18.3.

   Today we started to explore the Verfremdungseffekt, also known as V-effekt, alienation effect or distancing effect. Brecht first used this term in an essay called "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" published in 1936 where he described the effect as "playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious". This basically means that the acting was done so that the audience would judge and think about their actions consciously, constantly creating opinions and thinking. It wasn't a form of conventional entertainment, but critical entertainment.
   We explored this with an exercise that would tell the happenings of a crime scene from three different point of views; the robbers, the police and the eye witnesses.

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First we told the story from the robbers point of view. My group obviously went of what was the idea of the exercises, partly because we didn't fully understand it, but also because it was more natural for us to make fun of the characters. You can see how all of us are using gimmicks to make people laugh, which distracts from the story but also isn't following Brecht directions of just focusing on the description of the happenings and finding that one simple gesture for our character to show whether they are truthful or not. For me, I tried to think about the Gest a little bit, having my arm crossed to show defensiveness.

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   When we did the police my group tried to focus a lot more into just telling the story, rather than making fun of our characters, and so we followed the instructions better. The character traits in this version are very minimal, changing voice and posture just enough to convey that we are part of the law enforcement. Our group showed them as very professional, well postured and they knew what they were doing.

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Then we had to 'act out' the scene as the robbers. Every step of this exercise is to get more and more distant from the actual characters and situation and to focus on the telling of the story and the important gestures of the character. My group tried to become more distant in this version of the robbers, but also show their opinion of the police men, which we made to be over the top, to show that the robbers think that the police men are lazy and power hungry beings.

   For the fourth version we didn't get the chance to film it, but it was us telling the scene as an eyewitness a.k.a. ourselves and acting out the different parts as needed. We also had to agree on what actually happened in the scene and who was to blame. My group decided that the robbers were lying and were in fact robbing the the store, but also agreed that the police had lied about the shots fired. After seeing couple of groups perform, we realized this was wrong when following Brecht, since we should have simply picked a side and described the scene either making the robbers look bad or the police, making a point about police brutality.

    This class really showed me how we need to start thinking more politically, all of the time. Every action and how we present the characters has to have a point, it has to give something to think about for the audience, meaning we need to be constantly thinking as well. I really want to start reading more current news and read about the political situation in Britain and the rest of the world. For now, I have been mainly focusing on Finland's politics, since it is my home country and it something I've grown up with. Still, I think it is important to know what is going on in the world, so that we can make a point to our audiences with our play and to do that I need to read more. I also feel, thaat for this project and especially during these exercises I need to think more black and white, rather thaan trying to find a middle ground, to try and understand Brecht's techniques.