Skip to main content

Stephen Berkoff Research

We have started studying the theatre style of Stephen Berkoff in our drama lessons. 


Berkoff's style is non-naturalistic, he focuses much more on the movement of the actor rather than the voice, he states that the only use for the script is to 'minimalise and physicalise' the story;  it enables the story to be told in the simplest, most effective way. His Actor's use techniques such as background movement, repetitive actions and mime. Berkoff said that it was important 'to see how I could bring mime together with the spoken word as its opposite partner, creating the form and structure of the piece'. This very interesting concept provides the core of his work, the mimelike, staccato movements accompanied by vivid, imaginative language.

Berkoff studied at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Jacques Lecoq was originally a gymnast and athlete who later found physical theatre after becoming aware of the beauty and rhythm in athletic movement. His training was aimed at nurturing the creativity of the performer, as opposed to giving them a codified set of skills. Lecoq's instruction encouraged an intimate relationship between the audience and the performer. He also wrote on the art and philosophy of  miming: tracing mime-like behaviour to early childhood development stages. All of these aspects have obviously influenced the style of Berkoff, who focuses around the relationship with the audience and mime-like movements

Berkoff's earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka, who's work is said to 'fuse elements of realism and the fantastic', he explores themes of alienation, existential anxiety and absurdity by often depicting isolated characters in surreal predicaments. The most well-known of Berkoff's Kafka adaptations is The Metamorphis, he said that 'It shook me when i read it' and he strongly connected with the 'dream-like stories', he also spoke of Kafka's 'acute perception of detail, detail that is not ordinary and programmed, the detail of life below the frustrations'. It is evident that the latter element of Kafka's work has immensely inspired Berkoff's own work as he uses vivid detailed imagery in his language to inspire the physical movements within the piece. 

Berkoff was also inspired by Antonin Artaud who created the concept of  Theatre of Cruelty, he had this idea that theatre needed to move away from mundane structured melodrama towards grotesque physical theatre that made the audience feel physically frightened, hurt and emotionally attacked. He explored the power of words and gestures to evoke strong emotions. It is very obvious in Berkoff's work to see how Artaud's ideas have influenced him: Berkoff's characters use rude language, talk about crude subjects, experience violent outbursts, have sex, humiliate each other as well as the intense physical movement to accompany the content of the play. Drama critic says his style of theatre 'is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react' which is the reason why most people have love/hate reaction to experiencing his work.

Artaud also had a theory called Total Theatre which is key to Berkoff's style. The aim of Total Theatre is very similar to that of Theatre of cruelty: to create extreme moods and give the audience an overwhelming experience and to shock, amuse, scare, or amaze them. However, Total Theatre is basically the idea that every aspect of theatre must have purpose: every movement, that is choreographed; to each line, that is learned perfectly; to each lighting effect, that is used to convey a mood or message; to each sound effect, that enhances the audience’s experience; to each prop that has a use. This results in minimalist performances with bare stages and very little language so that audiences are forced to focus more on the meaning of the physical movement and not on all the effects or the creation of a scene. For example, in The Trial, only the cast, very simple frames and a rope made up the whole staging. 

Another person Berkoff took inspiration from was Bertolt Brecht, an anti-fascist, German playwright who left Germany when Hitler came to power. He is well-known for his 'Alienation Effect' of speaking directly to the audience in order to break the fourth wall. Berkoff uses this in East to destroy the naturalism and force the audience to relate to the play on a deeper level.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Performance review

On Wednesday it was my performance night. Overall, I was very pleased with the way it went, I have never had such a long rehearsal process so the lines and the staging for each section felt like muscle memory. I didn't have to think very hard about what my next line was and where I was supposed to be on the stage because each scene had been thoroughly rehearsed so I could really focus on embodying the character of Antigone and I had never felt so in character as I did on my performance night. Another element that we could only really engage until performance was the metatheatre element of it because when the chorus says 'she's going to have to play her part right through to the end.' I only really understood that line until that night when the audience was there. It blurred the line even further as to what was acted and what was real because I found that I didn't have to act that gut feeling of what I was about to do and each line the chorus said I slowly got more...

Woman Alone - first impressions, disecting the script

Woman Alone is a short play written by Franca Rame and Dario Fo. It is the monologue of a woman who has been locked inside the house by her seemingly very abusive and controlling husband who is talking to her neighbour across the gardens. It is a very comedic script: full of sexual innuendos, hilarious anecdotes and clever one-liners. However, this comedic language juxtaposes some very serious and sinister themes: domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, self harm, suicide, mental health and murder. Upon first read, I found the extended monologue to be very confusing as the woman changes train of thought very quickly and jumps from subject to subject very often. The language itself is very simple and the anecdotes can be followed easily but her character as a whole is very hard to understand as her intentions seem to change every second and she is constantly contradicting herself. I immediately thought that it was going to be a very challenging script to work with, however for our perf...