Verfremdungseffekt

VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT

This is a German term meaning: effect of making strange, and in this task we took a scene and for us we made it strange.

In pairs we had to create a scene of a serious nature, we choose a friend telling another friend that they have cancer; we had to act this out in a naturalist, Stanislavsky style. We then showed these to the class, it was quite emotional to watch, as we could see the actors fully engaged and connected with the scene as they were all really emotionally involved, some had tears in their eyes and their was real feelings being shown in their voice.

Then in our pairs we revisited the climax of our scene and rehearsed that piece over and over until we knew all the stage directions really well. Then we had to do that small part of the scene again, however this time we had to say the stage directions as well as the lines, for example if we naturally took a step forward we, as actors, had to narrate this.

From this exercise we learnt a lot of the technique of Verfremdungseffekt, as we took a scene that could be seen as normal and quite a normal way of acting, to making it something that you would very rarely see on stage and that actually feels really uncomfortable to act and to watch as it doesn’t seem right. I started to learn more about Brecht from this technique because it shows how much he disagrees with the naturalism style of acting and that he prefers it being more unnatural and even strange to watch or act and this exercise demonstrated that aspect of Brecht’s acting style.

I think that Brecht would use this technique because it alienates the audience and the actors from the characters themselves because when the emotional parts of plays or scenes and from stopping the actors from becoming too involved with the hard issue that they are dealing with because this could be seen as very hard or harmful for the actor to have to contact the emotion that those issue create. So by putting in the actors having to say the stage directions takes them out of the scene and out of the emotion. He wants to distance the audience because although he want them to go away with a message and something to think about, equally he doesn’t want the audience to think that the characters are real people and wants them more to think that the action on stage isn’t real but is in fact a reflection or representation of the issues in society but aren’t happening to those people on stage, they are just tools to comment on society.

I found this exercise quite hard to do. As an actor I have always tried to connect to the character, so by being made to have the connection I have between my character, especially in a very hard, emotional scene be broken by the narrating of the stage directions, I found it hard to accept that I wouldn’t be able to have that deep connection and understanding between me and the character, as I am not trying to be the character any more. Also I found it uncomfortable to do, as it didn’t feel natural to be commenting on my movements, so it felt forced and not natural.