Bauhaus Schooling at Use Today

The Bauhaus is one of the two directions of art that sprouted with the forming of the Weimar Republic (the other being Berlin Dada). This style lasted for about 14 years, starting in the Weimar Republic, then moved to Dessau and eventually ending in Berlin. Its goal was to explore art and industry, and the relationship between them. It was not influenced by the past, but strove towards the now and the future. To teach this art form, a school was created. This school had a six month preliminary period where the student is "tested" in all aspects of the Bauhaus. At the end of that period, if the student shows an understanding and ability in these areas, the student will be accepted as an apprentice in a workshop setting for three years. The ultimate goal of the apprentice is to learn architecture in its whole.

I find this kind of schooling to be very similar to the Theatre program here at York University. This program has a six month "test" period as a common first year, in the sense that one is required to take courses in, more or less, every aspect of theatre. At the end of that "test" period, auditions and interviews are held to get in to the second year and become a student of a certain aspect of theatre. At the end of the three years studying that aspect, that person's main goal is to be either an actor, a playwright, a designer, a stage manager, a director, etc.. This program also is not too concerned with the past. The only time that a student's past is important is applying for the program in the first place. In the Acting classes they want you to forget everything you know about acting and start from the beginning again. The Stagecraft classes also start at step one to cover all aspects and give a broad understanding of the subjects to each student.

Brecht: "Bigger Than Jesus"?

From November 16th to December 12th, 2004, the Factory Theatre downtown Toronto, at Bathurst and Adelaide, is hosting a brand new play called Bigger Than Jesus. It is a one-man show, starring Rick Miller and is directed by Daniel Brooks. I saw the first preview of this show on November the 16th, and I reccommend it to anyone who is looking for a good time. The reason I bring this play up is because it can be seen to have a certain "Brechtian" feel to it.

* WARNING! To all those interested in seeing the show: DO NOT READ FURTHER due to numerous SPOILERS of some of the BEST PARTS OF THE SHOW. Sorry. *

The first aspect of Brecht in Bigger Than Jesus is that Mr. Miller speaks directly to the audience and tells straight up that he will be undertaking the role of Jesus for the evening. To add to this he even jumps into the audience and gets the audience to participate with him. When he decides to sing a song, he lets the audience know. He lets most of the props show. His biggest prop, the camera, is in plain view of the audience and he even lowers it and films the audience with it. He talks to the audience through it, completely killing the willing suspension of disbelief most people put on while going to see a show. He even mentions that in the play.

Messages and words are written for the audience to see and projected on the screen behind him. This is very much like how Brecht has narrative boards lowered on curtains between scenes. Mr. Miller even plays with action figures for about twenty minutes of the whole production, which is only ninety minutes long (he informs you of this as well). By doing this, he successfully keeps the audience's minds thinking and he clearly gets his messages across. This is exactly what Brecht wanted to do, but Brecht uses a grander scale. None of the Brecht plays I am familiar with are one-man shows. In full plays, it is harder to destroy the willing suspension of disbelief because there must be interaction between characters. That aside, Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks have successfully created a work of art that can be comparable to Brecht in technique and motive.

Moholy-Nagy's "Gesamtkunstwerk"

Interdisciplinarity is the basis of how FACS 1900 operates. It is about the breaking down of singular structures to realise that all forms of art can be equally used together and compliment each other. Gesamtkunstwerk is the culmination of the arts. It started as a concept taught by one of the teachers at the Bauhaus, of architecture; calling in the specialists of each art form to to add their touch where needed. It allows a work of art to be carried on by any other student of the Bauhaus. This concept, however, can be applied to so much more than just architecture. Modern movies, with all the new innovations and special effects, often use a culmination of the arts to produce the piece.

Dancers double in when an actor cannot dance; designers create computer gerenated scenes when it is inconvenient or impossible for a carpenter or a costume team to handle; singers dub their voices over others and musicians provide background music. This essentially is Gesamtkunstwerk architecture, only instead of making a building or structure, one is creating a whole world in which the movie takes place. If it weren't for this, then the land of 'Middle-Earth' from The Lord of the Rings movies would not have been possible to create. Another good example of Gesamtkunstwerk being used in modern times is this class, FACS 1900. It teaches interdisciplinarity, and one of the concepts it teaches is none other than Gesamtkunstwerk. This is not merely a coincidence.

Brecht put the Epic in Epic Theatre

The title is misleading. It is true that Piscador did invent Epic theatre, but from my standpoint (and many others) it is Brecht that made it known. I first heard about Epic Theatre in my grade 12 drama class. We were actually studying The Threepenny Opera and I have grown to love it ever since. Brecht has become my favourite playwright over the last year because he is fresh and innovative. He believed there needed to be a new way of getting drama across in this new Weimar period, and therefore started what people would later term "Brechtian Alienation". This is the process of distancing the audience from the action going on onstage and destroying the "fourth wall" that theatre of the previous ages created. By changing the action onstage from song to drama to speaking directly to the audience and saying stage directions, Brecht successfully kept his audience's mind working throughout his plays to have them focus more on the thinking rather than the feeling.

Brecht did a whole lot more than just mess around with the dialogue to alienate his audience. He would show all the technical aspects of the show: things like the lights, the microphones and the speakers. He would eliminate the suspense of the scene by stopping before physical combat or when a death would occur. The plays he writes usually do not have a realistic historically accurate setting. He doesn't need it. He would also blatantly change the endings: in The Threepenny Opera he employs the use of a Deus Ex Machina (God in the Machine) to stop Macheath from being hanged. All these aspects help Brecht get his audience out of their "willing suspension of disbelief" and think.

*Our school has put on The Threepenny Opera a couple times in the past, but more recently two years ago. Check out the poster here at the Theatre @ York webpage.

Being a Theatre student, I can easily relate this back to the world of theatre, but so can anyone else because that's what Brecht did: theatre. So instead I will talk about a modern variation of it as I did with photomontage. Although this group of artists do not, I believe, consider themselves as using "Brechtian Alienation", their movies employ many of the same styles and methods of getting the point across. The group is none other then Monty Python. Take, for example, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This movie, as well as all their other movies, break the action, the feeling, of the movie with cartoons (like the monster in the cave), or musical interludes (like the Camelot song), or something completely different (like an actual intermission or a llama). Their movies are satires and they want their audience to understand what they are satiring. Brecht's work can be viewed as satire as well: he always speaks out against the modern world, like how Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera for example is a representation of Hitler. Also, in The Holy Grail, they add in people from different time periods into the setting, like the reporters and the cops at the end. I highly recommend watching some of Monty Python's work.