Lesson 2 - Alienation

With most theatre, the plays and actors emotionally invest in the situations they're acting in and this is influenced on the audience, so then they begin to become emotionally involved in the scene and focus more on how and why they are saying something as opposed to what they were actually saying.

Example:

I presented this clip to the general public and asked them what they thought of it and what they thought was going on. The main result was:

"Well the redhead is clearly frustrated and angry at the other woman. She's shouting and her facial expressions shows how pissed off she is. The actress really plays the character and you can tell." When I asked them what they were arguing about, none of them could tell me. Brecht doesn't want this to happen when people watched his plays. He wanted people to know what the conversation was between his characters, not how it made them feel. Explaining Brecht's theory, I showed the clip again and asked what they thought was going on.

"Bianca is annoyed at her mother because she always seems to get in her business and is always involved in her daughter's life. Carol acts as if she knows it all and Bianca says she doesn't. Carol is sticking up for Ricky because Bianca has cheated on him and Bianca hits back that her mum is just jealous because Bianca is happy whilst she has never been so."

Due to this, Brecht wanted his actors to focus more on gestures and actions than emotions.