Narration

NARRATION

Brecht in his work uses narration, and sees narration as a very important tool; we did an exercise to explore narration and the use of it. In this exercise we had to act out an exercise and use narration to tell the story, however we had four types of narration that we had to use: one single narrator, an actor playing a character and stepping out to be a narrator, an actor speaking in third person and a singing narrator.

We had to tell a fairy story and use the four narrations, we did Cinderella, and we started off with the single narrator, this was because it is the classic way with fairy tales to have some one set the scene and the background, also it drew the audience in as it painted the picture for them. We then put the actors being the characters and narrators and the actors speaking in third person in the middle of the play, as part of the action as they were so much as describing the setting like the first narrator or setting the scene but are just telling the audience what their character is thinking or about to do, so that the audience know that that piece of narration goes with that character. Then at the climax of the piece we put the singing narrator, because this creates humour and highlights that part of the speech, because it has a twist to the normal narration to it.

Brecht uses narration in his theatre as a technique to break the forth wall between the audience and the actors. Unlike Stanislavsky, Brecht doesn’t believe in naturalism acting and the actors on stage being in another world and being their characters. The use of narrators breaks down that idea of the actors being in another world and being the characters. It brings the audience in and acknowledges their existence and it becomes clear that they are involved in the theatre and that they are trying to send a message to them. Also use of the actors playing the characters and doing narration stops them from becoming that one character and from connecting with them on a level that Stanislavsky would want but makes them act the way that Brecht believes is right, by being yourself on stage being a character and not the character on stage, and if you have to keep coming out of the character it makes it harder to get into the emotions of the character and from being them.