Daniel, Michael. Meryl As ‘Mother Courage’. CBSNews. CBSNews, 3 Sept. 2006. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.
The behind-the-scenes documentary, Theater of War, exhibits how the production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage follows the principles that define epic theater. As Brecht’s old assistant director stated, plays are exhibited in “very definite short moments” and “many scenes are sequences of short narratives, sometimes connected and sometimes not even connected completely…like a montage”. This is one of the key facets of epic theater which is seen in Mother Courage and in its production. The documentary is divided into five acts which are loosely connected and episodic in structure. Within each act, the scenes shift from showing backstage processes to pictures/sound bits from war to newspaper headlines and protests. For example, Scene 3 drifts in and out of real life shots of war images such as those of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb to showing the rehearsal of the play in 2006 to the black and white shots of the play in Germany. This structure prevents the audience from identifying with the individuals on the screen or the scenes shown. Images of war are interrupted by the production process which forces the audience to evaluate with reason rather than become immersed in their emotional resonance with what is on the screen. Additionally, the documentary captures characters addressing the audience, like in Scene 1, the actor looks at and speaks to the audience while setting up the opening scene of the play. By addressing the audience, the play is inducing the audience to realize that they’re watching a play instead of immersing them in the illusion that it is real life. There are certain points in the documentary that highlight the emotional turmoil of Mother Courage and show personal accounts of individuals such as Barbara Brecht, which are likely to invoke emotion amongst the audience. This does not follow the principles of epic theater. However, the shift to a new act reminds the audience that this is a documentation, which detaches them and brings forth the question Brecht wants us to think about with reason: What is it that ties us to the behaviors that end up destroying us?
Image: A scene is exhibited from the original production of Mother Courage.
Works Cited:
Theater of War. Dir. John W. Walter. Perf. Meryl Steep. 2008. Documentary.
War: Through the Eyes of Humans 