Gestus

Throughout this term, we having been focusing very much on Gestus, which is a brecht technique in which, people use 'gestures' to show the action in a stronger light. Brecht felt that traditional theatre focused too much on facial expression and so gestures dried up. He wanted people to investigate their body own body language as well as the body language of a social class, their mannerisms and customs included. As Brecht was uninterested in traditional, psychological drama that presents the mental attitudes and actors of its protagonists as God-given or unknown forces, he wanted to display a character’s actions as choices a person makes because of the social factors affecting them. For example, a ‘peasant’ would lick their plate not because they were a peasant but because that is how they had been brought up to behave in a less wealthy climate.
This is Brecht's term for that which expresses basic human attitudes - not merely “gesture” but all signs of social relations: department, intonation, facial expression. The Stanislavskian actor is to work at identifying with the character he or she portrays. The Brechtian actor is to work at expressing social attitudes in clear and stylized ways. So, when Shen-Te becomes Shui-Ta, she moves in a different manner. Brecht wished to embody the “Gestus” in the dialogue - as if to compel the right stance, movement and intonation. By subtle use of rhythm pause, parallelism and counterpointing, Brecht creates a “gestic” language.

The songs are yet more clearly “gestic”. As street singers make clear their attitudes with overt, grand but simple gestures, so, in delivering songs, the Brechtian actor aims to produce clarity in expressing a basic attitude, such as despair, defiance or submission.

Instead of the seamless continuity of the naturalistic theatre, the illusion of natural disorder, Brecht wishes to break up the story into distinct episodes, each of which presents, in a clear and ordered manner, a central basic action. All that appears in the scene is designed to show the significance of the basic “Gestus”. We see how this works in Mother Courage. Each scene is prefaced by a caption telling the audience what is to be the important event, in such a way as to suggest the proper attitude for the audience to adopt to it - for instance (Scene 3): “She manages to save her daughter, likewise her covered cart, but her honest son is killed.”

When we performed this scene from Mother Courage, we used many Brecht techniques, such as holding up a sign at the beggining, stating where we were and when it was. We also used things such as using one actor to play multiple characters. We really enjoyed performing this scene as we had been taken out of the natrulistic acting world, and we could be as over the top as we wanted (obvioulsy with boundaries).