Fear and Misery in the Third Reich

534 Words2 Pages

Fear and Misery in the Third Reich

On the 6th October 2005 I went to see a production of ‘Fear and Misery

in the Third Reich’ by Bertiot Brecht at the Markova Theatre. The

production was performed by the Watford Palace travelling theatre

company.

During the performance once performance really did surprise me. It was

the performance of the ‘Jewish Woman’performed by Sarah Stanley.

The reason I found this a very surprising performance was that I was

incredibly moved by her performance. I left the play thinking very

deeply about the message she conveyed. I also felt extremely emotional

during that particular section. This surprised me as up until that

point I had not felt any emotion for any of the characters in the

play. I was also very surprised as I was not expecting to feel at all

moved as the play was written by Bertiot Brecht.

Brecht wanted to inspire the audience to act and change the world. He

wanted a theatre which reminded its audience at all times that they

were watching a play with actors – and not get emotionally attatched

to any other the characters. He wanted to discourage the audience from

identification of the characters. He hoped to achieve this with

anumber of distancing techniques, or ‘alienation’ techniques. Many of

these are present the ‘Jewish Woman’ scene through Sarah Stanleys

acting.

She started the scene completely out of character interacting with the

audience – reminding them she was an actor and not real. This didn’t

surprise me as it was typical Brecht. When she snapped to character –

I was very surprised. Her body language completely changed and

transformed her into the ‘Jewish Woman’. She walked extremely poised

and upright. She had a slow controlled pace – this was very effective

as she controlled the stage and engaged the audience’s attention. She

led with her chest and held her head high. She had an extremely proud

posture. She stuck her nose in the air and came across almost snobby.

I found this surprising as the woman knew why she was packing yet

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