transform theatre from a place of entertainment into a
hub for education, Brecht would form ‘Epic Theatre’ in which he employed a wealth of
various approaches to creating theatre, from the context in which music was implement
creating a juxtaposition between what was see on stage and that which was being heard; to
informing the audience on the events they were about to witness and there conclusion as to
their draw focus onto to process to reach that conclusion rather than the suspense in waiting
to discover said conclusion; and even narrating out loud the stage directions involved with
the being portrayed.

One objective that all these approaches intend to fulfil, is the deliberate ‘breaking’ of the
illusion that theatre so often strives for, reminding the audience that what they are watching
is a performance, not something to be lost in. This is the primary goal of Brecht’s acting
approach described in his essay ‘The Street Scene’ in 1964. To explore how this particular
acting approach achieves this goal, this essay will examine the techniques described in ‘The
Street Scene’; explore their purposes in relation to the goal of ‘breaking the theatrical
illusion’; explore the advantages that are offered though this approach when creating Epic
and Political Theatre over naturalistic acting approaches such as the ‘Stanislavski’ method;
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and will elaborate on the effectiveness that ‘The Street Scene’ approach possess when
applied to an Epic Theatre text such as ‘He Who Says Yes’ 1930, by Bertolt Brecht.

The purpose Brecht was seeking to fulfil with Epic Theatre, as we addressed earlier, was to
educate. With theatre being predominately viewed from the perspective on whether it is
entertaining or not, an aspect of ‘The Street Scene’ in which Brecht made an effort to
establish clearly, is that the demonstrator’s goal is distinctly not to entrain their audience.
“There is no question but that the street-corner demonstrator has been through an
‘experience’, but he is not out to make his demonstration serve as an ‘experience’. Even the
experience of the driver and the victim is only partially communicated by him, and he by no
means tries to turn it into an enjoyable experience for the spectator…” (Brecht, 1964, p. 122).
Through understanding that the entire purpose of this performance is education over
entertainment, the actor can more keenly understand the need for an entirely different
approach to acting in theatre. As Brecht phrases it: “…theatre which follows his lead in this
respect undergoes a positive change of function.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 122).

The defining concept of ‘The Street Scene’, is that in Epic Theatre, the Actor and Character
needs to be distinctly separated from each other: “He never forgets, nor does he allow it to
be forgotten, that he is not the subject but the demonstrator.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 125). This
aspect of ‘The Street Scene’ is what ensures the illusion of theatre is dismantled, by
consistently being aware that what they are witnessing is not real, the audience is brought to
think critically about what it is they being shown. “If the scene in the theatre follows the street
scene in this respect then the theatre will stop pretending not to be theatre.” (Brecht, 1964,
p. 122). To demonstrate this concept, Brecht imagines an eyewitness (the actor)
demonstrating a traffic accident (the scene in a play) to a set of bystanders (the audience).
Here, the eyewitness never attempts to become the driver, the victim, or any of the other
people involved in the accident, only demonstrate the actions taken by them. “The feelings
and opinions of demonstrator and demonstrated are not merged into one.” (Brecht, 1964,
p.125).

Throughout the essay, Brecht details various techniques and important points of
consideration for the actor (or ‘demonstrator’) to employ in order to make their separation
from their character (‘subject’) obvious to the audience. One of element of this process the
Brecht highlights straight away is the for the actor to avoid the desire of creating a ‘perfect’
recreation: “On the contrary it is important that he should not be too perfect. His
demonstration would be spoilt if the bystanders’ attention were drawn to his powers of
transformation.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 122). With goal of this process being that the audience is
consistently made aware of the fact that they are experiencing theatre, resisting the potential
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desire to realistically portray their role is important, as it removes possible distractions from
the message the play is looking to communicate or the issues that attention is brought to.
Brecht even encourages the demonstrator to narrate elements of their demonstration,
elaborating upon aspects that are physically unable to achieve by themselves: “Suppose he
cannot carry out some particular movement as quickly as the victim he is imitating; all he
need do is to explain that he moves three times as fast.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 122). This aspect
of narrating the actions they take reflects how often stage directions were spoken outload to
the audience in his Epic Theatre performances.

With this process focusing on the distinction between Actor and Character, those that could
be considered skilled performers whilst participating in more naturalistic or realism
performances, can find their habits and skills backfiring upon themselves as they are more
familiar with creating an illusion resembling reality. This is even opens up the possibility for
performers who are not as skilled in imitating reality on stage, to find themselves to be very
capable in performing in this manner. As Brecht puts it: “the incident is clearly very far from
what we mean by an artistic one. The demonstrator need not be an artist. The capacities he
needs to achieve his aim are in effect universal” (Brecht, 1964, p. 121- 122) “… The street
demonstrator can carry out a successful demonstration with no greater abilities than, in
effect, anybody has.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 126). Furthermore, the intricacy of how a character
would perform their actions does not need to be extensively portrayed. “The demonstrator’s
purpose determines how thoroughly he has to imitate. Our demonstrator need not imitate
every aspect of his characters’ behaviour, but only so much as gives a picture.” (Brecht,
1964, p. 123). Through providing a highly detailed and intricate demonstration on how a
character performed an action, the actor runs the risk of distracting the audience with
unnecessary information. “He imitates their actions and so allows conclusions to be drawn
about them. … To the street demonstrator the character of the man being demonstrated
remains a quantity that need not be completely defined. … What the demonstrator is
concerned with are his accident - prone and his accident -proof qualities.” (Brecht, 1964,
p.124). As long as the essential information is provided to the audience, even though non-
physical means such as explaining the action verbally via narrating their actions, the
audience are able to grasp the concepts they need in order for the scene to be successful.

With the acknowledgment that certain aspects of a character performing an action can exist
as unnecessary, it is then vital that a method of identifying what aspect of a character
actions are essential is established and understood. Brecht links this back to the established
purpose of Epic Theatre, and what makes a performance qualify as Epic Theatre; that being
having a message to communicate to the audience: “One essential element of the street
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scene … if this is to qualify as epic, … the demonstration should have a socially practical
significance. Whether our street demonstrator is out to show that one attitude on the part of
the driver or pedestrian makes an accident inevitable … or whether her is demonstrating
with a view to fixing the responsibility, his demonstration has a practical purpose, intervenes
socially.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 122). With a message to communicate to the audience, the actor
is able to define what is essential to present to the audience and what is not by determining
whether or not it furthers the message they are trying to communicate, or even if it works
against the message.

Once the actor has the capability of being able to define what elements are essential to
communicating their message and then limits their performance to exclusively those
elements, they then opportunity to further direct the audience’s attention towards them. Due
to the intention of reminding the audience that what they are experiencing is theatre, the
actor is enabled, even encouraged, to employ techniques that entirely unrealistic to
emphasise the action’s importance. Brecht outlines an example as such: “The demonstrator
achieves it by paying exact attention this time to his movements, executing them carefully,
probably in slow motions; in this way he alienates the little sub -incident, emphasizes its
importance, makes it worthy of notice.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 126). Such exaggerated action not
only serves to break the illusion of theatre, it reinforces the importance of certain action
incredibly effectively.

The entire focus of this acting process aims to equip an actor with the best possible tools to
communicate a message to their audience. Through understanding that the purpose of
theatre has been shifted from that of entertainment to education, the actor is fully
empowered do whatever they can to communicate their message, even encouraged to
break the illusion of theatre so that the audience isn’t distracted from the core message.

The advantages that ‘The Street Scene’ model possess over more naturalistic approaches
when creating pollical theatre are quite evident when looking at what the models aim to
achieve. First and foremost, ‘The Street Scene’ is built from the ground up to create pollical
theatre. “The object of the performance is to make it easier to give an opinion on the
incident. Its means correspond to that. The epic theatre is a highly skilled theatre with
complex contes and far -reaching social objectives. In setting up the street scene as a basic
model for it we pass on the clear social function and give the epic theatre criteria by which to
decide whether an incident is meaningful or not.” (Brecht, 1964, p. 128). By establishing a
clear separation between the Actor and Character, that one is imitating the other, and
maintaining this separation, the illusion of theatre is dismantled. With the lack of an illusion,
the audience’s attention is able to be fully focused upon the message.
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The issue with relying on more naturalistic approaches, such as the Stanislavsky method of
acting, is that the focus of this method and those like it, is to blur the distinction between
actor and character. To allow one to influence the other. Mike Alfreds, in his book: ‘Different
Every Night: Freeing The Actor’ describes the use of ‘Wants’ in order to discover what drives
a character: “Stanislavsky’s work supports this flexibility. It’s based on the simple perception
that in life we’re driven by Wants – needs and intentions that motivate us to carry out a
range of actions in an attempt to fulfil those Wants. As in life, so in the theatre: the actor –
character functions in exactly the same way. This way of playing is based on intention rather
than result.” (Alfreds, 2007, p. 38) Through this method, and incredible engaging and
entertaining portrayal can be created. The problem is that this runs in conflict with the
objective of political theatre. By creating a performance that is entertaining for the audience,
that same audience is then distracted from the message that the performance is intended to
communicate to them.

When applied to a political theatre text such as the play: ‘He Who Says Yes’ written by
Bertolt Brecht himself, ‘The Street Scene’ model’s methods work seamlessly with the
characters and dialogue present in the script. The message the play is making an effort to
communicate to its audience is communicated clearly by the ‘The Great Chorus’:

“The Great Chorus: What we must learn above all is consent.

Many say yes, and yet there is no consent.

Many are not asked, and many

Consent to wrong things. Therefore:

What we must learn above all is consent.” (Brecht, 1930, p. 63)

The dialogue in which the characters explain the context of the scene, reflects the same
steps taken by the demonstrator in ‘The Street Scene’ when they elaborate on the actions
taken by the subjects:

“The Teacher: I am the teacher. I keep a school in the city and I have a pupil whose
father is dead; he has only his mother to look after him. Now I will go and say good-bye to
them, for I shall soon be starting on a journey to the mountains. A terrible disease has
broken out among us, and in the city beyond the mountains live several great doctors.”
(Brecht, 1930, p. 63)
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And the narrative of the play is simple, precise, and easy for the audience to understand.
Through using the techniques described in ‘The Steet Scene’, an actor can play to the
performance’s strengths, and deliver the message the play intended to communicate to its
audience clearly and with minimal distraction.
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Bibliography:

Alfreds, M. (2007) Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor. London: Nick Hern Books

Brecht, B. (1964) Brecht on Theatre. Translated by John Willett. New Delhi: Radha Krishna
Prakashan

Brecht, B. (1930) He Who Says Yes. Translated by Wolfgang Sauerlander. London:

Bloomsbury. Available from: https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/playtext-overview?
docid=do-9781408163160&tocid=do-9781408163160-div-00000034&st=he+who+says+yes
[Last Accessed: 03/02/2022]