Brecht wanted to inspire the audience to act and change the world. He wanted a theatre which reminded its audience at all times that they were watching a play with actors – and not get emotionally attatched to any other the characters. He wanted to discourage the audience from identification of the characters. He hoped to achieve this with anumber of distancing techniques, or ‘alienation’ techniques. Many of these are present the ‘Jewish Woman’ scene through Sarah Stanleys acting.
She started the scene completely out of character interacting with the audience – reminding them she was an actor and not real. This didn’t surprise me as it was typical Brecht. When she snapped to character – I was very surprised. Her body language completely changed and transformed her into the ‘Jewish Woman’. She walked extremely poised and upright. She had a slow controlled pace – this was very effective as she controlled the stage and engaged the audience’s attention. She led with her chest and held her head high. She had an extremely proud posture. She stuck her nose in the air and came across almost snobby. I found this surprising as the woman knew why she was packing yet Sarah Stanley decided to perform the woman as fearless and too proud to show emotion. She used gestus amazingly and I immediately got an impression of the class she was. She used her voice to enhance the type of character also. She used stereotypical ‘posh’ accent. It was very effective as it was very expressive and enhanced her mood and when the scene reached a climax the woman true emotions were portrayed partly through the desperate tone she had in her voice.
The way Sarah Stanley built up her character during scene to reach a desperate climax surprised me also. I thought it was a very good angle however – as the audience were gripped to her every word as her performance contained so much colour and texture and caught the emotions of the character perfectly.
It also surprised me when she suddenly broke out into the song ‘What Good is Love anyway’. To me it was slightly out of context and a surprise – I know that Brecht intended me too feel this way, as it reminded me that the Jewish Woman was in fact just an actor. Nevertheless, I was still surprised.
It surprised me that I believed in her character regardless of the fact she was wearing a costume which was completely unreflective of her character. Throughout the play the actors wore a constant costume of a prisoner uniform – with a symbol on it to determine what kind of prisoner they were (eg – the Jews would have a star of David). During different scenes the actors would put on one thing to show there character change – like the jewish woman had a pair of high heels and a set of beads. I think having the Jewish Woman packing her bags in such a proud manner, showing no signs if fear or misery to start with, in the prisoner outfit was very effective as it almost showed what the future held for this woman. I found this a very harrowing image.
I thought that Sarah Stanley performed the character of the Jewish Woman extremely convincingly – yet very surprisingly and different to how I imagined she would.
