Gestus is an acting technique created by Bertolt Brecht, which combines gestures and attitudes to help explore relationships between characters or how they are feeling.
Actors must adopt generic actions in order for audiences to clearly understand what is trying to be shown, making it easier to assume their relationship. They then add attitude to the actions, giving more depth to the character and story, also provoking audiences into having an opinion towards it. I feel as though the actions can also be used to clarify a character's thoughts or parts of the story, letting actors easily deliver their desired message.
It is a simple, yet effective, technique because it tells a lot about a character. We saw this when Josh and Ivory played out the relationship between a servant and the master. With Ivory seated, back straight and nose turned up, we immediately got the impression of her power. Although paired with a beckoning gesture and head turning away, with Josh's slumped character's hurried arrival, I felt as though this added more insight, allowing me (as an on looker) to assume that Ivory felt as though she was superior to Josh - not giving him the courtesy to look at his face- and with his rushed response representing how he believed he was inferior, letting me infer that he'd maybe grown up in a prejudice society towards the class system, Josh's character possibly been indoctrinated.
A quote that I seem is fitting to Gestus is:
"Actions speak louder than words."
I believe gestus tries to let the audience think for themselves, allowing them to come to their own conclusions and having a greater impacts, being more powerful than audience members being force-fed what they should believe and agree with. Which is what I think Brecht wanted when he introduced the idea, relying on the gestures and attitudes to convey parts of the story/character. It also shows how words aren't always needed, suggesting it is often better to be simplistic.
In this picture we can clearly see the social classes of the men just by the fact that the two taller men look down on the lower to suggest their higher class.
No comments:
Post a Comment