Brechtian styles of performance - Research

Brecht's acting theories:

Epic theatre

Brecht's view is that actor should not impersonate, but narrate actions of another person, as if quoting facial gesture and movement. The actor is free to comment on what he shows, either obviously or by implied comment. He can show how he forsees where the character's actions will lead.

The actor must be relaxed and not tense, Brecht was opposed to frenetic and uncontrollable intensity on stage, the actor is always in control of his emotions.

He is aware of the presence of the audience, and all this means he is communicating his thoughts on the character with the audience, and they develop their own thoughts on the character's actions, allows for self-reflection and critical view of the stage. An actor becoming a character in the style of Stanislavsky will make the audience believe he is the character, and they will enter into the world of the play. Brecht opposes this, and forces the audience to regard the play as the actor is, from an objective point of view.

Verfremdungseffekt - the defamiliarisation effect

It is “stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them” - Brecht

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." Supports the defamiliarisation effect, Brecht believed in shaping and twisting reality for the audience with his plays.

French playwright Jean Genet in a letter to director Roger Blin advises an epic theatre approach: "Each scene, and each section within a scene, must be perfected and played as rigorously and with as much discipline as if it were a short play, complete in itself. Without any smudges. And without there being the slightest suggestion that another scene, or section within a scene, is to follow those that have gone before."

Gestus

The uncovering or revealing of the motivations and transactions that underpin a dramatic exchange between the characters; and second, the "epic" narration of that character by the actor (whether explicitly or implicitly).
A Gestus makes visible a character's social relations and the causality of his behaviour
"For it is what happens between people," Brecht insists, "that provides them with all the material that they can discuss, criticize, alter."
"The choice of viewpoint is also a major element of the actor's art, and it has to be decided outside the theatre" Brecht explains in his "A Short Organum."

http://www.actorhub.co.uk/266/bertolt-brecht
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/drama/brecht.htm#13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestus