Mother Courage and Her Children
by Bertolt Brecht
dir. Brittney Anderson
The Show
Mother Courage drags her cart across the battlefields of the Thirty Years War, profiteering from a conflict that destroys her children, one by one. It isn’t easy, starting a war, but nothing worthwhile is easy. Although some may pray for peace, Mother Courage knows war is like love, it always finds a way.
My Work
This production took Brecht’s Thirty Years War story and set it on the Occupy Wall Street movement. The players were all protesters who were putting on the story of Mother Courage. I worked closely with the director to solidify this concept providing textual evidence to support her choices. I also met with each actor individually to explain how their character in Brecht’s world functions in the Occupy movement and how that would affect their performance. I also created a packet that tracked the Occupy movement, the Thirty Years War, and explained Brecht’s ideologies so that the whole team could be on the same page.
