Advanced Improvised Brecht
Sundays, 2:30 – 5:30pm
Bayfront Theater, San Francisco
Schedule: Sundays September 13, 20, 27, and October 4th from 2:30-5:30pm
Performances: Two performances – Sunday, October 4th, 6pm and 7:15pm
Class size: 12 students maximum
Class length: 12 hours of instruction total
Prerequisite: Studio level with significant performance experience.
**Please email Dean Regina Saisi at regina@improv.org to confirm eligibility BEFORE registering.**
Tuition: $239
Bertolt Brecht was a hugely influential and unique 20th century German poet, playwright, theatre director, and Marxist.
His ideas of the “Epic Theatre” provide a true treasure chest of theatrical improvisation. Brecht’s theory behind Epic Theatre aims at tackling social and political issues to be negotiated between stage and audience. What may sound brainy and exhausting is in fact quite entertaining, interactive, and up-to-date. “Heavy entertainment”!
This workshop introduces theory of Epic Theatre, its dramatic structures, as well as the use of “Alienation-Effects”.
Some of the themes, tools, and structures of the genre you’ll play with in this workshop include:
– using a narrator
– using a chorus
– playing with slow motion and speed up motion
– slapstick
– actor leaving the character
– monologues
– signs/placards
– light
– echoing
– exploring the basic conflict (good/evil) as a platform
– using characters as representatives of societal structures and groups
– finding the other side (opposite) in characters
– discovering different kinds of endings which includ open questions, unclear, ambiguous…, final character tableau
Our wonderful guest coach is an improviser and coach joining us from Berlin, the epicenter of Brecht’s artistic work.
Theatre should not be judged on whether it satisfies the habits of its audience but rather on whether it is able to change them!
– Bertolt Brecht
