Theatre Practitioners
What's covered
Key facts
Artaud
Artaud proposed abolishing the separation between stage and auditorium so performers and audience share the same space.
Berkoff
Steven Berkoff was born in 1937 (3 August 1937, in Stepney, East London).
Brecht
The alienation effect distances the audience from emotional involvement so they observe critically and reflect on the play's social and political messages.
Contemporary practitioners
Steven Berkoff developed an expressionistic "Total Theatre" of heightened physicality and stylised movement.
Forced Entertainment
Audiences at Forced Entertainment's durational performances are free to come and go at any point, rather than having to stay for the whole running time.
Kneehigh Theatre
Kneehigh Theatre was based in Cornwall; the company closed in 2021.
Stanislavski
Stanislavski sought truthful living emotion rather than a fixed result reproduced identically every night; the performance is re-found, not mechanically repeated.
Artaud
Artaud rejected spoken text and rational narrative as the centre of theatre, replacing them with a physical, sensory stage language.
Berkoff
Berkoff uses a chorus of performers who move with precise synchronisation to create stylised, collective physical images.
Brecht
Exposed lighting rigs, visible machinery and projected text all share one function: to expose theatrical artifice deliberately and prevent the audience falling into illusion.
Practice questions with answers
A taste of the 103 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.
What is the name of Artaud's manifesto for radical theatre?
- •The Epic Theatre Manifesto
- •The Living Theatre Declaration
- ✓The Theatre of Cruelty
- •The Theatre of the Absurd
What distinguishes Berkoff's use of stylised movement?
- ✓Exaggerated physical actions replace set and props: actors create the environment
- •Movement is drawn from classical ballet vocabulary
- •Performers move in slow motion throughout the entire production
- •Physical actions are performed only by the chorus, never lead actors
What is the purpose of Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect)?
- •To alienate rival theatre companies from Brecht's rehearsal process
- •To disorient the audience so they cannot follow the plot
- •To make the audience feel intense emotions by removing distractions
- ✓To stop audiences identifying with characters so they think critically
What devising approach is central to Complicité's rehearsal process?
- ✓Beginning from a visual image or object and building the piece collaboratively
- •Casting the company before any creative development begins
- •Starting from a detailed written script and working backwards to movement
- •Using digital motion-capture data to choreograph every scene
What is distinctive about Forced Entertainment's approach to theatre-making?
- •A company that devises short-form comedy sketches for studio theatre spaces
- •A London-based company specialising in large-scale site-specific outdoor events
- •An international touring ensemble known for physical and acrobatic performance
- ✓Sheffield company best known for long-form durational theatre exploring endurance
What is distinctive about Kneehigh Theatre's approach to performance?
- •A company founded by an actor-manager model with a single artistic lead
- •An ensemble that specialises in verbatim theatre drawn from real testimonies
- ✓Cornwall-based touring company using found spaces and exuberant physical storytelling
- •London-based company devising abstract work exclusively for black-box venues
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