I think that I really benefited from our lesson in Political Theatre. We begun our lesson with a warm up game in which we studied the way we can tell a persons personality and social status by their gestures, facial expressions and posture. I found this particularly interesting as we are still using Brecht's techniques in modern day Theatre. We explored this through a simple improvisation through watching two different people act as characters. Firstly, watching Josh play the stereotypical 'snob' helped me to really understand how important it is to portray a character not only through voice but through small aspects such as walking. Josh strolled around the room, with his chest out, nose up and his hand behind his back to show a sense of importance. Watching someone else portray how they see a character is really interesting because is helps me to have a wider range of understanding through characterisation. We then watched Ivory portray the stereotypical 'snob' as a woman. Seeing and analysing Ivory portray her character enabled me to hold a clear understanding of how a upper class character can be played. I found the contrast in the social statuses really interesting, and how even a small aspect such as posture can completely change a character. We watched many different examples of a mother. I particularly liked Zoe's portrayal of a mother. She held her stomach and her back to show her posture is bent after the tiredness of pregnancy, however, she also changed her facial expression to quite glum which made me decide maybe she was portraying a mother who was confused on what she wanted in life. All these exercises benefited me to understand how characterisation is so vital in playing a role.
Carrying out these exercises all build up my understanding of Political Theatre.
In our next exercise to do with characterisation consisted of portraying the stereotypical mother, villain and mental person, again using Brecht techniques to portray them. I feel that this enabled the group as a whole to become clear with Brecht and how we can use him as a inspirational figure to make our Theatre to the best of its ability.
We then came into groups to discuss certain issues that we all thought were relevant in the media. My group discussed issues such as feminism, racism and animal rights. Being in a large group of people discussing different ideas helped me to have a wider understanding of how many issues there actually are. This definitely helped me not only to understand issues around the world, but with my group work and talking about all of our opinions and whether
to not we agree with each other. As a whole class, I think discussing all the different types of issues around the world benefited everybody because it added excitement and enthusiasm into our discussion. I find it really interesting to listen to everyone opinions and how they think things should be dealt. We all decided many different topics in which we could discuss.
Before we started Political Theatre as Term 2, I was quite worried in case my understanding was as clear as the term before, however we were given a play each on Political Theatre to read as a class. Once I had read the play, immediately it helped me to understand how Political Theatre can also be humorous and doesn't always have to be serious. It told us how the media decide on what they find interesting and what they think should be shown on the television. The play allows you to relate to it because its so recent. C and D were looking at lots of different issues in Politics, characters A and B looked at fewer issues, C and D mirrored each other. I personally think C and D are made to represent the nation and how people can copy each others opinions. The character D had very strong views and opinions throughout the play, however nobody listens which could be the representation of issues. The play builds up tension to a climax. I feel that my strengths in Political Theatre so far are my clear understandings of characterisation. Even being through two performance workshops this Term, I have already learnt a lot about Brecht's history. I am really excited about our protests which are coming up because I think that this is going to give myself and the rest of the class a proper experience on what its like to be part of Political Theatre. As a whole so far, I am really enjoying Political Theatre and how different it is to our fist term Naturalism.
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