Pictures from Live Arts' Mother Courage (Charlottesville VA)

While I'm online today, I'd like to post some pictures from Live Arts' production of Mother Courage.  (Live Arts is a community theater group from Charlottesville, VA, and my sister-in-law and her husband are very much involved in this group.   )

Here is Mother Courage pulling her cart.

Mother Courage is selling a capon (or chicken) to the Cook.

Yvette sings a song about her affair with the Cook.

Mother Courage is doing brisk business at her canteen.
Yvette arrives with her husband who is going to buy Mother Courage's cart for her.

Am not sure which scenes these are:



Below looks to be the scene where Kattrin is killed.

Mother Courage sings a lullaby to her dead daughter.

Here you may see the stage where everything took place.

After Going to See Mother Courage!

At long last!  Today (6/7) I was able to see Mother Courage at the Clark Street Playhouse in Virginia.  I have wanted to see Brecht's play for a while.  My husband and I were actually supposed to go last Sunday, but the matinee was canceled...due to a bike race.  

The picture above is of Colleen Delany (Kattrin) and Nancy Robinette (Mother Courage).  By the way, the Post gave Ms. Robinette quite a rave review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303294.html

Here's a picture of the theater.  It is incredibly hard to find either on foot or by car, so it's no wonder that the bike race could cut off access to it.



The inside of this playhouse is just as funky, which fits Mother Courage, a play set on the battlefields of the Thirty Years War.  Also, Mother Courage is not intended to be a painfully historical or realistic play.  Even though it is set in the 17th century, historical and geographical details are not that important.  Mother Courage and her children might as well be on a treadmill as the years go by.   I would also say that Scena Theater's production was particularly austere.  Compare these two productions below.  The first is from a 2004 production that appeared in several cities in the UK and was set in modern-day Africa.  Another is from Cambridge (MA)'s American Repertory Theater.

 

However, an elaborate set or central idea is not always a sign of a fantastic production:

http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N11/Mother_Courage_.11a.html

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/00630946.htm

In Scena Theater's production that I saw, the play was staged on a concrete floor while the audience sat above in bleacher seats...ok...not quite bleacher seats.  The seats had backs.  The actors used all of the stage and more.  In fact, as the play began, the two army recruiters sat among the audience and spoke the first of their first lines there.  It was not until Mother Courage's sons Eiliff and Swiss Cheese pulled her cart out from the wings that the recruiters joined them on stage.  The cart was quite sizable, by the way.  It opened up so that Mother Courage and Kattrin could stand inside serving drinks in one scene.

Imagine the truck above without its engine and with a long pole with a long handle instead.

But what was it like to hear and see the actors performing the play?

I think that a performance of Mother Courage moves more quickly than one thinks if one has only read the play.  The scenes really fit together in performance.  Of course, this production showed information about each scene as well on screens well above the actors' heads.  However, watching the play, I saw how much the characters' situation changed and how much it remained the same.

Surprisingly, the songs did not jump out from this presentation, which detracted from more than one scene.  To compare, here is a link to Antaeus Theater's version of Mother Courage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0

Probably the actors at Antaeus were miked.  Or Scena's taped music overwhelmed the singing of the live actors.  Or the Clark Street Playhouse is a little too intimate, which discourages the actors from projecting.  Mother Courage has been performed in more formal settings as in the picture of the University of Denver's production from 1985 (see below).  I'm not sure which.  It may even help to carry a tambourine as the actors at Antaeus do.



A number of scenes play differently in real life.  The scene right before Kattrin's death is a lot less sentimental than I imagined it.  The peasant woman telling Kattrin to pray is basically telling her to get lost.  Nancy Robinette's Mother Courage also seems to love her children more than I imagined her to, which affects the scene in which she is bargaining for Swiss Cheese's life or when she is reunited with Eiliff or when she responds to the attack on Kattrin.

However, as this picture from Yale University's production shows, actors do represent Mother Courage as more emotional and less hard-bitten -- despite playwright Bertolt Brecht's strictures.



My impression of various characters changed as I saw them in performance.  Joe Baker's Eiliff seemed more hostile and less stiffly heroic.  Rashard Harrison's Swiss Cheese was more bumbling.  Of course, since she is mute, Kattrin's role enlarges in performance.  I was really surprised by how much she aged in this production.  At the beginning, she was very sprightly and childish, but by the end, she was quite weary and moved very slowly until of course she broke away from the peasants to beat the drum warning the villagers.  If I were to watch this or another company's performance, I would play closer attention to the actor playing Kattrin.   (I couldn't find another picture of Colleen Delany as Kattrin, but here is a picture of Hilary Burns, a British actor, in that same role.

I happened to see someone videotaping the production.  Perhaps some scenes will end up on YouTube.  They would be useful for someone wanting to see a professional yet less distracting version of Mother Courage.  I wish that I had been able to go to Charlottesville last year or to the American Repertory Theater back in 2001.

Study Guide for Drama & Theater (Spring 2008)

The picture above is from Oregon State University's 2005 version of A Doll's House.  Yes, yes, it is set in the 1950s...in Dallas, TX.  For more about this production, see the two links below:

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2005/May05/dollshouse.htm

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2005/05/13/Diversions/a.Dolls.House.To.Close.Osu.Theatre.Season-2293784.shtml

Drama – playscript, text, includes stage directions, playwright’s conception, playwright's intentions

Is it still worth studying a play that is no longer performed?

Theater – performance, central idea, director, actors, audience, set, costumes, sound;

elements of play: action or plot, character, setting, spectacle, mise-en-scene, thought/language, song and dance, (at times) translation

In the pictures above, Avery Brooks performs the roles of Willy Loman (stage--Oberlin College) and Othello (stage -- DC's Shakespeare Theater).

Avery Brooks – films tell stories; theater is a place to explore ideas

Aristotle – unities of time, place, action

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll’s House (1879) -- problem play; well-made play; realism; original version is in Norwegian; first version performed in US was in German; in German version, Helmer makes Nora look at the children she would be abandoning; Nora is the central figure; altering her character would change the whole purpose; Nora's relationship with Helmer; Nora's relationship with her children; we saw most of Patrick Garland's film of A Doll's House (1973 -- Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Richardson) as well as several scenes from Joseph Losey's film from the same year (1973 -- Jane Fonda, theater actor David Warner, Trevor Howard), Mabou Mines' production (tall women, very short men), and the Hunger Artists' version (set in the 1950s).

See this link for scenes from the 1973 version of A Doll's House starring Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwnBukRiRJI

See this link for the scenes of the other 1973 version starring Jane Fonda and David Warner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWM3PB0OI4s

See this link for the Mabou Mines version of A Doll's House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHn2FxLJOoI

The picture above is of Nora and Doctor Rank.

See this link for the Hunger Artists' 1950s version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb3CIsynKa4

Mother Courage – set during Thirty Years’ war, written at the beginning of WWII, Brecht already in exile, relationship of songs & plot,epic theater, alienation effect, how to portray Mother Courage, Mother Courage's children (Eilif, Swiss Cheese, Kattrin), Chaplain & Cook,

See this link for the Antaeus Theater Company's trailer.  However, the picture above is from Live Arts' recent production in Charlottesville, VA.

Anteus Company's MC -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0

See this link for more images of Mother Courage in performance.  Several are of Helene Weigel, Brecht's wife (the woman above).

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYcpY7P0qcc

More Mother Courage

Here, in fact, are a few more videos of recent productions. The first was at William and Mary.  (The picture above is from this college production.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeYwFzBNk2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC7senNIlyo



The second is the production that starred Meryl Streep. Tony Kushner did the translation of Brecht's play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mz5I1LmLLw&feature=related



Another is by the Antaeus Theater Company, a professional theater company from LA. It includes many of the songs from Mother Courage so that you may see them acted out.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find a picture from this production!  Below is a picture from rehearsal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0






Here is a YouTube video on Brecht's life and works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu_jOEAwQ6Q

The picture is from USC's site on Brecht.

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 1 (drama)

This study guide for drama & theater will cover A Doll's House, Mother Courage, and The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The Taming of the Shrew will be included in our film unit.  The Japanese play Shintoku-Maru and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean will not be included on the final--unless you'd like to mention them in the extra credit section! 

The picture above is from the now defunct Boston Shakespeare Company's 1984 production that starred the 4'9" actor Linda Hunt as Mother Courage.  One of my former professors has argued that Ms. Hunt's Mother Courage is among the best portrayals of that role (other than Helene Weigel's, of course!).  Below is an undated picture of Ms. Weigel in this role:


I've also highlighted the midterm study guide because that entry contains information about the difference between drama and theater *and* some historical background about A Doll's House.

To begin with...here is a review of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's "problem play" from 1879.  It was originally written in Norwegian although it was soon translated into other languages including English.  At the time it was first performed, A Doll's House was controversial, especially because of its ending!  The play is set at Christmastime in Norway (Oslo?).  The characters are Nora Helmer, a youngish woman whom no one takes seriously; her husband, Torvald, a lawyer who has finally been hired to manage the National Bank; Krogstad, a bank employee who has lent Nora money and whom Torvald is about to fire; Mrs. Linde, Nora's school friend who is about to be hired by Torvald; and Doctor Rank, a dying friend of the family who confesses his love for Nora.  Nora and Torvald have three children.  Nora borrowed money so that Torvald (who was then ill) could travel to Italy's warmer climate.  However, as Torvald refused to borrow money, she forged her dying father's signature so that she could borrow money from Krogstad.  (In the 19th century, a woman could not borrow money on her own; furthermore, very much unlike today, her husband was generally awarded custody of their children--if their marriage dissolved.)  The play begins as Krogstad threatens to blackmail Nora.

The 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht's work can be considered in opposition to the previous generation's plays (like A Doll's House) that are well-made, are very much suited to the proscenium stage with its fourth wall, and have consistent characters with back stories and motivation that we can discuss.  (Note that Ibsen's advocates in English included the failed playwright and ground-breaking novelist Henry James.)  On the other hand, Mother Courage takes place over twelve years (1624 to 1636) as Anna Fierling (aka Mother Courage) tries to hold her family together and profit from the war, selling food, drink, clothes, and ammunition to both sides.  At one point, as the Catholics overcome the Protestant forces, Mother Courage, her family, and their hangers-on change religions.  Mother Courage's family is made up of Eilif, who joins the Protestant army despite her protests; Swiss Cheese, who is killed while his mother haggles over the means to pay a bribe; and Katrin, the mute daughter who is raped and later sacrifices herself to warn villagers of an approaching army.  The hangers-on include Mother Courage's two suitors, a Protestant chaplain and a cook (who tries to convince her to abandon war profiteering and help him run a tavern in Utrecht, away from the battlefield), and Yvette, a prostitute whose red shoes are stolen by Katrin.  Mother Courage and Her Children (the full name of the play) was written in 1939 when the playwright was in exile from Nazi Germany.  (Brecht was a Communist and known for his politicized theater.)  Ideally, the audience is discouraged from sympathizing with Mother Courage and the other characters, and actors are expected to be critical observers of their characters' actions.  Practically, this approach may have made this play difficult to stage although this is probably not the only factor.  Other plays by Brecht include The Threepenny Opera and The Good Woman of Setzuan.  As in The Threepenny Opera, the characters of Mother Courage (except for Katrin, of course) often break into songs intended to comment on the play's action.  Can you imagine Nora and Torvald breaking into song like that?!  OTOH, as I mentioned in class, an actor who has done well with roles like Chicago's Mama Morton, Velma, or Roxie probably could do well with the role of Mother Courage!

With the unit's final play, The Love Suicides at Amijima, we move back in time to 1720 and to a very different theater.  The playwright Chikamatzu Monzaemon wrote this play for the bunraku theater, a Japanese theater that relies on puppets and a chanting narrator.  However, as has been noted, the play was also performed in the kabuki theater by human (male) actors.  From 1629 until very recently, women were not allowed to act in kabuki.  The Love Suicides at Amijima tells the story of Koharu, a young prostitute, and her lover Jihei, a married man, youngish father, and struggling paper merchant.  Because they cannot be together, the lovers commit suicide at a Buddhist temple.  Jihei's wife (and cousin) Osan is surprisingly accepting of her husband's involvement with Koharu, but her family tries to break up the love affair.  At one point, Jihei's brother disguises himself as a samurai and pretends to be Koharu's customer. 

Here is a picture of The Love Suicides at Amijima

  The picture below is a close-up of bunraku, a puppet theater for which The Love Suicides at Amijira was originally written:
  Below is a picture of images from Kabuki theater:

Scenes from Mother Courage By Brecht

I thought that I would put together an entry linking to various videos of Mother Courage.  They will have to do until someone decides to film this play or I decide to spring for a DVD from Germany.  First, though, here is a review of the production pictured above:

http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/mother-courage_1106.htm

Here is a quick scene from an Illinois' high school's production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S5XZgV2Hd0

This production is by "Theater Bayside":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Y-icyZFZg

This video of "The Death of Kattrin" is short, but the scenery looks more professional:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwa_Z2iQP00

Villanova University's Theater Department has a slide show of its production of Mother Courage and a video of the set and costume designers at work:

http://villanovatheatretalk.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

I am desperate, so I am going to add some reviews with extensive pictures and/or description!

See this links for pictures from Rutgers-NJIT's production:

http://theatre.njit.edu/pictures.php?d=mothercourage&n=MOTHER%20COURAGE%20AND%20HER%20CHILDREN

Minneapolis'  Frank Theater has done Mother Courage recently.  For once, the play is reviewed glowingly!  See the second link for an interview with Wendy Knox, the founder of this theater:

 http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/minn/minn171.html

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/10/20/wendyknox/

In 2003, a theater company in the UK put on a production with disabled actors:

http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2003-02/mothercourage.htm

A year later, The Eclipse Theater Company toured the UK with its version of Mother Courage translated by Afro-British playwright Oladipo Agboluaje.  In this version, Mother Courage is set in modern-day West Africa.  For more details, see these links:

http://www.eclipsetheatre.org.uk/mcahc.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northamptonshire/stage/2004/mother_courage.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/going_out/on_stage/2004/03/mother_courage/preview.shtml

http://www.theatrevoice.com/listen_now/player/?audioID=483


These reviews from Pittsburgh and San Diego may explain why I am desperate!

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A24565

http://www.sandiego.com/option,com_sdca/target,9e394025-6005-4bb4-b426-15f018d60a0d/

More on Brecht

  The picture above is from the recent production of Threepenny Opera (the most famous play by Brecht) with Cyndi Lauper and Nellie McKay.  Here is the video preview for that production--direct from You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A3CR5K8-ys

YouTube also has audio recordings of Lotte Lenya's versions of songs from the Threepenny Opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo7LpEkkAk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V_iLXkx1Uo

Bertolt Brecht sings here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXJ3OXWaOY

Although I've posted this blog from the dramaturg of Villanova's production of Mother Courage, I think that it's worth reposting for the information about Brecht:

http://villanovatheatretalk.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

I've posted this article on epic theater and Brecht's biography elsewhere as well, but I'm sure that you'll find it useful here:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_bio.html

Deustche Welle, the German broadcasting service, has put together a picture gallery on Brecht and his work.  One picture is of Helene Weigel, his second wife and the most outstanding Mother Courage:

http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_imagegalerie/0,2172,2128266_page_1_lang_2,00.html

Here is a biography of Ms. Weigel.  Again, she is pictured as Mother Courage although she portrayed many other roles in her husband's plays.

http://www.artsalive.ca/en/thf/histoire/comediens.html#weigel

Brecht spent some time in the US while he was in exile from Germany.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2125885,00.html

Here is an article about the Brecht-Weigel House in East Berlin.  It includes some information about Ms. Weigel's work after her husband's death when she led the Berliner Ensemble, the theater company that they had founded together.

http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/chnn/CHNN17HOU.html

In 2001, a movie was made about a day in Brecht's life:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,531391,00.html

Let's finish with some articles on Brecht's influence on later theater.  The first is from Brandeis University's production of The Good Woman of Setzuan.

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_influence.html

The next is from Deutsche Welle:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2127719,00.html

Prof. Edward Isser of the College of the Holy Cross discusses Brechtian influence on the performance of Shakespeare!

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/theatre/eisser/BrechtianShakespeare.html

Mother Courage and Her Children

After reading an article like this, how could I not add Ibsen & Brecht's plays to our reading list for EN 202?

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34341

But why are these theater critics so concerned about DC theaters' restricting themselves to English-language playwrights and their works?  Why do they want local theaters to produce works by playwrights like Ibsen, Brecht, or, more importantly, those active in Eastern Europe, Latin America, or the Middle East?

Let's start with this biography of Brecht with its overview of his career and his approach to theater.  Note that he was reacting against an emotional, realistic theater and striving for one that was more politically and intellectually engaged.  Note as well that Mother Courage and Her Children comes out of the period of time leading up to WWII.  At that point, Brecht had already escaped from Nazi Germany.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brecht.htm

Brandeis University has reprinted this article on Brecht's epic theater, which explains his approach in more detail:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

For more information about Brechtian theater, see this set of pages from the University of Southern Australia.  In fact, the link will go to a table of contents, making for a more efficient blog entry. 

http://www.usq.edu.au/performancecentre/education/goodwomanofszechwan/brechtandtheatre.htm

This site from Cambridge's American Repertory Theater includes a brief summary of the play as well as a cast list and photographs:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage.html

More importantly, here is a link to Gideon Lester's history of the play's successful (and unsuccessful) performances:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage2.html

ART's production is reviewed here:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/00630946.htm

Here is a review of the Steppenwolf Theater's production from about the same time:

http://www.artscope.net/PAREVIEWS/mothercourage101801.shtml

Recently, the playwright Tony Kushner translated Brecht's play into English for the production pictured at the top of this entry:

http://www.hotreview.org/articles/tonykushneronmc.htm

Peter Marks reviewed this production (in NYC) for the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201436.html

The theater company that Brecht himself founded, The Berliner Ensemble, performed Mother Courage at a festival in Iran:

http://iranfacts.blogspot.com/2008/02/mother-courage-and-her-children-brecht.html

Ah, here are some posts about Mother Courage in Charlottesville!

http://cvillemuse.com/2008/04/02/mother-courage-and-her-children/

http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/entertainment/theatre_arts/article/mother_putting_cart_before_her_heart/7717/

The URL below links to a podcast interview with the production's director:

http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2008/03/27/mother-courage-and-her-children/

And here is a picture from the production in Charlottesville.