Thursday 8 November 2012

Gestus


GESTUS

Gestus is a theatre technique create by Brecht, it combined using gestures and putting attitudes on these gestures. By using gestures it immediately tell part of the story or character to the audience in a quick and simple way; however these gestures could only tell the story so far and could become very generic. Then by adding an attitude onto this gesture it gives more depth to it and consequently gives more depth to the characters and the story line as it tells the audience how they feel about the gesture or emotion behind the gesture.

We did many exercises to explore Brecht’s technique of Gestus. In the first exercise we had to get in pairs and then stand at opposite ends of the room, one then had to tell a nursery rhyme to the person across the room. This presented problems to the person receiving the nursery rhyme as there was lots of other noise being created in the room, so a lot of the words were being missed and lost, making the story that was being told get lost and this could lead to the wrong or no message getting across. We then repeated this exercise but added gestures to the telling of the nursery rhyme, we used simple, clear signs to get the message across. For example I was telling my partner “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and I added gestures such as a star shape or looking into the sky, these are noticeable, generic gestures and signs that got the story that I was trying to tell across a lot more easier as if my partner missed some of the words or part of the story, they could fill in that part of the story with the gestures to get the message and the full of the story. However then we took out all of the words and only used the gestures to tell the nursery rhyme. This became difficult as well as the just words, as it only demonstrated parts of the story and other parts that were harder to put into simple movements and this could also lead to sections of the story going astray. From this small exercise I learnt that sometimes it is easier to communicate with the audience by combining dialogue with gestures can get messages through to the audience and the gestures can back up the story as well. This is something that Brecht does a lot in his work and he thinks that adding dialogue and gestures together can support and strengthen the piece of theatre.

We then did a simple exercise where we had to get into pairs and we were given classic, well known pairings, such as Romeo and Juliet, cat and mouse, and then we had to put them into a still image. This was exploring the usage of gestures but more so the stereotypical gestures that we all associate with certain groups in society, issues or people. For example we were given the pairing of rich and poor, when looking around the room, nearly every pair had created the same image, with the poor person on the floor, and sometimes begging up to the rich person, with the rich person standing up grandly with a very pompous stature. We all seemed to go to the extremes of each social group and more than that we all went to the stereotypes, this was because that the stereotypes are the most recognisable signs of the social groups. This is part of Brecht’s work and gestus as he uses stereotypes in his work to show groups and different people. It also makes a social commentary on how groups and classes are viewed by the rest of society, this would then impact on the audience as to whether these stereotypes are accurate or not.

The idea behind the Gestus, gestures combined with attitude, was demonstrated clearly in the next attitude that we did. One person walked on stage as a solider, the rest of us had to explain how we knew he was a solider; the reason was because of the gestures that took over his body, for example he had a strong posture, with arms behind his back, and his head held high, he then did the classic gesture that sums up soldiers and what we know of them; he stood to attention and walked off. This gesture is world know as a statue that people in the army have to take, so this clearly informed all of us that he was a soldier. He then repeated the exercise, this time with dead bodies laid around the stage. This time it could have just been the same with the actor continuing to just play the gestures of that type of person: the soldier, however this time wasn’t the same because he implied gestus and with the gesture he added attitude. He did this by reacting to the dead bodies and having some engagement with them, this would then tell us a lot more about the character himself and the story. This actor chose to look down disgustedly at the dead bodies and even kicked some of them. By having this negative attitude, gestus was being put in place because without any words or description we, the audience, could tell that the soldier was on the opposite side to the dead bodies and that he could even have had a part in their death. It came across that he wanted them to be dead and the kicking was a way of making sure they had died. Just by adding these to small details of acting together, the characters, story line and even the message was projected across to the audience in a really simple way.

Lastly in groups we had to make two images, one: “War the maker of hero’s” and two: “War the taker of lives”. For war the maker of hero’s, my group had people putting up the flag in celebration and people with their hands over their hearts. This was gestic because it we used an iconic picture of victory, and nationalism which is so often linked in closely with hero’s as it shows dedication to your country, equally people don’t want to see their own country in a negative light, so this nationalism attitude we gave to the image, out a positive spin on war and what it can make of people. For “War the taker lives”, like most groups, we showed an execution taking place, with people lined up, waiting to be shot. This was gestic because it showed a very negative and cruel view of war because although people’s lives are lost in battle all the time, this seemed even worse because the people lined up had a very helpless, innocent attitude and the executer seemed to not care about them at all. This showed war as being unfair and murderous with a negative attitude over it.

I think that gestus is a very useful technique as the gestures can be simple, just how you stand with your body or a slight action, but it can tell the audience a lot about who the character is and what type of person they are, as demonstrated in the soldier exercise. The gestures also mean that you can communicate with the audience not only through words but through movements, your body and symbols, and this can speak to the audience in a very strong way and can connect and effect them in a another way, it could even get what you are saying across more clearly in an action or gesture. Then combining this gesture and telling the audience about the character and who the character is through the gesture, the attitude then tell the audience a message, and I think that this is really useful, as a lot of Brecht’s work and techniques are used in political theatre and political theatre often is trying to get across some sort of message and have an impact on the audience, so the attitude, as also shown in the soldier task, does this. Also I think that gestus is good for Brecht work as it tells the audience and the actors a lot about the character without the actors having to be the character and to feel the emotions of the characters as Brecht through that acting should be getting into the character and becoming them but thinks that the actor should be themselves on stage, pretending to be someone else, and I think that gestus does that because it doesn’t give us time to look deeper into the character it just does what it has to do to get the message across to the audience.

5 comments:

  1. Hi, this was really useful for my course thanks a lot for posting xx

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  2. you are the best thing that happened to me right now

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  3. Bless your soul I have a 50 minute presentation on Brecht and needed exercises <3

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  4. Thanks a lot, l now u gestus better.

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