We had spent one lesson planning and brainstorming our
project against the SOI and the global context for our unit.
For this unit, our SOI was that “Artists raise
awareness of the implications of change and innovation through their work”. Our
project this unit was to learn about Bertolt Brecht’s theatre through acting a
scene of his play “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”. We had made multiple
links of between our unit’s SOI with Brecht’s work that we have studied.
Firstly, Brecht’s work was based on the context of World War II, where change
was happening to everything that surrounded Brecht at that time. His work was highly
influenced by these changes. The play that we have studied, “The Resistible
Rise of Arturo Ui”, was a play that critiques Hitler’s action when he rose to
power. Hitler’s power changed the society, innovated different communication
techniques that had influenced the society very much. The change and innovation
were the factors that urged the innovation of Brecht’s work. Additionally,
Brecht had innovated techniques and used it in his work to achieve the purpose
and intentions of his plays. He had implicated his innovations to cause change
in the surrounding society that also has experienced ongoing change. The
purpose and intentions of his plays were obvious to the audience, and his
techniques helped to clarify and enforce it. These were the links that we had
come up with during the workshop of brainstorming the links between the studies
in our unit with the SOI.
For the Global Context of the unit, it is “Scientific
and Technical Innovation”. For this unit, Brecht’s work had shown to be very
relatable to the global context. Firstly, the context of Brecht’s work had been
WWII, which was a time where Hitler had innovated and improved the technical
areas of expertise to the benefit of the war and the German people. The global
context surrounds innovations that are in the benefit of others. Secondly,
Brecht’s work has been innovated to help achieve a purpose. This purpose was to
educate and help the audience understand the world through theatre. Again, this
highlights the importance of the global context in the project. Brecht’s work
uses techniques and science to a certain extent to reach a purpose, which
reminds people of the importance of innovation in theatre. These links shows
the importance and how the global context is highlighted within the project.
In our project, we will be using Epic Theatre
techniques to continue Brecht’s purpose of helping the audience understand the
world through theatre. These techniques are very crucial to the effect of the
theatre since it highlights and urges thinking processes in the audience.
Therefore, although we don’t cause huge changes in the society while performing
the scene to the audience. We still intend to change the thoughts of the
audience about the society through theatre, like what the SOI and the global
context have stated. The workshop this time had helped all of us become more
clear about our intentions in the unit, and understand the purpose of our SOI
and the global context of our unit better.
