Indicate how the influences and ideas of other playwrights and/or directors, designers and performers have been used

Bertolt Brecht was an influential   , , and  of the . He created an influential theory of theatre, the , in which a play should not cause the audience to emotionally identify with the action, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the actions on the stage. Instead, he wanted his audiences to use this critical perspective to identify social ills at work in the world and be moved from the theatre and effect change. For this purpose, Brecht used techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself, which he called the  (translated as distancing effect or alienation effect). Such techniques included the direct address by actors to the audience, the text read in third person or past tense, speaking the stage direction out loud, exaggerated, unnatural stage lighting, the use of song and explanatory placards. This inspired us in our piece as we wanted the audience to walk away from seeing our piece of drama thinking and questioning themselves instead of them being completely immersed within the action on stage. We used a Brechtian style towards the end of our piece as we addressed the audience so that they were not to get absorbed or feel as though they were included in the action. Instead they felt they had been distanced and alienated so they could think critically about the action on stage and question themselves.  

Previously, we visited “The Institute of Contemporary Arts” (ICA) and watched a selection of short films to help inspire us into gaining new and fresh ideas for our piece. A particular film called “Hylje/Seal” included heavy breathing in complete darkness. This technique sounds extremely simple however it managed to make the audience feel tense and uncomfortable and yet it was so straightforward. Therefore in our sound collage, we felt it would be effective to have heavy breathing noises in complete darkness, however we also included other sounds which complemented our scene as our aim was not to just make the audience feel uneasy. This inspired us as we knew how the audience would react as we were once before the audience who had reacted to a similar technique.

At The National Theatre, we saw “The Smallest Person” by the Trestle Theatre Company, which was directed by Emily Gray. It used masks and puppets throughout the production. The Trestle Theatre Company used a unique style of modern theatre combining masks, music, puppets and text to form a magical production full of humour and emotion. This inspired us to use masks as we felt this could be relevant to our piece as masks could be considered a form of escapism. By creating a short sequence of moves, we decided to use our body movement to connect with the audience rather than the use of facial expression and voice as we had masks on. The Smallest Person included parts which were in mime and in our own piece we also decided it would look best if the scene was done in mime as it would force the audience to focus on our body movement, which would differ from the other scenes as usually the audience would focus on our facial expression or voices. The scene also uses a lot of physical drama, which allowed our piece to include a wide variety of styles, from naturalistic scenes to abstract scenes.    

We also used the text, “Agnes of God” by John Pielmeier to create a scene which would allow us to include religion. This was influential as at the beginning of our rehearsal process we all felt religion was a form of escapism and so we felt it was important to include it in our final piece. Having read the play, we managed to select certain lines to create a new scene which suited our piece; however we had to also include our own lines as we needed to make sure the scene was relevant to our theme. We performed the scene naturalistically in comparison to our other scenes, even though the storyline is quite unrealistic. The play is about a psychiatrist who tries to determine how a twenty-one-year-old nun came to murder her newborn child. The play raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief. However, for our piece we showed the doctor and Agnes speaking and showing how Agnes did not understand where babies came from. This is quite funny and allows our piece to include an element of comedy without it looking as though it has been overdone.