How does Godber prepare his actor's for a performance?
As aforementioned, Godber is inspired by lots of Brechtian techniques an example of this is his use of Spass and Verffremdungseffekt, known as the V-effect. This effect was to ‘make the familiar strange or unfamiliar’. A workshop Godber uses to do this is called Scales. He will get his performers to walk around a space as their character starting at number one, this being a very naturalistic version of the character, as the workshop continues, he will shout out different numbers all the way up to ten which would be the most extreme non naturalistic version of their character. Once he has completed the one to ten part of this exercise, he will decrease the number however he will then add in different scenarios, for example, ‘The class has gone on a school trip to the zoo’. The actors will then interact with one another whilst improvising this scenario, Godber will then continue to call out different numbers so the actors can see all different ways their character would react to this.
