Mother Courage Live Notes

Holy crow, my notes make no sense. I need to stop jumping around

Brecht and Mother Courage and Her Children

• Thirty Years' War
• Went to experience the actual 'set'
• bones and skulls, just piled up... just... terrifying
• loaded into the bottom of a church?
• Meryl Streep: "This plain has seen so many wars... fought over... an interpretation of the bible"
• "Stripped open" "Theatre is forced to respond"
• Jeanine Tessori
• Costumes 'no specific historical moment' but it should be recognizable
• Kevin Kline (the Cook)
• "Maybe there's a way the world could change so that that wouldn't happen anymore?"
• "The harm they do"
• "He decided that it was his job to give himself up for someth... I missed the quote, darn it
• "It would just be a scream of pain"
• "Is that truth strong enough or bold enough to fill out this space?"
• "Her business must thrive to protect her family, but what she doesn't see is that protecting her business would destroy her family"
• "You don't think 'oh well serves you right Mother Courage' you think just, 'Oh my God' because you can see that..." - you can see the reasons behind everything
• Mother Courage, that's your son... oh my gosh, that poor woman... that's terrible, just... there are no words to express what Meryl Streep conveys with her presence
• Brecht interrogation: pretended he didn't speak English
• Brecht wrote most of his plays, including Mother Courage, in exile
• Many artists committed suicide because they were accused of being Communist (the Red Scare)
• Hollywood tin - Brecht left America the day after his testimony
• "Always looking for ways to have commentary in the action"
• "It's not virtue that pays in this world... but wickedness. Just how the world is. And it shouldn't be that way."
• "People use God"
• Brecht puts twists in the emotions
• "The Fatal Virtue" - tragic characters are supposed to be killed by a flaw, but with Brecht (and Shakespeare) they are killed by their virtues (which at one point, does become a flaw)
• He does not blame the characters
• It's not the characters that have to change - it's the society they're in
• Change the context in which these people make their decisions
• Duality is evident in his plays (characters, settings, situations)
• How abrupt is a director?
• "What attracts us to that which destroys us?"

Sophie's Choice (Meryl Streep + Kevin Kline)
Iron Weed (Meryl Streep + Jack Nickelson) - the crew thought she was dead

July 21, 2006

• Crisis in the Mideast: Enemy in Eye
• Partisan Divide in Iraq exceeds Vietnam
• END THE WAR
• DARN GOOD LIAR
• We, The People, SAY NO

Meryl Streep:

• "Someday, you should do this role"
• Readaloud vs. Actual Performance; similar yet different - a striking difference
• "I'm the voice of dead people, and I'm the one who interprets the lost songs."
• "Show me your new building and you show them the plumbing and the sewerline"
• Mother Courage - the scene where she denies the corpse is her son is so painful...
• Oh gosh, poor Mother Courage ;__;
• The Song of Great Capitulation is amazingly expressive; so discordant yet fits with the jovial melody... o...o
• Why she did she want to do this play: the lullaby
• in that moment, she is only a mother, saying "Why?" 

Barbara Brecht:

• "I had a very happy childhood"
• "I don't know how they managed it, but my parents made it seem like we lived in a very safe and happy world"
• "I was not even three when we fled the country"

Berlin - "It is a ghost city." "War has indeed come home to Germany, and the German people"

• Ruins... like the Wastes of Aethes
• German announcement of Mother Courage's debut
• "...gains nothing but stands to lose everything"