Brief 7 – Due by 8 Feb at 10:00am UK time
Aristotle?! What does he know?What’s with all that relatability and catharsis malarkey?
And this illusion that theatre is meant to represent some present state? All it does is make the audience emote and forget – like boring dinner.Naa… Not on my Bertoltian watch!
Time to make a difference in the world and make our audience think. After all, if they feel – they stop thinking, and then they forget – so what’s the point of that?
I think it’s time for some Brechtian epic theatre!
No more ‘here’ and ‘now’, only ‘then’ and ‘there’ (thankfully, we’re fully versed in past tense writing). Tell a story and comment on it as you report it.
Don’t attempt to create identification with your characters, make them do strange things that break the illusion all the time (that’s what ‘verfremdungseffekt’ means – not alienation as is often mistranslated).
As for the structure of the play, go wild – be loose, forget everything you think you know about how to structure a story with climaxes (climaxi?) catharsiseseses (catharsi?) suspenseseses (suspensi?) it can even be episodic (shout out to all my DDD playas).
Oh… and don’t use the word ‘alienation’… it hurts my ears… eyes… heart! No! Brain! It hurts my brain! Screw my heart! I mean… don’t screw my heart… That’s… weird… ooh, but then it verfremdungseffekts! So maybe you should? Oh dear…