Gestus ([ˈɡɛstʊs], from Latin meaning "gesture, attitude, carriage")[1] is an acting technique developed by the German theatre practitioner Bertold Brecht.
"Every emotion" when treated under the rubric of Gestus, Elizabeth Wright comments, "manifests itself as a set of social relations.
"[T]he choice of viewpoint is also a major element of the actor's art, and it has to be decided outside the theatre" Brecht writes in his "A Short Organum.
"[5] In this sense of the clarification and embodiment of a particular interpretative perspective, Gestus is related to Brecht's other important practical tool, the Fabel.
The post-Brechtian German theatre practitioner Heiner Müller (who ran Brecht's Berliner Ensemble for a short while) argues that "[r]eflecting the actions through the figures, mentally as well as emotionally, also has the character of citation.