Melissa Mchiney Rehearsal 4: Development Of Physicality

Brecht always wanted to keep his audience thinking throughout the whole duration of his plays. His plays strived for social awareness to provoke social change. However Brecht's plays were far from boring. Brecht learned that he could engage the audience into thinking through entertainment even if there is a serious subliminal message behind it. This technique is called Spass. We use spass to break the tension after Melissa is first introduced to the audience by being thrown on to the stage. While Melissa is on the floor trying to comprehend her whereabouts, the rest of the cast or society, play a game with her. We creep away over exaggerating each movement using the whole of our bodies and immediately freeze when Melissa turns to look at us- just missing us in action. This is amusing to the audience because it's child's play, they can see what Melissa can't, therefore the cast and the audience share that secret. This is used in the beginning to quickly stop the audience from following Melissa on an emotional journey as they would immediately feed in to why she has been thrown on to the stage and sympathise with her. Meanwhile the audience is laughing, they are thinking, they know that Melissa is being isolated and mistreated they just don't know why just yet.

What is working well in rehearsals is the class is able to be very imaginative with the type of movement we use when creeping away from Melissa. We learned to experiment with how we can make use of every part of our body and make every movement stylised. This creates a better picture an emphasises just how much we are mocking Melissa. A personal challenge for myself is spatial
awareness, every time we rehearse this piece every one's movement changes. The aim is to keep watch of Melissa not only to see when she turns so we know our cue to freeze but to show the audience that we think we are having fun with her and it is all a game to us. I've stumbled on people behind me as I am moving back because I can not see behind me. How I have challenged this problem is making my first movement is to quickly look back before I decide on my next movement. By doing this I should be able to get in position before Melissa turns her head again and not be blocking someone else or causing any incidents to myself or others.