Mother Courage and Her Children

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Mother Courage and Her Children

• Bertolt Brecht

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Background Information

• The play was written in 1939 during Brechts
  exile.
• It was first published in 1941
• Genre Epic Theater, social drama
• Original Language German
• Narrator None

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• Climax As a work of epic theater, MC does not
  adhere to the Aristotelian model of plot and thus
  does not involve a structure of rising and
  falling action and climax. In some sense, each
  scene exists for itself.
• Protagonists MC, Kattrin, Swiss Cheese, and
  Chaplain
• Setting The Thirty Years War ( Spring
  1624-January 1636)
• Point of View P of V is not located as there it
  no narrator figure

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• What is Epic Theater?
• Epic theater, also known as theater of
• Alienation or theater of politics, is a theater
• movement arising in the early to mid-20th
• century. Though many of the concepts
• involved in epic theater had been around for
• years, even centuries, Brecht unified them,
• developed the style, and popularized it. It is
• sometimes referred to as Brechtian acting,
• although its principles apply equally to the
• writing and production of plays. Brecht later
• favored the term dialectic theater, to
• emphasize the element of argument and discussion.

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• Goals of Epic Theater
• Epic theater assumes that the purpose of a play,
  more than entertainment or the imitation of
  reality, is to present ideas and invite the
  audience to make judgments on them. Characters
  are not intended to mimic real people, but to
  represent opposing sides of an argument,
  archetypes, or stereotypes. The audience should
  always be aware that it is watching a play, and
  should remain at an emotional distance from the
  action Brecht described this ideal as the
  Verfremdungseffekt variously translated as
  "alienation effect", "defamiliarization effect",
  or "estrangement effect".

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• This was largely a reaction against other popular
  forms of theater, particularly the realistic
  drama. Brecht disliked the shallow spectacle,
  manipulative plots, and heightened emotion of
  melodrama. The social/political focus of epic
  theater was also a departure from the radical
  theories of Antonin Artaud, who sought to affect
  audiences on an entirely non-rational level.

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• Techniques
• Common production techniques in epic theater
  include simplified, non-realistic set designs,
  announcements or visual captions that interrupt
  and summarize the action, and music that
  conflicts ironically with the expected emotional
  effect. Brecht used comedy to distance his
  audiences from emotional or serious events and
  was heavily influenced by musicals and fairground
  performers, incorporating music and song in his
  plays.

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• Acting
• in epic theater requires actors to play
  characters believably without convincing either
  the audience or themselves that they are truly
  the characters. Actors play multiple roles.
  Brecht thought it was important that the choices
  the characters often address the audience
  directly out of character made were evident, and
  tried to develop a style of acting wherein it was
  evident that the characters were choosing one
  action over another. For example, a character
  could say, "I could have stayed at home, but
  instead I went to the shops."
• .

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• An acting term coined by Brecht is the Gestus a
  physical attitude or gesture that represents the
  character's condition independent of the text.
  This was based on Brecht's observation of Chinese
  acting he noted that when the actor Mei Lan Fang
  acted a part which required his character to be
  frightened, he merely put a lock of his hair into
  his mouth and everyone in the audience knew that
  the character was scared, though the actor
  remained completely calm throughout the
  performance. With a Gestus that clearly defines
  the character's attitude, the actor stays
  distanced from the play and therefore avoids any
  undue emotionality

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• This is what Bertolt Brecht wrote about his
  concept of the Epic Theater . . .
• This is no place to explain how the opposition of
  epic and dramatic lost its rigidity after having
  long been held to be irreconcilable. Let us just
  point out that the technical advances alone were
  enough to permit the stage to incorporate an
  element of narrative in its dramatic productions.
  The possibility of projections, the greater
  adaptability of the stage due to mechanization,
  the film, all completed the theater's equipment,
  and did so at a point where the most important
  transactions between people could no longer be
  shown simply by personifying the motive forces or
  subjecting the characters to invisible
  metaphysical powers.

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• The stage began to tell a story. The narrator
  was no longer missing. Not only did the
  background adopt an attitude to the events on the
  stage--by big screens recalling other
  simultaneous events elsewhere, by projecting
  documents which confirmed or contradicted what
  the characters said, by concrete and intelligible
  figures to accompany abstract conversations, by
  figures and sentences to support mimed
  transactions whose sense was unclear--but the
  actors too refrained from going over wholly into
  their role, remaining detached from the character
  they were playing and clearly inviting criticism
  of him.

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• The spectator was no longer in any way allowed to
  submit to an experience uncritically (and without
  practical consequences) by means of simple
  empathy with the characters in a play. The
  production took the subject matter and the
  incidents shown and put them through a process of
  alienation the alienation that is necessary to
  all understanding. When something seems "the most
  obvious thing in the world" it means that any
  attempt to understand the world has been given
  up.

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• The dramatic theater's spectator says Yes, I
  have felt
• like that too-- Just like me--It's only natural--
  It'll never
• change--The sufferings of this man appall me,
• because they are inescapable--That's great art
  it all
• seems the most obvious thing in the world--I weep
  
• when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.
• The epic theater's spectator says I'd never have
  
• thought it -- That's not the way -- That's
  extraordinary,
• hardly believable -- It's got to stop -- The
  sufferings of
• this man appall me, because they are unnecessary
  
• That's great art nothing obvious in it -- I
  laugh when
• they weep, I weep when they laugh.

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Characters in Mother Courage

• Mother Courage
• Kattrin
• Eilif
• Swiss Cheese
• Recruiting Officer
• Sergeant
• Cook
• Swedish commander
• Old Woman
• Voice
• Peasants

• Chaplain
• Ordnance Officer
• Yvette Pottier
• Old Colonel
• Clerk
• Young Soldier
• Peasant
• Peasant Woman
• Young Man
• Lieutenant