Bertold Brecht: Rough Draft performance reflection

Over the past few weeks we have been working towards creating a short play from the Caucasian Chalk circle using Epic theatre elements. In our group, I had picked play writing, Shubham had picked montage and Noshin had picked gestus and directing. Our theme was religion and all three of us had to act in the play.

During the first week I had to write the script for the play and to do this i picked a scene from the play which portrayed our topic, religion. I used the same structure the scene had used to create the script. I kept in mind that in epic theatre requires the play to cut out the emotion and to make it more straight forward, mostly like a show such as CSI where they just give us facts and we chose what emotion we should feel. The montage was created by Shubham and he chose to use animals locked up in cages to portray Mina being raped and neglected. Noshin helped us set the stage also helping us do the gestus while acting. Shubham was also the chorus, which is another epic theatre element. It was not necessary for us to use a chorus but it made the scene much better and more Brechtian. 

Today we had our rough draft performances and the overall feedback of the performance given by our peers and Ms Kimi was satisfactory. The group worked accordingly and we knew what was planned. I finished writing my script last Thursday and the group had read it . We made changes accordingly and practiced the scenes on Sunday. Shubham had made the montage and Noshin helped direct the staging as well as gestus.

Together as a group we worked well and helped each other with our elements.

We had our montage ready, our lines were 80% memorized and there were no blocking in the scenes. The staging was good since the audience members could see all our faces. We were loud and our chorus narrated the beginning and the end of the story.  

There were things which did not work well in our performance. Firstly, the chorus, which was Shubham, did improvise some of the segments and since he is quite sentimental, he made the scene emotional. Epic Theater does not want the performance to be emotional therefore we need to change that. Secondly, we need to add a few more bits to our performance to make it even better such as showing disgust when Mina (Noshin) tells her parents that she was raped. During that time we sat on the chair and was surprised but that scene could definitely be improved by showing gestus and adding a few extra lines.  The montage was good but it was a little short on time, therefore adding more pictures of the same context could make it better. Noshin had a constant character during the performance and it could be seen by her gestus as she kept her head down during the performance and expressed her lines in the script well. 

I realized where our group was facing the problems. We knew what epic theatre elements are and what it requires but it was quite challenging for us to apply these elements since we are used to implementing illusion and emotion during a performance. I had minimal amount of lines during the performance since I was the mother but as I mentioned above, our performance could definitely be improved by cutting the emotion in the scenes and adding a few extra lines in specific areas to grasp the audience attention. 


The first group which had performed today had Vanessa, Umar and Ryan in their group. Their theme was ownership and their performance was good. Some things they could improve on is definitely their staging. The Epic theatre elements were not visible in their scene since there was lack of gestus and there was no chorus or montage. If they improve upon these, their performance would be great since they have a good script. 

The second group we saw included Hamza, Ulugbek, Ayat and Armin. I felt that their group was not well prepared and none of them had their lines memorized. Ulugbek was supposed to do the montage but he failed to do so. Musanna was the singer and she read al her lines from the script which looked under done for their scene. The epic theatre elements were not properly portrayed in their scene and if they improve upon this, then their final performance will be great.

In the final performance of my group, there are few things which we need to alter in order to make this performance much better. Firstly, make it less emotional and more factual. Secondly, add more gestus during the crucial scenes to add emphasis. Other than that, the performance was good and it can definitely be better.