Lesson 3

Today we began to look at gestus 

What is gestus? 

Brekrts principle concern is to put a message in such a way that an audience can be in no doubt if the intentions of the audience. 

An audience should be able to understand each moment by looking at the stage picture .

The language of gesture and facial expression is clearly important to brektian technique.

Gestus is about putting across your message using your voice facial expression voice body to create the overall image you create on stage.

What we did in the lesson

We began with pair work across the space trying to relate a nursery rhyme, we then did it again but added strong vocals big facial expressions gestures physicality and we acted as if our lives depended on it and it worked. Brektian storytelling is dwffiwent to normal story telling, it may not look natural but it gets the story across

“Brekts gift to modern theatre is social usefulness. He liberates modern theatre to imitations of life and allows different styles of acting to coexist. Naturalism gives way to bold outlines comic exaggeration and a collage approach to production to put over a particular message “ -unknown 

Brekt isn’t interested in character he’s interested in message 

You can never truly imitate life on stage 

Stage is only a edited version of life 

Difference between brekt and Stan

He believed that social situations change the way that people act, Stanislavsky believed that there is no essential truth. B believed that people are formed by their society and culture and the time that they live. B said that “ all theatre should be appropriate to the modern age”

Gestus, the combination of gesture facial expression body language and voice/tone deliberately used to create meaning and communicate a message to the audience. It doesn’t just show the situation the stage picture but it sums up society’s opinion of the situation. Gestus, It’s a social conscious use of gesture and it’s used to provoke debate and educate the audience. 

The next thing we did was walked round in straight lines and when we heard a clap we had to get into partners and create an image. One was Cat and mouse, the mouse was on the floor and the cat was towering above, another was rich and poor and when we thought back both the images looked the same. This was sad because it showed our stereotypical society. 

Another exercise we did was work in pairs to create a still image of love; disbelief; intimidation. I worked with Alice and the pieces worked okay but then a narrator was added and it worked even better because there was more gesture to the piece.