Verfremdungeffekt (The V-Effect)

Brecht's name for the alienation technique. The actions and techniques used by actors so that the audience recognize that they are watching a play. It awakens the audience to question things that are happening.

Our first exercise to explore this effect was the 'Moody Objects' exercise. Using our bodies in groups we created normal objects such as: A toilet, motorbike and a chair. Once we had done this we were then told to add traits to these such as a 'sexy chair' or a 'sick toilet' by only using our bodies. We did this to challenge why things are different and to see how simple body alterations can highlight a particular moment or personality.

Brecht's Techniques and gestures:

Brecht uses different techniques to communicate ideas to his audience. One of these techniques is the use of over-exaggerated gestures. By moving around using over exaggerated gestures it is a big contrast to the norm. It isn't something that could be easily over-looked, it causes the audience to question and pay attention to what is being exaggerated and why exactly those things are being exaggerated. 

In Brechtian plays characters very often change. They are bold and comic-like and there are no major costumes and no major props just prehaps a key item which will aid the actor in their characterisation. This is because Brecht doesn't want the audience to invest emotionally in the characters but would rather the audiences saw them as representations of particular groups of people (very often people of different social classes and status).

By picking different characters we have to show physically BIG gestures and choices so that they are completely clear on who they are. As in a Brechtian play actors often change characters on stage this can be an important thing to remember.

We did an exercise where we had to put the exaggerated gestures into practise. We were given two characters to move inbetween, they both had to be differrent in the choice of gestures to show a complete change in a couple of seconds.

1) A pompous Capitalist - overy raised chest and a very smug face, walked lesiurley and puffed on a cigar

2) A pregnant woman (of working class) - had hand on belly and stomach was pushed out extremely far, an arched back and wide stance, waddling slowly. 

We then in both characters had to react to the news that the local factory is closing down. The Capitalist replied with, "Who cares?" And the Pregnant Woman replied with, "How will I provide?". Using this really highlighted for me the importance that by using single gestures or pieces of dialogue it can show a huge difference between each class which Brecht liked to focus on, if we didn't use this dialogue in we have to question if we would see such a big variation in class which Brecht very often liked to highlight.