WORKING NOTEBOOK:

INFLUENCING PRACTIONER: BERTOLT BRECHT

 Section One: Rationale and Research

Rationale for Starting Point

As a group, we felt inspired to share a story which is an important and prevalent topic. After
researching, the stimulus we decided to choose was the article following the recent death of
Sarah Everard. We Studied further into her death and new things were bought to light, for
example people’s attitude towards women in society, and our discussion was then bought
to Sarah Everards’s case, which was only just coming to a close, Sarah Everard's killer was
sentenced to life in prison when justice was finally served for her and her family. The story
begins on 3rd March, 2021, when she left her friends one night but tragically never returned
home after being kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death by Metropolitan Police Officer
Wayne Couzens. Hearing about her murder, my group and I were disgusted and appalled,
which prompted us to do more investigation into the topic, where we discovered many
more stories about people who had suffered in very similar situations. This included police
corruption and police in society not caring enough fopr women’s safety. We also researched
further into the current news based around the spiking of drinks in bars and clubs, and a
new statistic says up to 25 victims will have their drink spiked every week, from the
‘Mirror’ quotation.This juxtaposes the idea of women’s safety being important and also
oxymoronic because fundamentally, women’s safety is a huge worry in our society today
and men may never be able to entirely change it. The backlash comes after a year in which
the UK police has come under increased scrutiny for its record on women’s safety, and
contributing to the issue rather than preventing it.
It also leads on to another theme related to women’s safety, and girls being a target of
injection spiking. We also previously worked on the key theme of Perception Vs Reality and
we used the idea of repeating scenes, which at first showed the perception of men’s
attitudes, and the cases of sexual abuse and rape against women. Contrasting to reality, we
repeated the same scenes but showed what did happen, but not from the man’s
perspective. We wanted to strongly indicate the importance of how the same story can be
perceived in two very different ways. Evidence in which showed us this in our piece, was in
the Made In Dagenham inspired scene in which us working class girls were being underpaid
and at the end of the scene decided to go on strike to illustrate the fact of higher working
class men trying to have authority over us.
We then decided to create our original piece of drama in the style of Bertolt Brecht. This is
clear through the quotation of ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with
which to shape it’ because of his belief that theatre should not only reflect the world but,
more importantly, change it. In contradiction to the popular genre of theatre, Naturalism,
Brecht used his theories of Epic Theatre to achieve change and create the type of theatre he
felt could make a difference. This is also shown in the information of: ‘His plays include
humour, in a rather bleak and cynical way, and present social and political questions,
attacking conventional values in society. Brecht’s plays are innovative, rejecting the
convention of the fourth wall’. We were clearly driven as young girls to pursue this as our
chosen stimulus, and took part in a variety of activities such as Hot Seating in which we had
the chance to play different roles and question each other in the activity. We also discussed
as a group what situations we have in counted in our everyday live, and all agreed that as
girls we don’t feel safe walking home. Keeping this in mind, we decided our scenes would
also be episodic, and even cyclical to show how this is an ongoing problem for us girls.

The Male Gaze was one of our influences from our research, I studied and developed my
ideas and researched further into the Male Gaze and what it meant in society. The Male
Gaze describes a way of portraying and looking at women that empowers men whilst
sexualising and diminishing women. The Feminist theory, the Male Gaze is the act of
depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine,
heterosexual perspective that presents them as sexual objects for the pleasure of the
viewer. I went into even more depth in my research and researched further into Lesley Gore
the famous and well-known singer from the late 50s. Lesley Gore made wrote and sung a
song called ‘You Don’t Own Me’, this was a huge hit when it was first released and she was
taken by surprise by many. This influenced our ideas in our piece as it showed that women
were not always inferior to men, but in fact confident. This was shown in the Made in
Dagenham Scene where we decided to strike as underpaid workers.
’Essentially, the male gaze discourages female empowerment and self-advocacy while
encouraging self-objectification and deference to men and the patriarchy at large’’
This quote demonstrates that men most of the time have a negative impact on women, and
that women obey to a patriarchal conception of how a woman should look and act in a
certain way. It also influences how women view themselves, as it emphasises physical
appearance, which can negatively impact their mental health, lowering their self-esteem.

‘’The Male Gaze sees the female body as something for the heterosexual male (or
patriarchal society as a whole) to watch, conquer, and possess and use to further their
goals’’.
This quote further suggest that women are rarely portrayed from the position of power, and
are normally compared to objects instead of playing an actual role, and being treated like a
human.
Another key them we explored as a group was the topic of Women in Literature. Women
are quite often portrayed as weak and emotional in society while men are expected to be
strong, aggressive and dominant. There is an idea that women in literature always seem to
get the blame and shown and how women define themselves and how society evaluates
them based on their gender. In our devising group, questions were discussed, for example,
why are women are the ones who decide to wear short skirts, even though they know they
won’t feel completely comfortable wearing that, this led on to women feeling important
and having a sense of liberation and freedom. Another idea that was discussed was how
women are inferior to men, for example in our set text of Antigone, her and Ismene’s ideas
are always quite manic, and Ismene struggles to stand her ground, however with Antigone
she is not afraid to stand up for what she thinks is right. As a result of this, women suffer
terrible fate and they are shown as uncivilised and weak. In our devising piece, we used
these ideas to influence one of our scenes which was our Jail Scene, showing the distress
and sadness of the Suffragettes. This was shown in the line of ‘’ God’s a man, he ain’t gonna
give you the vote anyway.’’ This was also spoken in a cockney accent to symbolise the
underclass stereotype of the women at that time. As a group, the idea of lunatic and crazy
links to the idea of hormones and the menstrual cycle. This influenced our ideas of linking
the idea of women and the menstrual cycle to symbolise that the suffragettes were looked
down upon and men subjected them to violence and insults, much of which was sexual
nature

During the devising process, we went to see a play at The Dorfman Theatre, part of The
National Theatre, called ‘Rockets and Blue Lights’. It tells an important message through
transatlantic racism and abolishment of slavery, moving between London past and present,
the actors embark on a powerful, moving personal voyage throughout time. In a highly
successful moment in the play, the main protagonist is asked by a slave from the past ‘are
you free now?’. The use of silence made the audience question whether black people are
free, and even though slavery is abolished, systematic racism is still engraved in society
today. Another significant moment in the play was the ending monologue, it was a moving
and powerful moment, and shows that is he is not just a character, he in fact is a true
representation of a black man in society. This was a key quote from the play:
‘I’ve died 10 million times, I’ve died and died, and I will live and live’.
The repetition of both words has a strong meaning of hope and bravery. He is portraying
that you will never get rid of my race, nor will you outlive it. This influenced our ideas as a
group as we wanted to symbolise the importance of racism, and how it is still very much an
ongoing and prevalent key issue in our society then and now. The theme of hope and
bravery inspired us to show how as girls could incorporate the idea of bravery and hope in
our devising piece.
One of our scenes that was our Ford Factory Scene, in which showed women of the lower
class being underpaid. this was, inspiration taken from Made In Dagenham, As a group, we
discovered that the role of women in Made in Dagenham were impoverished. The women in
Made In Dagenham had the good work ethic and had loyal morals. By having these strong
morals, as a group we found it motivating to incorporate this into our piece, by setting in a
factory and showing the work of the underclass women, whilst being underpaid. We also
showed women’s demand for a higher pay and in later on in the scene decided to take
action and strike. This displays women of that era were eager and were skilled In their
profession, however they weren’t very well educated as they were not given that
opportunity to further showcase this in society.

In my performance, the aim of our piece was to illustrate that women are still very much
nowhere the same as men, and are compared even in our society today. I want to create an
assured and convincing character of a strong independent female, who shows the
audience’s appreciation through the roles that I play. I will use the physical skill of
synchronised movement inspired by Bertolt Brecht and the use of choral speaking to create
high energy, and chaotic and emphatic hand gestures to illustrate the idea of women being
crazy. We also believed that emotional involvement would enhance our character
development more. Additionally, if the audience were invested, our clear representation of
our message we were trying to demonstrate would be clearer for us as characters and the
audience watching. My individual aim in my piece as a whole is to portray women’s fight for
equality and justice, in which I will show this by the vocal skill of pause and the physical skill
of sustained eye contact throughout.