GESTUS
Gestus is a theatre technique create by Brecht, it combined using
gestures and putting attitudes on these gestures. By using gestures it
immediately tell part of the story or character to the audience in a quick and
simple way; however these gestures could only tell the story so far and could
become very generic. Then by adding an attitude onto this gesture it gives more
depth to it and consequently gives more depth to the characters and the story
line as it tells the audience how they feel about the gesture or emotion behind
the gesture.
We did many exercises to explore Brecht’s technique of
Gestus. In the first exercise we had to get in pairs and then stand at opposite
ends of the room, one then had to tell a nursery rhyme to the person across the
room. This presented problems to the person receiving the nursery rhyme as
there was lots of other noise being created in the room, so a lot of the words
were being missed and lost, making the story that was being told get lost and
this could lead to the wrong or no message getting across. We then repeated
this exercise but added gestures to the telling of the nursery rhyme, we used
simple, clear signs to get the message across. For example I was telling my
partner “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and I added gestures such as a star shape
or looking into the sky, these are noticeable, generic gestures and signs that
got the story that I was trying to tell across a lot more easier as if my
partner missed some of the words or part of the story, they could fill in that
part of the story with the gestures to get the message and the full of the
story. However then we took out all of the words and only used the gestures to
tell the nursery rhyme. This became difficult as well as the just words, as it
only demonstrated parts of the story and other parts that were harder to put
into simple movements and this could also lead to sections of the story going
astray. From this small exercise I learnt that sometimes it is easier to
communicate with the audience by combining dialogue with gestures can get
messages through to the audience and the gestures can back up the story as
well. This is something that Brecht does a lot in his work and he thinks that
adding dialogue and gestures together can support and strengthen the piece of
theatre.
We then did a simple exercise where we had to get into pairs
and we were given classic, well known pairings, such as Romeo and Juliet, cat
and mouse, and then we had to put them into a still image. This was exploring
the usage of gestures but more so the stereotypical gestures that we all
associate with certain groups in society, issues or people. For example we were
given the pairing of rich and poor, when looking around the room, nearly every
pair had created the same image, with the poor person on the floor, and
sometimes begging up to the rich person, with the rich person standing up
grandly with a very pompous stature. We all seemed to go to the extremes of
each social group and more than that we all went to the stereotypes, this was
because that the stereotypes are the most recognisable signs of the social
groups. This is part of Brecht’s work and gestus as he uses stereotypes in his
work to show groups and different people. It also makes a social commentary on
how groups and classes are viewed by the rest of society, this would then
impact on the audience as to whether these stereotypes are accurate or not.
The idea behind the Gestus, gestures combined with attitude,
was demonstrated clearly in the next attitude that we did. One person walked on
stage as a solider, the rest of us had to explain how we knew he was a solider;
the reason was because of the gestures that took over his body, for example he had
a strong posture, with arms behind his back, and his head held high, he then
did the classic gesture that sums up soldiers and what we know of them; he
stood to attention and walked off. This gesture is world know as a statue that
people in the army have to take, so this clearly informed all of us that he was
a soldier. He then repeated the exercise, this time with dead bodies laid
around the stage. This time it could have just been the same with the actor
continuing to just play the gestures of that type of person: the soldier,
however this time wasn’t the same because he implied gestus and with the
gesture he added attitude. He did this by reacting to the dead bodies and
having some engagement with them, this would then tell us a lot more about the
character himself and the story. This actor chose to look down disgustedly at
the dead bodies and even kicked some of them. By having this negative attitude,
gestus was being put in place because without any words or description we, the
audience, could tell that the soldier was on the opposite side to the dead
bodies and that he could even have had a part in their death. It came across
that he wanted them to be dead and the kicking was a way of making sure they
had died. Just by adding these to small details of acting together, the
characters, story line and even the message was projected across to the
audience in a really simple way.
Lastly in groups we had to make two images, one: “War the
maker of hero’s” and two: “War the taker of lives”. For war the maker of
hero’s, my group had people putting up the flag in celebration and people with
their hands over their hearts. This was gestic because it we used an iconic
picture of victory, and nationalism which is so often linked in closely with
hero’s as it shows dedication to your country, equally people don’t want to see
their own country in a negative light, so this nationalism attitude we gave to
the image, out a positive spin on war and what it can make of people. For “War
the taker lives”, like most groups, we showed an execution taking place, with
people lined up, waiting to be shot. This was gestic because it showed a very
negative and cruel view of war because although people’s lives are lost in
battle all the time, this seemed even worse because the people lined up had a
very helpless, innocent attitude and the executer seemed to not care about them
at all. This showed war as being unfair and murderous with a negative attitude
over it.
I think that gestus is a very useful technique as the
gestures can be simple, just how you stand with your body or a slight action,
but it can tell the audience a lot about who the character is and what type of
person they are, as demonstrated in the soldier exercise. The gestures also
mean that you can communicate with the audience not only through words but
through movements, your body and symbols, and this can speak to the audience in
a very strong way and can connect and effect them in a another way, it could
even get what you are saying across more clearly in an action or gesture. Then
combining this gesture and telling the audience about the character and who the
character is through the gesture, the attitude then tell the audience a
message, and I think that this is really useful, as a lot of Brecht’s work and
techniques are used in political theatre and political theatre often is trying
to get across some sort of message and have an impact on the audience, so the
attitude, as also shown in the soldier task, does this. Also I think that
gestus is good for Brecht work as it tells the audience and the actors a lot
about the character without the actors having to be the character and to feel
the emotions of the characters as Brecht through that acting should be getting
into the character and becoming them but thinks that the actor should be
themselves on stage, pretending to be someone else, and I think that gestus
does that because it doesn’t give us time to look deeper into the character it
just does what it has to do to get the message across to the audience.