Epic Theatre

Epic Theatre 

Epic theatre took its stand in the mid-twentieth century, it came about from the movement of many theatre practitioners for example, Erwin Piscator and Vladamir Mayakovsky but most pertinently Bertolt Brecht. 

Although we refer to certain styles of acting as "Brechtian" they were in fact around for hundreds of years before he began unifying them, Brecht just made them staple attributes to his style of theatre, he was around the only one of his time using this unique and blunt technique. His use made the term more popular and familiar. 

Breaking Down "Epic Theatre" 

It's name derived from Brecht's technique of Gestus, it describes a form of written drama enticed with a "methodological approach". 

 "Its qualities of clear description and reporting and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary earned it the name 'epic'."

Gestus is simply an acting technique of which where it pulls together the physical embodiment of a character and  the personality or "gist" of it as well. For example, a gestus is not just a stereotype or a caricature of someone, gestus is only found through deep exploration of that character and his/her's physical behavior and personality. 

Brecht is famous for his creation of Gestus, the combination of body language, facial expressions and gesture are all used to communicate with the audience, it provoke ideas and thoughts in their head which would later create a conflicting debate. 

Gestus exposes a specific realm of the character rather then deploring the characters feeble conscience as a whole. 

In our first lesson, we created an example of gestus, one person had to walk through the room as a soldier, we all noticed his physical characteristics, taught shoulders, broad chest firm walk, yet once others were moved into the scene the image of a soldier became different, the other people in the scene were dead corpses laying on the floor, the soldier walked through them seamlessly kicking their bodies without second thought. The meaning of the soldier becomes more powerful, we see him as relentless and as though he is immune to the world of death and horrors of war.