Bertolt Brecht's The Mother Visual, Aural and Spatial.

Bertolt Brecht’s The Mother Visual, Aural and Spatial.

By Mark Costa

On our selected scene for The Mother we used many different systems of Epic Theatre such as Gestus, half-curtain and music in order to produce alienation that the audience would not feel on a play such as ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago’.

For our scene we needed to show the way in which the message of the revolution was passed on through the workers. To do this we used a rolled up cloth that represented a Gherkin rolled inside a leaflet that advertised the revolution. We then had the cloth rolled out between the workers, to represent the message of the revolution being passed across the workers instead of actually having prop leaflets. The colour of the end of the cloth itself was red which represented the revolution, as it was the colour of the communist flag.

The environment of the play was set in a factory, when the workers were taking their break. To show that the workers were taking a break off work we decided to have the workers mime what they would be doing at this time, such as one worker was smoking and I was reading a newspaper to show that in was the only one whom could read. When we were learning how we were going to stage direct the scene, we used action only rehearsals that enabled us to choreograph the scene without the lines. This did help us to decide ...

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Musical instruments were used with chorus singing which produced alienation towards the audience, which is one of the main aims of epic theatre. A guitar was used together with singing to produce a melody as well as a drum, which symbolised the movement of workers together. This type of singing would not have been done in another play that we performed, ‘Sexual Perversity In Chicago’ as Brecht’s plays consist of epic theatre that we had to use in order to produce alienation towards the audience.

At the beginning of the play we were all positioned around three blocks, which allowed us to show that we were actors towards the audience, instead of an entrance onto the stage. The audience was seated in front of the performance, known as a proscenium arch yet it could have been performed as thrust stage on all three sides. The blocks were used to symbolise the levels of the workers as a sign of importance towards the message on the leaflets that had to be sent to them by Pelagea. When Pelagea stands on the block, this shows that the message has been sent to the workers and the workers then stand down off the blocks.

Half-curtain was used when the workers are arguing with Karpov, as they look towards the audience, which once again alienates the audience. The factory arguments were shown with the majority of the workers whom want to get their money back from Mr.Suchlinov on one side of the cloth and Karpov the negotiator, on the other side pulling over the argument of what they should be receiving which also links to the song where again the workers are telling Karpov what they want out of life from work.