Social, historical, personal and artistic analysis of Steven Berkoff.
L.O to explore the social and historical factors that influenced Steven berkoff
Berkoff’s influences
Mime..marcel marceau ( control, repetition, body propping, group images, insect movement )
Japanese Kabuki and noh theatre ( mei, stock characters )
The ‘moral’ didactic aspect of Brecht ( political and demonstrative, minimal set, satire)
The sensory aspects of Artaud ( quite an aggressive, in your face style, ugly style)
Starter
How might poverty affect your point of view?
HISTORICAL: events of the day
SOCIAL: How society was affected
POLITICAL: beliefs and ideologies of the time/Berkoff’s politics
PERSONAL: family history and Biography
CULTURAL: Artistic trends, fashion and representation.
Overall ‘wider’ History of Berkoff’s early life in the 1950’s
Steven Berkoff (born Leslie Steven Berks; 3 August 1937) is an English actor, author, playwright, theatre practitioner and theatre director.
History
At the beginning of the 1950s, after all, Britain had been threadbare, bombed-out, financially and morally exhausted. Its major cities were still bombsites, it was almost impossible for many families to borrow money, rationing was harsher than ever, and there was an acute shortage of decent housing
Social .
Society had defined gender roles-
society had defined class roles-
Society was defined by religious values ( christianity)
There was very little ‘ social mobility’ and still widespread poverty.
This was the roots of Berkoff’s Class and Social activism that characterised his early work…
Overall ‘Wider history’ of Berkoff as a young adult in the 1960’s
How was society changing in the 60s?
The biggest social changes in the 1960s involved the fight for freedom and equality. Women fought for equal rights and equal pay, Black Americans fought against racial disparity, and pacifists rebelled against the Vietnam War.
In the UK a labour government came to power in 1963 promising to fight for working class interests.
Shifts in law, politics and media reflected a new expressive individualism and growing appetite to live in a more liberal 'permissive society'. People began to stand up for their rights, both civil and at work, and express themselves in new ways.-
Counter culture icons like the rolling stones were vocal in their opposition to traditional authority.
Berkoff wanted to stand up for working class interests and promote political awareness in his productions. However, there were many clashes with the authorities who saw ‘hippy’ culture as dangerous and subversive.
quote
Berkoff quote
‘Coming from a working class jewish background helped me to define things as coming in groups. There were things like the boys’ club, the local pool, the park where all the guys used to hang out with the girls – it’s an ensemble. I’ve never lost the sense of the group being important; that’s always been part of the work I do, the ensemble, interacting, creating together.’
The idea of ‘the collective’ is an important part of Berkoff’s political ‘socialist’ beliefs.
Berkoff’s C.V
Berkoff trained as an actor at the Webber Douglas Academy in London and studied movement at the Ecole Internationale de Theatre de Jaques Lecoq in Paris. These two disciplines are key to his creative work. He worked as a mime and physical theatre practitioner at Webber Douglas and first experimented with The Trial using an ensemble of students. In 1968, Berkoff formed the London Theatre Group and like another influential actor/director, Laurence Olivier, proceeded to write, direct and perform with his own company. The 1970s were a time of rapid change. With the end of censorship, a new writing culture permeated British theatre. Berkoff featured in his own experimental adaptations of Kafka’s The Trial and Metamorphosis, Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, as well as appearing in iconic films of the period. Hamlet at Elsinore (1964), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975).
Berkoff’s style and influences
https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/281664-practitioners-berkoff.pdf
https://www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/berkoff-study-a5.html
Total theatre
Mime..marcel marceau ( control, repetition, body propping, group images )
Japanese Kabuki and noh theatre ( mei, stock characters )
The ‘moral’ didactic aspect of Brecht ( political and demonstrative, minimal set)
The sensory aspects of Artaud ( quite an aggressive, in your face style)
Bold adaptations of ‘classical and established texts as well as original scripts.
Berkoff quote..
I think a lot of actors and people who go into the theatre are lonely people. I think, first of all, they’re lonely from their family. Something about them is a bit different. They are isolated, have different sensibilities, they can’t communicate within their family and then they decided to enter the theatre. Theatre is a big family. I know it’s a bit of a cliché but it becomes a family group and is united for a period of months. So you have a family with brothers and sisters, very supplicating -- a family again. So it becomes a family for misfits. (Personal interview)
Berkoff’s personal family history.
The young Berkoff had few early advantages, and rejection and disappointment ran like themes throughout his early life. He even hated his name. Steven Berkoff was a later invention. He was born plain old Leslie Berks, a derivation of Berkovitch – a name his father had abbreviated to assimilate in the adopted country of his Russian forbears. Loathing Leslie, Berkoff instead adopted his middle name, Steven, then added an ‘off’ to his crudely shortened surname to preserve the ethnic ring.He was born in 1937, in the Jewish East End, to a doting mother, Polly, and a largely absent father, Albert. His father was a tailor who made zoot suits, he was also a womaniser and gambler. His shop was beneath a betting establishment, so much of his hard-earned profit was frittered away over the nags, dogs, and anything else – from poker to bridge.But even when he wasn’t in the betting shop, Albert had little time for his son. “I don’t think he had the inclination, though it may have been that he was having a relationship with another woman, and that made him feel guilty,” says Berkoff. “He acted as if he was an indifferent stepfather and I was just a useless burden he happened to be stuck with. He never ceased to moan about how hard he worked to keep a parasite like me.”And then came the ultimate betrayal. One day his father promised him a bike, on condition he remained on his best behaviour for 40 days.
cont..
I’m sure he was unaware of the biblical resonance of that number – Christ’s 40-day fast in the desert – but as far as he was concerned, this was a pact made in blood.”Finding the deal irresistible, the young boy determined to be on his best behaviour – never arguing, eating whatever was put in front of him and going to bed when he was told. It was the longest 40 days of his life, but through the mist he could see the bike at the end of it. Then, lo and behold... no bike. Berkoff never forgot the deceit.He was continually being uprooted. During the war, he was evacuated to Luton, then spent a year in America, before returning to Luton and subsequently back to the East End. “I never had a chance to make allies and became an introverted kid.” He sought solace in the local library, but his desire to learn was knocked out of him at school, where he was beaten and unfairly relegated to the bottom of the class. “I was a happy, enthusiastic child, full of games and interests, but that got dampened by the awful society that existed then – a post-war brutish world. All the curiosity I had, the passion for language and art, just faded. And so I bumbled along, half alive.”One day he stole an expensive bike and was sentenced to three months in a remand centre, where he was temporarily placed in solitary confinement. “It was a lonely time and I took refuge in fantasy and writing stories; it was a means of expressing the most vital part of myself.”The acting was born out of a need for allies. “People from broken families, people without love in their life
cont..
I’m sure he was unaware of the biblical resonance of that number – Christ’s 40-day fast in the desert – but as far as I was concerned, this was a pact made in blood.”Finding the deal irresistible, the young boy determined to be on his best behaviour – never arguing, eating whatever was put in front of him and going to bed when he was told. It was the longest 40 days of his life, but through the mist he could see the bike at the end of it. Then, lo and behold... no bike. Berkoff never forgot the deceit.He was continually being uprooted. During the war, he was evacuated to Luton, then spent a year in America, before returning to Luton and subsequently back to the East End. “I never had a chance to make allies and became an introverted kid.” He sought solace in the local library, but his desire to learn was knocked out of him at school, where he was beaten and unfairly relegated to the bottom of the class. “I was a happy, enthusiastic child, full of games and interests, but that got dampened by the awful society that existed then – a post-war brutish world. All the curiosity I had, the passion for language and art, just faded. And so I bumbled along, half alive.”One day he stole an expensive bike and was sentenced to three months in a remand centre, where he was temporarily placed in solitary confinement. “It was a lonely time and I took refuge in fantasy and writing stories; it was a means of expressing the most vital part of myself.”The acting was born out of a need for allies. “People from broken families, people without love in their life
BERKOFF’S POLITICS!
In his early adult life Berkoff was a Marxist and a socialist
Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker rights..false consciousness
Marx cont..
Marx condemns capitalism as a system that alienates the masses. His reasoning was as follows: although workers produce things for the market, market forces, not workers, control things. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace.
Marx’s ideas
Six Key Ideas of Karl Marx
Marx’s ideas
The center of Marx's theories across all disciplines, collectively known as Marxism, is the notion of class conflict. Marx believed that history and the development of society is a narrative of class struggle, where a ruling class subjugates a lower class in the form of exploitation, dehumanization, and other forms of oppression. Society and history move forward through this struggle, as the ruling class oppresses the lower class, the lower class overthrows the ruling class, and the cycle continues over and over. Marx is famously known for applying this theme to capitalism. He argues that the economic system ultimately exploits workers for the benefit of the wealthy elite. In this class, we will examine Marx's writing on capitalism and the meaning of life through his most well-known work, The Communist Manifesto. This pamphlet is a collection of Marx's theory that history is one of class struggle, but we will focus on Chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians. You can find a link to the document here if you prefer to work through that.
Marx’s ideas
What do Marxist believe about social control?
Marxists essentially see crime and deviance as defined by the ruling class and used as a means of social control – if you don't conform then you will be punished. Institutions such as the police, the justice system, prisons and schools, the family and religion are there to encourage you to conform
Marx’s ideas
Ideological Control
Marx argued that the ruling classes used their control of social institutions to gain ideological dominance, or control over the way people think in society. Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling classes were presented as common sense and natural and thus unequal, exploitative relationships were accepted by the proletariat as the norm.
The result of the above is false class consciousness
The end result of ideological control is false consciousness – where the masses, or proletariat are deluded into thinking that everything is fine and that the appalling in which they live and work are inevitable. This delusion is known as False Consciousness. In Marxist terms, the masses suffer from false class consciousness and fail to realize their common interest against their exploiters.
Commodity Fetishism
Commodity Fetishism..A fetish is an object of desire, worship or obsessive concern. Capitalism is very good at producing ‘things’. In capitalist society people start to obsess about material objects and money, which is necessary to purchase these objects. Material objects and money are worshipped in capitalist societies. Some people even need material objects to construct identities –according to Marx this is partly responsible for keeping most of us in ‘false consciousness’
quote
: "Anyone with anything to contribute has to feel an outsider because of the entrenched establishment. Anyone of any quality feels an outsider
Steven berkoff
cont..
Berkoff tells stories in a poetic and heightened way, both vocally and physically using minimal set and in a physically demonstrative, almost aggressive, non- naturalistic style. Characters use a mix of poetic language, sometimes Shakespearean, often vulgar and muscular, almost physical. Imagine throwing their words out into the air. He uses the Kabuki theatre mie a picturesque pose to establish your character. It is a great way of putting your character immediately into the Berkoff performance style starting point.
Berkoff’s mission statement
Berkoff’s purposes and practice As an actor, director and playwright and general non-conformist, Berkoff wanted to shake naturalistic theatre and encourage experiment using the idea of 'Total Theatre'. ‘Total theatre is a use of the imagination. Actors express the genius of the body. Express the story without a set’. Steven Berkoff said that his career owes much to his training as a physical theatre practitioner, but perhaps equally, to his working class origins, which, he maintains, give him a different perspective to those around him in a predominantly middle and upper class profession.
Kafka and Metamorphosis
"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation"
Franz kafka
L.O To understand the connection between Steven Berkoff and the play Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!
Starter: What, arguably, does capitalism force us to do?
L.O To understand the connection between Steven Berkoff , Marxism and the play Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!
Franz kafka and Metamorphosis
Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Although he briefly considers this transformation, he quickly turns his thoughts to his work and his need to provide for his parents (he lives with them and his sister) so that they can pay off their debts.
L.O To understand the connection between Steven Berkoff and the play Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!
Kafka Metamorphosis
Kafka’s The Metamorphosis shows the capitalist systems dehumanizing effect on human through an economic perspective. In Capitalist system, humans can only maintain efficiency and value by assuming ‘the status of an object’. They must objectify, quantify, and label their current selves in order to know their state of being, then contrast it with the ideal and continue changing themselves for efficiency.
According to Karl Marx, the means of production in society controlled the society-whoever owned the factories owned the ‘culture’.
Themes
Themes cont..defined by work!
Gregor’s change expresses his sense of guilt at having ‘betrayed’ his work and his parents, at having broken the familial circle. It is a treacherous appeasement of this guilt complex, inviting his isolation, punishment, and death. His loss of human speech in the end prevents him from communicating his humanity. His enormous size, though an insect (he is at least two feet wide), his ugly features, and his stench invite fear and revulsion. Yet his pacific temperament and lack of claws, teeth, or wings make him far more vulnerable than when his body was human. His metamorphosis therefore gives him the worst of both worlds: he is offensive in appearance but defenseless in fact, exposed to the merciless attack of anyone—such as his furious father—ready to exploit his vulnerability.
L.O To understand the connection between Steven Berkoff and the play Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!
One of the themes of the story is the unpleasantness of work. Gregor Samsa hates his job as a traveling salesman but must continue doing it to pay off his parents’ debts. There is no suggestion that he gets any job satisfaction; all he talks about is how exhausting the job is, how irritating it is to be always traveling: making train connections, sleeping in strange beds, always dealing with new people and thus never getting the chance to make good friends, and so forth. Moreover, it turns out that Gregor works for a firm that does not trust its employees at all: because he is late this one day, the chief clerk shows up to check on him and begins hinting that he is suspected of embezzling funds and may very well be fired. It also seems that Gregor’s coworkers dislike him because he is on the road so often; they gossip about him and the other traveling salesmen, making unfounded complaints such as that they make lots of money and just enjoy themselves. Work is hell, the story seems to suggest.
Father son relationship
Life at home, according to the story, is no paradise either. In particular, Gregor seems to have a difficult relationship with his father. The very first time Gregor’s father is seen he is making a fist, albeit just to knock on Gregor’s door. Soon after, however, he makes a fist more in earnest: when he first sees Gregor in his insect form, he shakes his fist at him and glares at him fiercely. Later he attacks him with a newspaper and a walking stick, and, later still, he bombards him with apples, causing him serious injury. He is also not above making sarcastic comments, suggesting, for instance, that Gregor’s room is untidy. And it turns out that he has deceived Gregor about the family finances, thus needlessly extending the length of Gregor’s employment at the hateful traveling salesman’s job. Finally, he does not seem particularly appreciative of the money Gregor has been bringing in; he is content to live off his son's labor, but Gregor feels there was “a special uprush of warm feeling” about it.
Can gregor escape?
Escaping
Although in some ways the transformation reinforces Gregor’s situation, in other ways becoming an insect is a way for him to escape his unhappy life. No longer will he have to work at his burdensome job; instead, he can spend his days scurrying around his room, something he seems to enjoy. One of the themes is the joy of escaping from one’s responsibilities.
Berkoff , Marxism and Metamorphosis
-themes-
Being forced to work
Identity and personal value tied to ‘use’ in making money
Identity roles in society, father, mother, student, are reinforced by the system of capitalism
Conformity is enforced by capitalist values
How does Berkoff represent these themes using movement and speech?
practical
To create a piece of Berkoffian theatre looking at:
1: the repetition of work
2: the oppression of the Ruling Class
3: the reinforcement of identity stereotypes through capitalism
4: the alienation of non -conformists
L.O To understand the connection between Steven Berkoff and the play Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!
L.O To understand the role of the ‘Lodger's’ in Berkoff’s/Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Starter: In groups of 3-4 answer this question:
How does the play Metamorphosis discuss the the idea of ‘conformity’? - Clue ‘how does ‘instagram’ encourage conformity?..
Potential answers
-The bourgeoisie ( rich) enforce social norms by ‘approving’ of certain behaviours and ‘disapproving’ of other that are not in their interest.
- The bourgeoisie ( rich) enforce identities by ‘approving’ of certain identities and ‘disapproving’ of other that are not in their interest.
These both are in enforced with social ‘and’ economic pressure
L.O To understand the role of the ‘Lodger's’ in Berkoff’s/Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
‘The lodgers’!
The lodgers are three anonymous/ often masked characters. The family has rented out a part of the apartment to the lodgers to meet financial expenses because gregor can’t work. As they move in the home and enjoy life with Greta's music, Gregor resents this. However, one day they spot Gregor, and one of them refuses to pay
L.O To understand the role of the ‘Lodger's’ in Berkoff’s/Kafka’s Metamorphosis..
‘The Lodgers’
The Three Lodgers represent the snobbery and oppression of ‘the system’ that keeps people in line/conforming with social pressure- rewarding ‘good’ behaviour and punishing ‘bad’.
How could you represent that in movement and voice when playing the lodgers and the families reaction to them?
Movement and speech for the Lodgers
-Stereotyped snobbery in the body language/voice of the lodgers
-Robotic, Unison or canon movements to show how they represent the system/idea of conformity-
‘Slippery’ and manipulative movement showing how they psychologically oppress working people
Movement and speech for The family
The family desperately tries to please the lodgers and gain their approval as if their very lives/identities depend on it-
OTT reactions to being approved or disapproved of.
Robotic or stereotyped movement to show how they are caught in the system- remember the stereotype of the characters!
Warm Up task
Follow the leader: unison-canon exercise:
1-2-3 -stereotyped rich-posh- disapproving
2- posh but robotic -posh terminators
3- slippery and evil..manipulative..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaCheA6Njc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZVYI_hIEs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtNDm8DuFzE
Let’s have a go at the text..
In groups of Three ‘multirole’ the lodgers scene!
Reflection
What is Berkoff trying to represent with the Lodgers scene?
Come up with 3 ideas..
Berkoff and Metamorphosis
L.O to be able to make complex connections in the written exam!
Written Question:
How did Berkoff’s historical past reflect his adaptation of Metamorphosis?
Intro -Who is Steven Berkoff?..
What is Metamorphosis about?
-Big historical events-
-Personal history
-the conditions and time he adapted metamorphosis in-his politics at the time
-How his techniques and approaches on Metamorphosis reflect his past and politics