Theatre Log Book Term 2- November 12th 2013

Today we all shared a political story with the class which we had researched and pick a song which related to race and immigration.

I found an article written by Susan Brown who believes in the far right wing ideology, and the song I chose was '99 problems' by Jay-Z which has some lyrics in it as to why he used to get targeted by cops because of his heritage.

The term far right or extreme right is the ideology that agrees with social inequality and social hierarchy which is the opposite of liberalism and socialism. Far right consists of the 'neo-nazis' and fascists.

Here is a conclusion from the right wing article that I had found:

"We see this today with politicians in Washington who believe that a big government is the cure all for everything that aids its nation. They believe government, by way of forced charity, should do for us what we should be doing for ourselves and each other... Of course, none of this matters to liberals who are good at legislating go-good policies that fail terribly short on going good."

 After, we then got in groups and were given different topics about race and immigration, each from what we had researched which was previously homework.

When my group were given our topic, we had to devise a small performance which related to different races and racism. We had to include the Brechtian technique to our performance which should shock the audience but reminding them at the same time that it's just a performance and that there is no fourth wall.
As a group we came up with the idea to do 'Speed dating with Hitler', and we included different types of people whom Adolf Hitler wanted to get rid of which included, Jewish, gay, disabled, and cultured people. Each of our characters go speed dating with Hitler, however my character who is Anne Frank ends up becoming friends with him, which is totally opposite to the reality of the situation, considering it would have never even happened. The Brechtian technique will make the audience think and wonder. Also, the idea of splitting the audience up based on their race was considered, which would probably make the audience think or wonder why it's being done, until they later find out about what type of techniques we are using.

From this, I can see the idea where Brecht was going with by trying to get the audience to remember that it isn't reality, and I can now understand different ways in which he may have done that during performances. I've learnt this from watching the other groups ideas of Brechtian Theatre, and it has expanded me knowledge.