Why Mother Courage Now?
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Considering our current world situation, there's no doubt we need to do Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children now, as this play is an anti-war masterpiece. However, I want to give you more specific context about why I chose to work on this play. Last year before the Ukraine war started, we struggled with Covid-19. Unfortunately, we have seen some people conducting business and "living off" the needed medical product for Covid: masks, alcohol, and even vaccines. The prices were significantly higher than the original price because of the shortage in the market and to make a great profit from the misery of the poor.
After witnessing these things happen, I can see that the way people do business like this during miserable times was a consequence of both greed and need. Some people just want to be more prosperous, while others have no choice but to do what is required to survive these difficult times. And that was when this play came to my mind. It's true that Anna Fierling lives off war and her goods. But it’s important to consider what makes her do this: war, poverty, classism, inequality, and other injustices. The important question to me is what we are going to do about it. And this is not a simple question to answer.
Directing this play, I see myself in the peasants and Kattrin later in the play when the soldiers invade the town at night. I'm aware that something terrible is happening and will worsen, but I don't have all the answers to how to fix these problems. I appreciate you coming to witness this story tonight with me and to reflect on what we can do about the injustices in our world. I hope our production will be as impactful as Kattrin's drum roll.
-Sanhawich Meateanuwat
สัณหวิชญ์ เมธีอนุวัตร
DRAMATURGY NOTE
Many scholars and critics have noted how Mother Courage- likely Bertolt Brecht’s most famous play- uses the Thirty Year’s War (1618-1648) as an allusion to the events of “The Great War” (World War I). Both were politically confusing; both marked a passage from one era in European history to another; but above all, both were needlessly destructive, especially seen from the German perspective. For these reasons, Mother Courage is often described as a quintessentially “anti-war” play.
To be sure, Brecht was certainly anti-War. His commitment to pacifism predated any other political commitments he came to be associated with. Brecht was always interested in how War made demands of individuals that they either willingly or blindly fulfilled. One of his early poems, “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” speaks of a dead German solider in WWI that was reanimated, like a zombie, and sent back to combat because the War wasn’t ready for him to die just yet; his 1926 play Man Equals Man concerns the reconstitution of a civilian, Galy Gay, into the prototype of a soldier.
What sets Mother Courage apart from his earlier statements on War is that Mother Courage draws a link between War and the marketplace. Brecht depicts War as a heightened version of market functions, and market functions as a sublimated version of War. But they are not only mirror images of each other- they mutually reinforce each other. The War would not survive without Mother Courage; Mother Courage would not survive without the War.
If this is true, then Mother Courage is not only “anti-War”; it is also anti-Market. In our own time, we still recognize economic imperatives as conduits for War. This line of critique was raised in opposition to the Vietnam War, later in the War on Terror.
It is less important to properly categorize Mother Courage into a formal genre than to take its lessons to heart; that War is materially and psychologically damaging, morally indefensible, and that an end to War would have to start at its source- Economics.
-Thomas Brown, Dramaturg
SPECIAL THANKS
We would like to deeply thank those who have contributed in translating and reading the placards of Mother Courage into a variety of languages from international cultures. It was important to us to emphasize the global dimensions of war, and we truly could not have done it without you all. Thank you- it makes a world of difference.
Scene 1- Anishinaabemowin translation by Margaret O'Donnell Noodin and Michael Zimmerman, Jr. Read by Shannon Epplett.
Scene 2- Yoruba translation by Janet Ademilua. Read by Abiodun Ademilua.
Scene 3- French translation and reading by Jenefas Okonma.
Scene 4- Persian translation and reading by Shahrzad Hamzeh.
Scene 5- Chinese translation and reading by Dr. Li Zeng.
Scene 6- Polish translation and reading by Elise Surzyn.
Scene 8- Spanish translation and reading by Keyla Marie Soto Pabon.
Scene 9- German reading by LeAndra Pund.
Scene 11- Portuguese translation and reading by Gustavo Nery.