The Practitioner

About Bertolt Brecht
The playwright, poet and theatre director was born in 1898 in the German town of Augsburg. 



 After serving as a medical orderly in the First World War and appalled by the effects of the war, he went first to Munich and then to Berlin in pursuit of a career in the theatre. That period of his life came to an end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Brecht fled and during this period the Nazis formally removed his citizenship, so he was a stateless citizen.
In either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Carl Valentin Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology".He learnt most from Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers and made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice.

Brecht on the flute; Valentin on the tuba and Liesl Karlstadt on the left.

By the time of his death in 1956, Brecht had established the Berliner Ensemble and was regarded as one of the greatest theatrical practitioners.
As an artist, Brecht was influenced by a diverse range of writers and practitioners including Chinese theatre and Karl Marx.

His most acclaimed work is 'Mother Courage and Her Children'. Although it’s set in the 1600s, the play is relevant to contemporary society and is often regarded as one of the finest anti-war plays. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich is Brecht’s most overtly anti-fascist play. This work analyses the insidious way the Nazis came to power.

Watching this clip, produced by the National Theatre, definitely enlightened me and helped me to understand the discipline and elements of what make theatre Brechtian. The video gave clear examples from on stage of how some techniques were applied. For example, alienation came through when one of the actors used his own mouth to produce the sound effects of a bomb going off whilst being on stage for the audience to see. In some pieces of naturalistic theatre the fourth wall is gradually taken down ; i feel like in Brechtian theatre the fourth wall is completely demolished. What I mean by this is that no director choose to subtly introduce the idea during their play that it is indeed a performance and is there to be examined but automatically throw it in your face without warning that it should be analysed seriously. It's like trying to familiarise yourself with something you'd have no reason to and are meant to find the weird, the norm. I agree that for some members of the audience before understanding Brechtian techniques it can be quite disconcerting yet visually thrilling to watch. I'd say most Brechtian technique isn't applied in the acting but the blocking, staging, lights and installations. 

Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children at the Olivier Theatre

This particular video focused on the emotional  aspect the audience connects with the play of 'Mother Courage and Her Child'. As we know, Brecht moves away from the idea of letting the audience feel comfortable enough to watch a piece of theatre and challenges them to reanalyse the situation with how and why something is occurring. One person mentioned how Brecht wants us to be 'affected by what's happening but in many different ways'. Honestly i'm left a bit confused because I thought the idea of emotional connection between character and audience was stripped away yet the woman states how important it is to leave enough space in a political piece where the audience can enter themselves. Although I understand the end product is for the individual to enjoy what's going on but be allowed and persuaded to view it as an examiner of why something may be. Having never watched a piece of Brechtian theatre, i'd established this quite mundane, educational history lesson in my head of what it would look like but i realised the practitioner wasn't crazy enough to filter all the elements that makes a piece of theatre so intriguing. In the end theatre should prioritise entertainment rather than it being polemical.