Scene Comparison - Mother Courage and Her Children, Summer of Aliens

             Scene Eleven from the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" and Act One, Scene Four from "Summer of the Aliens" are scenes that are performed very differently, according to their theatrical styles and using conventions relating to those styles. The context in each scene is diverse, too, however, there are some similarities.
             'Mother Courage's' scene, written in the 1940s by Bertolt Brecht, is a work of epic theatre, created by the writer. It is totally opposite to the realistic theatre style of the scene from 'Summer of the Aliens' written by Louis Nowra in 1968. According to this realistic style, invented by Constantin Stanislavsky, the performance of the scene has to be very real and believable. The actors have to re-enact the circumstances as realistically as possible through life like characters with the right use of voice and movements, realistic costumes, the overall stage resembling photographic detail of the period in the scene and the main aim for audience to empathy with characters. Along with Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre is the very essence of non-realism with the main aim to avoid the typical theatrical conventions of realism. Through this, avoiding an illusion of realistic theatre. The acting and staging techniques such as use of a narrator, simple or fragmentary costumes, basic open white stage lighting, fragmentary props and scenery, actors swapping characters mid-scene, actors playing multiple roles and occasionally speaking directly to the audience are all used in the performance of Brecht's scene from 'Mother Courage'. These theatrical conventions, according to Brecht, can portray social truths in a way audiences could not ignore. They are didactic in nature with audience alienating purposes. The purpose of performance is to teach or instruct the audience about the issue in the scene. As well as in the performance of 'Summer of the Aliens', there can be moments of comedy and tragedy, but the factu...

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Scene Comparison - Mother Courage and Her Children, Summer of Aliens. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 01:10, April 19, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/21943.html