Tango Ballad: By Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht

Tango Ballad was a duet featured in a Music Theatre Production in Threepenny Opera. The song was written by German composer Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht who is a German writer. Weill’s musical talent was recognised early during his teenage years. At twelve years of age he was composing concerts in a hall which was located above his family quarters. Weill’s also supported himself in a number of different musical occupations from playing the organ in a synagogue to teaching students in music theory.

Bertolt Brecht was acknowledged for being a poet and director as well as being a writer. Brecht had made and shaped theatre in such a unique way, it had a huge influence upon society during its development. Billingoton stated Brecht is the air we breathe, his structure of theatre has continued to have an influence upon audiences and many would suggest his style of directing has changed the face of modern theatre. However, Brecht did not approve of the idea of cathartic theatre, he argued that audiences would misplace (or lose) to judge a piece of theatre because they would become too emotionally attached to what was going on stage.

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He wanted audiences to remain objective so they would have the ability to make rational judgements about his work, otherwise the message would be lost. Therefore, he designed a new type of theatre to make the audience question and think about what they are watching; this was called ‘Epic Theatre’. A technique called Verfremdungseffekt was used to the audience would direct their attention to something new.

The scene would start, then something unexpected would commence and when the rhythm was suspended the audience would stop getting lost in the emotion of the characters and the storyline and start to think and question. This would help the audience be reminded; they were watching a play, so the technique would break the illusion of drama, the audience are constantly reminded the actors are communicating ideas and situations to them.

Tango Ballad refers to Macheth and Jenny who were formerly married, they recall their times of living in the house together. Macheth (who is violent pimp) is working towards tuning his illegal empire, into a business so he arranges for his wife to spend the night with another man in exchange for indemnity. Although, this causes their marriage to become strained leading them to divorce, they both criticise each other for the failed marriage. Before attempting to learn the song I was instructed by my teacher (Tristan) to use a technique called ‘Actioning’ I allocated each line of the song with a suitable verb that would express the underlying attention of the line; for instance “it was so sweet to his little spouse” [I loved you], “but when he drank too much I’d get kinda grim” [miserable]. Actioning allowed me to understand my character as well as how she was feeling for each line of the song. From the song, I acknowledged Jenny was unhappy in her marriage with Macheth. I did not have a partner, so I decided to have a solo performance. Even though I worked hard in trying to convey the emotions of the character some of the performance was improvised and besides this, I believe I prospered in my performance because I did not forget the words and I had good voice projection which demonstrated my confidence in singing.

One couple’s performance that particularly stood out for me was Chris and Jude. I noticed they put in hard work to memorise the lines. Also, both of their voices were in unison and were able to connect deeply to the lyrics, in addition to this able to translate the emotions of Jenny and Macheth well. They both demonstrated a professional level of competence on stage; they looked bold and were able to control the pace and flow of the performance.