Minor Project: Brecht- The Gesamtkunstwerk

The Gesamtkunstwerk, roughly translates to 'the complete work of art' and it was Wagners idea that all media forms could work collaboratively to make theatre into one big perfect art from that creates perfect seamless fiction which creates the illusion of a new world that isn't fabricated by stage hands and it assumes the viewer has a passive role much like a dream. This is the antithesis of what Brecht strives for and as such he was completely opposed to this style as it flew in the face of what he was trying to achieve. He wanted no illusions of creation, he wanted the audience to know it was fake and constructed and he wanted them to to be a part of it and be engaged and motivated by it. This is why Brecht was said to have praised English and Spanish renaissance as well as the Chinese theatre because of their very strange styles that were nothing like that of real life and served to take the audience into a state where the artifice was evident and didn't look to deceive. the main issue here is what is realism within acting, you see Brecht said that there is a difference between philosophical concern and the actual performance signs with which realism is achieved. Brecht describes realism in this sense as being 'shifting ground', a new set of ideals and iconographies which is constantly changing as social norms do and superseding the old systems, Brecht argued that it is not what is realistic that is changing but only what is socially construed to be realistic. This is the fundamental of why he was trying to highlight the issue with Gesamtkunstwerk is that while all of these arts can come together to form something that is perceived as real, the realism is fleeting and we ,must use art instead to shape the world into a better place not to reflect a world that currently isn't that better place.  Brecht likened the Gesamtkunstwerk to a child on a carousel horse, the enjoyment wasn't from how realistic the horse seat was nor how contained it was within a circle, this then shows that a simulation of reality isn't required, the child enjoys the ride all the same even knowing it is a fabrication that is in no way similar to the real thing.

He then furthered this by saying:

"The pleasures given by representations of different sorts hardly ever depend upon the the        representation's likeness to the thing portrayed. Incorrectness, or considered improbability even, was hardly or not at all disturbing, so long as the incorrectness has a certain consistency and the improbability remained of a constant kind."

This does not in anyway combat the aim of the Gesamtkunstwerk only offer it advice in a way, stating that it need not be realistic, only consistent and therefor it can represent reality in anyway it chooses provided it adheres to that reality strictly.

The second key element of Gesamtkunstwerk was the complete unity of everything visual, the lights the acting, the set, the props, everything, now this is hard to judge because they are all very different aspects, how can light be the same as acting, they're completely different, this must derive from how the viewer reads into it, the law of the text as it were, and all of these aspects must send the same message, so as to unify to tie the production together. This is a more Brechtian idea of theatre as he was very concerned with how the visual aspects created meaning and on top of this how the audience engaged with these aspects so in this sense he could get along side this scheme. The third aspect is that it must exist in a space away from the social rules and interpretation of the audience and in a space where the only rules are that of the performance, the rules of the stage you could say. This creates the stage into a window looking onto a slice of time and space somewhere outside that of the real world, it takes place in the the there and then rather than the here and now. This means the text can create its Logos, the underpinning idea which cannot be questioned because it is fact, this means that whatever world the text creates is fact and will be absorbed as such by the audience this means then that objects become symbolic of things rather than being objects constructed from symbols like with Brecht's approach of only using things that are made to be symbols of what he wants to express. Brecht opposed such ideological contractions, but not only that, the means by which they were constructed it affects the viewer's relationship with the text and render them completely passive, which as has been made clear on many occasions, not what Brecht looked to achieve. 

In summary of this section, Brecht cared little for the Gesamtkunstwerk and its methods as it was about creating artifice and this was the opposite of that he wanted, instead Brecht seeks to make you aware of the fabrication and as such praises strange mannerisms and actions in works of this nature as they remove you from the artificial world and instead draw you to a particular message. So to conclude, Brecht would probably say that acting doesn't have to be realistic as long as it is consistent and gives a message clearly and also engages the audience.