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Unit aims.

  • To be able to identify a range of presentational theatre forms.
  • To research the works of leading practioners from several different presentational theatre forms.
  • To use Prezi to create your own presentations for Task 4.

Stage 2 Unit B

Verfremdungseffekt

Brechts Teachniques

Music and Song

Brecht brought many new and found techniques to the stage.

Research and write a paragraph description and how you could apply them in performance of each of the following.

Forms of Presentational Performance.

Bretolt Brech and Epic Theatre

Puppetry

Butoh.

What is it?

"the impersonal, mindless—and therefore implacable—cruelty to which all men are subject. The universe with its violent natural forces was cruel in Artaud's eyes, and this cruelty, he felt, was the one single most important fact of which man must be aware. . . . Artaud's theater must be ecstatic. It must crush and hypnotize the onlooker's sense." G. Wellwarth, Drama Survey

Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty.

Theatre of Cruelty.

There are many forms of Presentational performance. This semester you are going to focus on the forms of:

  • Epic Theatre,
  • Theatre of Cruelty and
  • Theatre of the Absurd.

Answer the following questions about Brecht in your journal.

1. Give a brief outline of Brechts life.

2. What was Brechts political orientation?

3. What key techniques did Brecht introduce to the theatre of the time?

ToC is an intense theatrical experience that combined elaborate props, magic tricks, special lighting, primitive gestures and articulations, and themes of rape, torture, and murder to shock the audience into confronting the base elements of life.

In presentational theatre the settings may not be realistic, at all, and the actors may be assigned numerous roles, often shifting from role to role with only the most minimal of physical changes. The audience is challenged to keep up with what is developing on stage as the story is told.

www.lagcc.cuny.edu/laramie/presentational-theater.htm

Answer the following questions about Artaud in your journal.

1. Create a brief biography of Artaud's working life.

2. According to the reading provided by Grotowski what did Artaud leave behind him?

3. What Indonesian countires theatre style influenced Artaud?

Read and explain the following quotes about the Theatre of Cruelty in your journal.

"A dramatic presentation should be an act of initiation during which the spectator will be awed and even terrified. . . . During that experience of terror or frenzy . . . the spectator will be in a position to understand a new set of truths, superhuman in quality." W. Fowlie Sewanee Review

Presentational Theatre

The Theorists.

The Conventions

Tom Stoppard.

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern and Dead

Answer the following questions about the play by Tom Stoppard in your journals.

1. Who are Rozencrantz and Guildenstern?

2. What Shakespearean play are these characters from?

3. Where is Stoppards play set?

4. What game do Rozencrantz and Guildenstern imitate during their game of questions?

Theatre of the Absurd

Answer the following questions about Tom Stoppard in your journals.

1. Give a breif biography of his life and work.

2. What is Stoppards most famous work?

While there was no one person who stated what makes an absurdest performance there are conventions that can be identified in a range of plays that are considered to be absurd.

One is the reoccurring idea of Existentialism.

Define existentialism in you journal, then research what the other conventions are and list and define each in your journal.

  • Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud were the front runners in their respective theatre forms while Theatre of the Absurd was brought to life by a group of playwrights in response to the ideas of existentialism.

There is no one theorist who invented Absurdism. Unlike Epic and ToC Absurdism came about from a bunch of playwrights working independently to write plays that followed certain structural elements and mostly dealt with the themes of existentialism.

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