Characters Exercise

In this exercise we were all given stereotypical characters. I was Lucy Luscious the barmaid. We had to develop the characters to make them even more stereotypical. We had to think about our physicality and our voice and had to develop this further. We had to have a tag-line to emphasise our character, "Can I get you anything? Beer, Vodka, plate of peanuts?" we then had to really exaggerate our characters physicality and voice.

From this exercise I have learnt even more about Brecht stereotyping characters to create a sense to the audience that they are a certain class, which portrays to the audience why they are doing the actions on stage.

This allows the audience to question their presence on stage. It also made me realise that Brecht's characters are not three-dimensional, they are being stereotypically represented on stage to portray themselves to the audience.

It engages the audience because what they are doing on stage is interesting, yet it also manages to distance the audience because there aren't real people being portrayed onstage, they are stereotypes, so the audience are not trying to work out who they are and why they are there.

It doesn't engage the audience in the character's story either. So they focus on why they are there, not who or what the story is about. This is another clear example of Brecht's alienation technique. The tag-line we say alienates the audience from who the character is, so the audience don't have to work to follow the story.