BRECHTIAN THEATRE 2

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BRECHTIAN THEATRE - 2

• GESTUS / GESTE /GESTISCH

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• Gestus, of which gestisch is the adjective,
  means both gist and gesture an attitude or a
  single aspect of an attitude, expressible in
  words or actions.
• Willett/BT. P.42

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• This is not an easy set of words to understand
  but the word attitude is a very useful one to get
  hold of.
• It underlines everything Brecht wanted his actors
  to do.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• Brecht was a great admirer of Charlie Chaplin,
  the great British silent film comedian.
• Brecht said that Chaplins skill was so great
  that you could understand clearly every action
  and emotion of Chaplins performance without the
  need to hear any dialogue.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• This led Brecht to the idea of quotable gestures.
  
• Making your gestures quotable forces the actor to
  consider the active, social meaning and function
  of everything s/he does.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• This is a very different focus to that of
  Stanislavski.
• For Brecht an actors job was to make himself
  observed standing between the spectator and the
  text. Willett 1993

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• If the verfremdungseffekt puts a frame around an
  action, statement or object, thinking of gestus
  allows us to give the framed object a caption or
  title.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• Look at the picture of Chaplin in his anti-Nazi
  film The Great Dictator.
• He is here parodying and ridiculing Adolf Hitler.
• What captions can you give the geste in this
  picture?

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• Brecht wants us always to be aware that theatre
  is being made.
• He wants us to see the meaning and message of a
  text clearly.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• He also wants us to be aware of just how the
  message is being put across.
• Gestus is a tool to help us isolate and identify
  the precise message and the way in which it is
  transmitted.

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GESTUS / GESTE / GESTISCH

• One gestus, (noun, singular),
• Two or more geste, (noun, plural),
• And something can be described as being gestisch
  (adjective).