Berkoff

Steven Berkoff (born Leslie Steven Berks; 3 August 1937) is an English actor, author, playwright, theatre practitioner and theatre director.

Berkoff works in both apoetic and heightened performance style. His use of voice and physicality is pushed to an extreme, often a 'grotesque' level. There is little room for subtlety in a Berkoff production and this is largely due to his reaction against naturalism and the need for audiences to become immersed in the world of his imagination.

Berkoff expects actors to willingly sacrifice themselves physically and emotionally, ready to perform whatever tasks are necessary to illuminate the text. When dealing with texts, as a director, Berkoff does not seek to produce a literal reproduction of texts on stage. Uses total theatre = uses as many devices as he can use (lighting, sound, ect...)

Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes Berkoff's dramatic style as "In-yer-face theatre": The language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each other, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent.

Berkoff theatre is called total theatre. This is because he tries to use as many theatrical techniques as he can e.g. narrator, song, music, lighting, etc.

Context:

Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. His plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Berkoff wrote two plays criticising Christianity and its treatment of the Jews who were victimised and persecuted throughout history, something he likes to apply to himself, systematically criticised and marginalised by the Establishment. 

Berkoff followed Artaud and wrote his own Three Theatre Manifestos, and in the documentary Changing Stages Berkoff talks of the influence of Artaud. Jean-Louis Barrault (1910-1994). Barrault formed his own theatre company and developed his use of mime on theatre which influenced Berkoff when he founded the London Theatre Group. Berkoff was heavily inclined to use mime as it allowed the piece to be non-naturalistic (so that the audience could focus on the purpose of the play - influenced by Brecht). Other styles of theatre that influenced Berkoff are: Classical Greek theatre, Japanese Kabuki, and Vsevelod Meyerhold's constructivism, are particularly influential on Berkoff's visual aesthetic.By mixing minimal sets with very theatrical costumes, masks, and lighting, the visual focus is on the actor.

Kabuki- Kabuki, traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner. A rich blend of music, dance, mime, and spectacular staging and costuming, it has been a major theatrical form in Japan for four centuries.

Berkoff's ideas on metamorphosis:

Honoring Kafka's original seminal work, Berkoff dramatizes the dehumanization of an identity built on labour. He wanted to show the beetle as the minorities in the world which would duffer under capitalism, being forced to work 9-5 jobs at minimal wages.

He was Jewish himself and suffered a lot of anti-Semitism as a child. He wanted to show people his distain for the way the country was run, he famously said, 'I started to hate authorities...'