Steven Berkoff is an English actor/director who trained at the Webber Douglas school of dramatic arts and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, in which he trained in the art of physical theatre and mime. Berkoff is well known for his in your face dramatic styles that causes the audience to react. People describe this style as “It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation”. One of the dramatic styles used by Berkoff is a style of physical theatre called “Total Theatre”, which is the idea that all elements should be equally as important.
Berkoff is also well known for his physicalisation which is best shown in “metamorphis” in which berkoff becomes the object. Also in Berkoffs plays he intends the actors to represent the characters rather than become them. In turn Berkoff also wants to convey emotion withing his characters rather than just thoughts. This can be done through the use of mime, movement and voice expression. The overall reason why i chose to perform East by Berkoff was to learn more about the way characters are represented and why the audience feels distanced from the play.
Through the use of Berkoffs dramatic styles and vulgar scenes and characters. In the scene of East i am performing which is scene 4 we are shown the whole family eating breakfast. We can see that in this particular scene Berkoff is trying to disgust the audience in the way the actors are grotesquely eating their meal. We can perceive that berkoff is giving us an impression of what the worst type of families in the East End are like and grossly over exaggerateing them. By doing this Berkoff is already distancing the audience and showing them something alien.
After the first impressions of the family the audience then learns of the meaningless rituals of the family. In which the mother and fathers life is dominated by whats on the telly. But these conversations seem to always lead to the father going into a rant about the communists and foreigners. By doing this Berkoff is alienating the 21st century audience in which racism and homophobia is frowned upon. The fathers rant is very external which fits into Berkoffs’ idea of conveying emotions rather than thoughts in the characters.
The stereotype of the family is then continued as the audience learn of the fact that the family have not paid the license this in turn sparks up a massive rant by the racist father about a riot he was once in. As he destroys the table in nostalgic fury the audience is then disgusted through Berkoffs technique of using physicalisation for objects. During our rehearsals of the extract we have developed our characters and come to understand the techniques Berkoff expects to be used in East. We also realised that we needed to physicalise the internal elements of our character in order to represent the characters properly.
I learnt how to do this by turning the anger inside my character into obvious rage shown by the character in the way he destroys everything on the table. We are also going to make sure that the objects on the table are non lethal due to health and safety. I hope that through the development of my character i will be able to represent the character of the father correctly. Through the use off over exaggeration and also using to physicalisation for objects so that they portray the scene of the riot.
During our rehearsal process we also tried to createan in your face dramatic style that disgusts and discomforts the audience. Through the use of breaking the fourth wall and getting up close and personal with the unsuspecting audience. This will hopefully make the audience feel awkward and disgusted but also make the audience react so as to create the desired effect intended by Berkoff when he wrote the play. Finally we also worked on the use of movement and voice expression so as to fully represent our characters and make use of the style ofphysical theatre “Total Theatre”.
