Exaggeration

EXAGGERATION

In Brecht work he plays a lot on stereotypes and even exaggerating these stereotypes, we explore this by two actors demonstrating a scene of a doctor and a patient. Both were given a small character description; the doctor was a private doctor and it was the end of the day and he wanted to get through his last visit so that he could go play golf, this is a stereotypical view of middle class, private doctors but then the actor has to exaggerate this, and use their voice and physicality to support this. The actor made the doctor overly well spoken in his voice, with a clipped tone, this gave the impression across to the audience that he cared very little for his patient and that he cared more for his golf than the needs for others. Also his physicality was very solid and up right, this showed his high class status and his power, however it was also very close off and didn’t appear to be very welcoming to the patient, this implied that he didn’t want to know the patient problems and in a way just wanted his money not to help him.

The actor playing the patient was given the description of a patient that doesn’t have any illness but just want to off load to the doctor about his life because he doesn’t want to talk to his wife or any one and generally just wants to have a bit of a moan. The actor playing him also made him very posh and middle class in his voice and his physicality although trying to be upright like the doctor to show his status, he was slightly more worn down than him so he was more slumped and shoulders rounded over. This showed the audience that he had enough money to misuse the doctors time as his voice tells us about his background and hugely implies his wealth as he is at a private doctors. It also tells us that he thinks it is easier to cover his problems with his money rather than try to sort them out, this stereotypically implied that middle class people can’t deal with their problems and talk to each other openly.

Then our teacher clapped her hands and the two actors had to swap characters, they both played the character similar to the other and the story progress from that point. It was very humorous to watch as the audience because the actors had to completely change their objective in the scene and had to change their emotions and wants. It was also funny because they had to work out how to get the scene to flow and continue to go, even if they were in a position that they didn’t think that their character show or would be in. Brecht believed a lot in humour in theatre and this was one exercise that brought that to life and showed us how more serious issues, such as how much money runs peoples life, can be funny and still make an impact.

This exercise was also very useful to our project and to learning about Brecht because a lot of the time in his work he made a lot of his actors play more than one character, and this is something that we could be doing in our piece. By doing this exercise it got us as the audience used to seeing actors playing more than one character, this is helpful because it means that we wouldn’t get confused easily and it becomes something that we are accustomed and used to. Also it is very useful for the actors because we, as actors, will have to play more than one character and this allows us to get used to that and also not to become to connected or involved with one character as that goes against Brecht style of acting and by switching character we move out of that character so that we don’t get to in depth with that one character but are able to play more than one character without getting emotionally attached to them.