Minor Project: Brecht- The Gestic Split

The works that Brecht grew up watching were not in anyway Marxist, Brecht remarks that of course this was the case as an piece of art made to mask the world it was created in would not be rooted in a system which aims to highlight and change this world. This was then extended further into a hindsight view that says that works were controlled by making anything that was in line with the views of the time and its ideology as being good and by extension anything that didn't conform was received as outlandish and foreign and they were then reworked into a form which was more easily digested by an audience that was used to this standard of 'good'. Brecht was also very dismissive of some works that seemed to highlight the democratic system but had no interest in giving the audience a say in the matters of the world as he said that it was "giving people new rights but no chance to appreciate them". Brecht sought to create a theatrical platform which sought to give audience 'democratic relations'.
With specific regard to acting at this stage in Brecht's theatrical development, Brecht took a somewhat radical step of praising bad acting and amateur performances as he considered them to be useful for the educational effects of a piece. Brecht did this because he felt that as the quality of acting improves the audience is put more and more into a vague state of watching where they becomes less aware of what the message is. Brecht said that he did not like this situation and as such we should want actors to be as bad as possible. Personally, I don't agree with this, even from a Brechtian stand point, there has to be a point where the acting is so bad that the play is no longer entertaining, I understand not wanting your actors to perform so well that there performance becomes the talking point or that the play receives praise without the message being clearly received, but surely there still needs to be a degree of quality.
In Brecht's essay of the street scene he explains this relatively well in the form of a man recounting an accident he has witnessed to a group of people who did not. The man recounting the event needs no special skills, he simply must be able to recoup the story and he is aware of the setting in which he is recounting there is no need to pretend it is any different from a simple street corner, in the same way, the actor is a vessel for recounting something and need not be flash about doing so, and the theatre must not try to hide what it too is, a theatre. The key to all of this is demonstration, there is no artifice, simple the demonstration of an actor. This is the key to gestic acting, just as bad actors lack the skill to create seamless characters, Brecht wanted this as he wanted to always be drawing back to the fact that theatre should be unapologetic in its portrayal of its self, this is way any mechanical systems, orchestras or other such aspects of the theatre would never be hidden or obscured and there was never any curtains to hide scene changes. Brecht was also one of the pioneers for narration and storytelling verbally at this point as it drew back to the fact that you're being shown a story in a constructed fashion. In one production in Switzerland, Brecht even went as far as to have a bench for the actors to sit on when they weren't involved which was in full view of the audience. While they were on said bench they were expected to drop out of character to further highlight the construction of the work. Brecht also argued that staging and blocking should be stylised and dramatic in order to sharpen meaning, so this meant that he wanted to make actors really exaggerate movement and actions to really get the point across, even if this didn't seem like a realistic way to act.
Upon watching a Chinese actor at work Brecht found that their acting was very aware of the fact they were being watched.

(This is the actor in question, Mei Lan-fang)

Brecht had this to say on the matter:
"the artist observes himself. Thus if he is presenting a cloud, perhaps... he will occasionally look at the audience as if to say: isn't it just like that? At the same time he also observes his own arms and legs, adducing them, testing them and perhaps finally approving them... in this way the artist separates mime (showing observation) from gesture (showing a cloud) but without distracting from the latter.
Here we see how artifice is shown off by the actor and how he demonstrates self awareness of the real life scenario he is in, it advertises to the viewer the artificial nature of that which is being created in front of them. For Brecht this was all to do with the difference between gesture and mime, a key example of this was for songs, Brecht believed that a song should be delivered by an actor and not performed from elsewhere, in this Brecht is drawing attention to what is being told and the act of telling, or in other words, the different between the acting and the role. This separation between actor and role is known as the gestic split, after showing signs of social relations, this is the second essential feature of gestus. A key example gestus was from Peter Lore in the 1931 production of A Man's a Man, in this while waiting for his execution, Lore turned his back on the crowd and dusted his face with white chalk to demonstrate how he was white with fear.

This was extremely effective as firstly it clearly demonstrated the emotion of the character to the audience so they could clearly tell he was in fear. But also this served to highlight the artificial nature  of a theatre production. It also clearly highlights the difference between the character who is fearful and the actor who is displaying that feat because it shows the convoy by which Lore displays that fear to the audience. Brecht views gestus as not a style but rather a series of goals and he believes that rehearsals should be evident in the final piece, it should be obvious to the viewer that they are seeing the product of a rounded off piece which has been practised. There are three ways Brecht suggests this is achieved:

1. Transposing lines into third person to draw attention to the gestic split

2. Transpose lines into past tense 

3. Read the stage directions out loud

These steps are only to be taken in the rehearsal stage, however, they are done to create emotion towards the character from the actor so that when it comes to the real performance the actor has a really emotion towards the character, as this is characteristic of gestic performances; for them to be marked by an attitude towards the character.

So to summarise the gastric split, It is all to do with the separation from actor and character and on a more wide level, the difference between the act of telling and the subject that is being told. The most prime example of this is by making a character visibly sing on stage as this showcases the character and their feelings but also serves to highlight a performance from an actor as no character would naturally break into song in this manner.