Berkoff

Steven Berkoff is a well renowned English actor, author, playwright and of course theatre practitioner. Being born in 1937, Berkoff has seen a lot of change in what is standard for theatre and as an antithesis, evokes a sense of uncomfortableness through his use of ranging techniques that make up Berkovian theatre.

Born Leslie Steven berks to a Romanian Jewish family on 3rd August 1937. He was trained as an actor, writer and director at Webber Douglas academy in London, whom he later worked for. In 1968, he formed the London Theatre Group where he proceeded to gain fame and momentum as predominantly a director. He focused on non-naturalistic theatre. He mainly wrote and performed theatre in the 70s and 80s which were a period of huge cultural shift and social change so lots of his plays explore these ideas.

CHARACTERISTICS AND TECHNIQUES

Massively over exaggerated mime - particularly with physical skills, Berkoff beloved in extreme exaggeration. Every action is played massive, a Berkoffian character would never just shrug; they would throw their hands up and scrunch their face into a picture of confusion and misunderstanding.

Mixture of chorus-like poetic language - in many of his plays there are a set of characters who represent the chorus. They tell the story through poetic language and exaggerated movement. They often also talk about how the main characters feel and express what the main characters can't directly say.

Political themes - lots of Berkoff's work or work inspired by him is political because it can be so easily linked in with epic theatre. As Brecht hammered home, political theatre should not be believable.

Stylised movement - often slow motion and robotic but can be energetic when needed. Performed by an ensemble usually.

Masks- in some of Berkoff's work, in order for the audience to truly focus in on the mime and physical actions of a character, they wear a mask which hides their face - in order to dehumanise them while keeping character clear.

TOTAL THEATRE

Total theatre was created by Steven Berkoff. It aims to have maximum involvement from all aspects of theatre so it uses:

Dance - there may be scenes or characters that are portrayed though dance.

Song - although it is not strictly a musical, parts of the story in total theatre can be told through song.

Slide Projection - rather than have a permanent backdrop, total theatre often uses a projected series of slides that may change over the course of the play.

INSPIRATIONS 

Greek theatre - Berkoff drew on the overly exaggerated physical storytelling off the ancient greek chorus in many of his works. Characters often use a mixture of poetic language and dialogue although it is often vulgar and crude, like in Bouncers remix which is inspired by Berkoff's works.

Kabuki theatre - Berkoff also took inspiration from the Japanese Kabuki style theatre. The central pillar of Kubuki is jo-ha-kyo. Jo is a slow predictable beginning in which the characters and basic plot is introduced. Ha is the quickening of events in the middle of the play, usually leading to a tragic moment in Berkoff's case. Finally, Kyo is a short and satisfying conclusion usually involving characters moving on quickly from tragedy.

Barrault - Jean Louis Barrault was a french stage mime actor. Berkoff really liked the idea of mime and exaggerated movement, which Barrault specialised in. Barrault's work on stylised movement then became a core pillar of Berkovian theatre.

Japanese Noh - derived from the Japanese word meaning skill, Noh theatre focuses on dance. Berkoff took massive inspiration from the chorus-style dance routines coupled with the use of masks.

Artuad - Anton Artuad was very famous for being strange. He used elaborate props, magic tricks, special lighting, primitive gestures and articulations couples with heavy dark themes to give a rug-pull style shock. When Berkoff was producing total theatre, he took lots of inspiration from Artuad's strange lighting and non-diegetic sound.