11: lecture notes for Mother Courage intro.

1. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1955); German political playwright, exiled in 1933

2. Brecht: ‘How can theatre be entertaining and at the same time instructive? How can it be taken out of the traffic in intellectual drugs and transformed from a place of illusion to a place of insight?’

3.Epic, non-Aristotelian or dialectic theatre

4. alienation effects :

• titles


• fragmentation of scenes


• music


• staging: minimalist, but with the texture of reality


• language


• acting style

5. Brecht: ‘What is a performance of Mother Courage & Her Children primarily meant to show?
That in wartime big profits are not made by little people. That war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes the human virtues fatal even to their possessors. That no sacrifice is too great for the struggle against war.’ (xvii)

6. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648):
Imperial Catholic Germanic states
vs.
Protestant Germanic / Scandinavian states

7. Philosophical position of communism

• dialectic


• minimalism of individuality


• need for action