Fear and Misery

Back in March, sixth form students performed scenes from Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich as part of their Drama AS level. 

Brecht's play, written in the 1930s, examines the insidious way in which Hitler's regime engineered the German people's compliance with Nazism - at its close, presenting the notion that one must be willing to risk one's life in protest, if a dictatorial machine is not to gain dominance.

The students' production was characterised particularly by a focus on what Brecht calls Verfremdungseffekt - a device whereby theatre seeks actively to create a detachment between audience and their emotional responses: often, to remind them that they are watching a play, in a theatre - that they are responding emotionally to something which is ultimately 'fake' as if it were real.

To this end, the production was deliberately crude and basic, with cardboard cut-out props and no set-dressing.