Bertolt Brecht introduced what he called the Epic actor, a sort of narrator.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) introduced what he called the Epic actor, a sort of narrator.

He said that the actor should not dedicate himself to warming up the audience with a flood of feeling: "...no effort is made to put the audience in a trance and give them the illusion of witnessing natural, unrehearsed events."

On the contrary, the actor should dedicate himself "to show the audience with clear gestures of 'showing' ." Thus, the actor maintains a more frank and direct relationship with the audience, than with the tradition approach base on the supposed 'fourth wall.'

This notion is of great importance to us because it supposes an entirely different attitude, the idea being to appeal not just to the sensibilities of the spectators but above all to their rational comprehension of the situation being dealt with on stage.
Sometimes we wrongly suppose that acting is for "emotional" people and forget that an actor must work with mind, body and emotions.

Brecht also demanded that actors use clear diction: "the actor must be able to speak clearly, and this is not just a matter of vowels and consonants but also (and primarily) a matter of the meaning. Unless he learns at the same time how to bring out the meaning of his lines he will simply be articulating like a machine and destroying the sense with his 'beautiful speaking voice.'"

Brecht, who lived in East Germany and was clearly influenced by Marxism, also expressed clear guidlines with respect to accent and local variations in speech:

"...within clarity there are all kins of degrees and distinctions. Different social classes have different kinds of clarity: a peasant may speak clearly in comparison with a second peasant, but his clarity will not be the same as that of an engineer. This means that actors learning to speak must always take care to see that their voice is pliant and flexible. They must never lose sight of the way people really talk."

What does this mean for those of us whose mother tongue is not English? Although it is important to speak with clear diction, it is more important that the idea or feeling of a character or situation be transmitted clearly to the audience.

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