Engaging with Brecht: Making Theatre in the Twenty-first Century [1 ed.] 3031203933, 9783031203930

Citation preview

Engaging with Brecht Making Theatre in the 21st Century

Bill Gelber

Engaging with Brecht

Bill Gelber

Engaging with Brecht Making Theatre in the Twenty-first Century

Bill Gelber School of Theatre and Dance Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-20393-0    ISBN 978-3-031-20394-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to… David Barnett, Laura Bradley, Steve Giles, Paula Hanssen, Tom Kuhn, Meg Mumford, Ann Shanahan, Marc Silberman, Anthony Squiers, and David Zoob, incredible Brecht scholars and associates for their advice about all matters Brecht—with the caveat that any mistakes found in this book are my own. Brian Bell, great friend, host, and advisor. The late Dr. Carl Weber, Professor Emeritus of Directing at Stanford University. Many years ago, when I was at a low point in my university career, he read my work and told me I was on the right track. Like many of his admirers, I am forever grateful for his generosity. Angela (Friedlich) Schirmer and Andreas Schirmer, dear friends and hosts during my development leave in Berlin: Vielen Dank für Alles! Dean Noel Zahler and the J. T. and Margaret Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts for major sources of funding, including the Dean’s Advancing Creative Research Scholarship Award that allowed me to continue my studies overseas. The Office of the Vice President of Research at Texas Tech University, for a 2019 Catalyst Grant for overseas research. Mark Charney, Director of the School of Theatre and Dance at Texas Tech, for his constant support and guidance. All of the amazing graduate students from my Advanced Scene Study classes at Texas Tech University, who put my ideas into practice.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The cast, crew and production team of Texas Tech University’s Mother Courage and Her Children (2015) for an amazing experience. Our production lies at the heart of this book. Kelly Parker, Bethany Crosby, and Kirk Davidson, for always being in my corner. Andrea Bilkey, Mrs. Hilda Hoffman, Anett Schubotz and Erdmut Wizisla at the Brecht Archive, Silka Quintero at Granger Historical Picture Archive, and Sherri Jackson at Bridgeman Images USA for permission to use the images in this book. The Director of the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin, Dr. Erdmut Wizisla, and his staff, Dorothee Anders, Anett Schubotz, Helgrid Streit, and Iliane Theilmann. Their invaluable help and kindness during my visits there were, for many reasons, life-changing. My family: My sons Devon, Alex, and James: I couldn’t be prouder of you. And always: Debbie, my guiding light.

Contents

1 Why Engage with Brecht?  1 2 F  ive Productions of Mother Courage: 1941, 1949, 1950, 1951, and 2015 25 3 Collaborative Analysis 49 4 The Design Team, Meta-theatricality, and Literarization 73 5 First Rehearsal: Tools for Actors, Status, and Haltung 97 6 Rehearsing the Actors I: Arrangement119 7 Rehearsing the Actors II: Moment to ­Moment143 8 Rehearsing the Actors III: Playing the Events169 9 Documenting the Work: The Model Book193 10 Responses and Future Work215

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Contents

Appendix 1: Mother Courage Fabel Spring 2015235 Appendix 2: Working on a Scene with Stanislavsky and Brecht247 Bibliography255 Index265

List of Images

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Mother Courage and Her Children rehearsal with Brecht, Helene Weigel (as Courage), Erwin Geschonneck (as Chaplain), and Angelika Hurwitz (as Kattrin), Berliner Ensemble 1951. (Photo: Hainer Hill) 35 Collaboration in Brecht’s apartment: Paul Samson-Körner (at piano), Brecht (standing), Edmund Meisel, Hermann Borchardt, Hannes Küpper, and Elisabeth Hauptmann; Berlin, Spichernstraße 16, 1927. Photo: Bilderdienst des Deutschen Verlags51 The Actors Take Positions Before Lights Rise. This happens before Scene 5, during the Siege of Magdeburg. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 78 The cast of Mother Courage with Travis Clark’s paintings flown in for the curtain call. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 79 The setting for Scene 5 with the actors and artwork in place. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 81 Scene 3: Just before Swiss Cheese is executed, a rendition of the Goya painting, “The Third of May,” is flown in. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 83 Scene 8: The Introduction of a painting representing Eddie Adams’s 1968 photo, foreshadowing the death of Eilif. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 84 Scene 11: When Kattrin is shot, the painting of Käthe Kollwitz’s woodcut Hunger falls on the roof of the barn, covering her body. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 84

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List of Images

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The Foley table is clearly visible to the audience just right of the proscenium during the production of Mother Courage in 2015. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 85 The crew resets for the next scene of Mother Courage in 2015. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 86 Scene 8: The Chaplain and the Cook reminisce together during a ceasefire much the worse for wear. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)87 Scene 9: The band for Mother Courage in 2015, to the right of the proscenium and clearly visible to the audience. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 90 Scene 4: Kelsey Fisher-Waits in the Haltung that defined her Figure. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 114 The old friends finally work together again: Brecht and Caspar Neher in Zurich 1948. (Photograph: Ruth Berlau) 122 Rehearsal Arrangement for Mother Courage 2015 at TTU. Scene 8, in which Yvette confronts the Cook while the Chaplain, Mother Courage, and Yvette’s servant look on. Original Title: “Putting Pieter in His Place.” (Rehearsal Photo: Bill Gelber) 126 The same moment from Scene 8 of the 2015 TTU production but in its final form at the final dress rehearsal. Note that Courage is now between the Cook and Yvette, further enjoying the confrontation. The servant doesn’t feel it is his place to watch. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey) 126 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” c. 1588 (oil on canvas) (Bridgeman Images) 128

CHAPTER 1

Why Engage with Brecht?

In a historical situation that threatens critical thinkers and devalues strategies of critique, we need models of oppositional voices, lest we forget the necessity of protest. Brecht is such a model.1

In this volume, I record a process of applying a pedagogy of engagement with Bertolt Brecht, taking advantage of the most current scholarship, for an empirical study of Brecht in performance at higher institutes of learning, specifically in the School of Theatre and Dance at Texas Tech University, with graduate and undergraduate students. Brecht still has much to offer the theatre practitioner, particularly at a time when events of the twenty-first century cry out for a studied means of producing theatre for social change, to examine our own history from the vantage of previous histories and seek a process in which change is possible. Practitioners of Applied Theatre, who seek change by engaging with local communities to create works for and with them, in diverse venues ranging from schools to prisons, continue to take up this challenge, invoking Brecht’s name as their inspiration and adapting his methods to their own, citing his “rich legacy” which “underpins much of the story-based 1  Marc Silberman, “Brecht was a Revolutionary,” Jacobin, February 4, 2019, https:// jacobinmag.com/2019/04/bertolt-brecht-marxist-culture-politics-estrangement.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_1

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work of a wide variety of applied theatre practitioners.”2 While scholars in this century continue to examine and explicate, enumerating the various permutations of Brecht’s theory and praxis as they evolved during his lifetime, my project is a step-by-step process to realize Brecht’s ways of working in the classroom, rehearsal hall, and onstage using my own production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children as a model for exploration with side trips into my class work. Though Bertolt Brecht instituted practices that have viability today, I have not strictly adhered to Brecht’s methodology but have taken his work in new directions, recognizing the need to adapt his ideas to a pedagogical model that further explicates his theory and praxis for students and practitioners who are either unfamiliar with his intentions or have a surface view of them. Nor have I insisted on promoting a Marxist view of the world, the spur for Brecht’s work. What I want to stress throughout this book is the usefulness of Brecht’s examination of control narratives influencing the behaviors and thought patterns of people in society and the way they are reflected in theatrical works of art. Whether as instructor or director, where engagement with play texts involves a study of the environment from which they have sprung, I question our previous beliefs about how theatre is fashioned, sometimes rejecting and sometimes retaining what we know about how to reveal meaning onstage as we engage with the work of Bertolt Brecht. Bertolt Brecht is undisputed as the greatest German playwright and poet of the twentieth century, a germinal figure of theoretical and practical views on performance. In some ways, his work on theatre is now so ubiquitous as to be unattributed. Brecht was ahead of his time: his use of multi-media, his emphasis on critical engagement by the audience, his insistence on a form of semiotics for staging purposes, his dramaturgy of reflection, are now basic tools of exploration, realization, and examination of a theatre piece in process. In specific instances, he is misinterpreted, his famous staging techniques appropriated in a mistaken view that minimizes his contributions, relegating them to the realm of meta-theatrical means without method, such devices as the famous half-curtain considered cliché even in his own time, while his role as dramatist is consigned to master storyteller, with his political intentions downplayed as relics of a bygone era.

2  Tim Prentki, “Introduction to poetics of representation,” in Tim Prentki and Nicola Abraham, eds., The Applied Theatre Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009), 21.

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In some ways, this obscurantism is understandable. Brecht himself admitted in 1953, “It’s my own fault. [Accounts about his work] apply not to the theatre I practice but the theatre my critics read into my own theoretical writing.”3 He felt it necessary to continually revise his explanations as he found himself misunderstood, even by those who championed him. In “From a Letter to an Actor,” he opined, “I then feel as a mathematician would if he reads: Dear Sir, I am wholly of your opinion that two and two make five.”4 His disappointment would continue unabated today if he had the opportunity to read the various ways his name is still invoked predominantly as a proponent of devices which are disconnected from the primary goal for which those strategies were used, Brecht’s attempts to create critical thinking in the audience by disrupting the sense of a narrative which immerses them completely in the events, encouraging the spectator to take a role in changing society. At the same time, he knew he could only offer his spectators suggestions as to how to act, asking them questions rather than providing them with answers. To begin with, Bertolt Brecht’s work cannot be understood without knowledge of his political views: his embrace of Marxism and his complicated relationship with the Communist party. He had begun to study the writings of Vladimir Lenin in 1926, which he admired both for Lenin’s writing style and for his insights. The words hanging on a beam in his house in Svendborg during his first years in exile, and constituting a driving principle behind Brecht’s work, were a saying in Lenin’s writings adapted from Hegel, “The truth is concrete.”5 According to Carl Weber, Brecht “didn’t show any obvious interest in Marxism and/or communist politics until 1926, when he was approaching his twenty-ninth birthday.”6 This occurred as Brecht researched the workings of the Wheat Exchange in Chicago for his play Joe Fleischhacker 3  Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Performance, eds. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles, and Marc Silberman, trans. Charlotte Ryland, Romy Fursland, Steve Giles, Tom Kuhn, and John Willett (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 251. Hereafter BOP. 4  Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre. 3rd ed., eds. Marc Silberman, Steve Giles, and Tom Kuhn (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 267. Hereafter BOT. 5  In his essay, “One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back,” Vladimir Lenin is summarizing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s dialectics, within which we find: “There is no such thing as abstract truth. Truth is always concrete.” Quoted in John J.  White, Bertolt Brecht’s Dramatic Theory (New York: Camden House, 2004), 219–220. 6  Carl Weber, “Brecht and Communism” from Brecht Unbound, eds. James K. Lyon and Hans-Peter Breuer (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995).19.

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and discovered an issue: “I got the impression that these processes simply could not be explained, in other words were not rationally comprehensible.”7 He then sought the answers to his confusion in the works of Karl Marx. Once Brecht read portions of Marx’s Capital, he not only saw the system at work in Chicago, but he discovered a new sounding board upon which to pitch his ideas, a powerful, albeit a conceptual one: “This man Marx was the only spectator for my plays whom I had ever seen.”8 In particular, Brecht pointed to Karl Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach and wrote, “I wanted to take the principle that it was not just a matter of interpreting the world but of changing it, and apply that to theatre.”9 Brecht’s sense of how the world worked was a key to understanding his unique contributions: theatre practice was an essential means of combating the unfortunate effects of a bourgeois society promoting its agenda as the status quo; instead Brecht, leading an audience towards a critique of a world they took for granted, had hopes for the creation of a socialist society. He believed theatre could be an agent for change, a vehicle for opening the eyes of the spectator to the possibilities for a future society by pointing out the flaws of the current social environment rendered by the people in power as the natural and unchangeable order of things. This was because he believed people’s consciousness was determined by their social existence, rather than the reverse.10 Anthony Squiers explained how Brecht sought to “force people to conclude that humans are largely responsible for the construction of their ideological and material reality and that they are therefore not bound to how things are presently.”11 Brecht could apply a specific political lens, Marxism, to encourage such a view on the part of the spectator and use methods to produce this cognitive uncertainty or, as will be discussed later in this chapter, create what he called the Verfremdungseffekt. His became a visceral response to the governmental policies of the Weimar Republic, during a tumultuous period for politics in Germany. In 1929, Bertolt Brecht was watching the May Day demonstration in Berlin  Klaus Völker, Brecht: A Biography (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), 110.  Völker, Brecht: A Biography, 110–111. 9  BOT 248. 10  See “Katzgraben Notes 1953,” in BOP 274. 11   Anthony Squiers, “Philosophizing Brecht: An Introduction for Dark Times,” in Philosophizing Brecht: Critical Readings on Art, Consciousness, Social Theory and Performance, eds. Norman Roessler and Anthony Squiers (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019), 5. 7 8

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from the balcony of his friend Fritz Sternberg’s apartment when the police began to fire on the crowd and killed twenty-five unarmed protesters. Sternberg recalled, “When Brecht heard the shots and saw that people were being hit, he turned white in the face in a way that I’d never seen before in my life.”12 Overlooking this bloody suppression of an opposing political party by the governing one, Brecht’s belief in revolutionary change was strengthened. Brecht became a committed Marxist, even though he never officially joined the Communist party. Klaus Völker describes how Brecht found Marxism useful as a form of investigation, “Brecht saw that Marxism was a scientific method that would enable him to analyze the things that interested him as a dramatist and produce them onstage.”13 This idea of marrying scientific inquiry to artistic goals was a thread woven throughout Brecht’s explorations of theatre. Every work of art contained within it the societal constructs of the time in which it was written. Brecht could not only infuse his own works with revelations about these ideas but use various existing texts, familiar to the theatre-going public, to upset the spectators’ notions of the underlying reasons for character behavior; many of his works are adaptations or responses to already existing plays.14 Becoming a playwright did not satisfy Brecht’s artistic and political ends. Brecht needed to control the means whereby these works were presented to the public. Brecht always maintained a play was not completed until it had been tested in the laboratory that was the theatre: “it [sic] is impossible to finish a play properly without a stage.”15 Unless he himself supervised a production, he couldn’t know if the play would be efficacious, since he relied on collaborators, such as the designers and the actors, to both realize and question what was written and rehearsed. Unfortunately, he learned this all too well when, in 1933, he lost the means of testing his 12  Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014), 262. 13  Völker, Brecht: A Biography, 110. 14  As Stanley Mitchell notes in his introduction to Understanding Brecht by Walter Benjamin, “Brecht’s ‘plagiarism,’ his rewriting of Shakespeare and Marlowe, are experiments in whether a historical event and its literary treatment might be made to turn out differently or at least be viewed differently, if the processes of history are revalued.” Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Verso, 2003), xii. 15  Bertolt Brecht, Bertolt Brecht Journals 1934–1955, trans. Hugh Rorrison, ed. John Willett (London: Methuen Drama, 1993), 73. Brecht kept to lower case letters throughout his journals, a habit he shared with his friend Arnolt Bronnen, whose name he copied to become Bertolt rather than Berthold.

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ideas onstage. Though Brecht achieved great success, both monetarily and culturally, with The Threepenny Opera in 1928, by 1933 Brecht found himself in great danger when Hitler used the Reichstag Fire as a pretext to seize power. Brecht realized that, for himself and Germany, this was a disaster, and he left the country on February 27 knowing the Nazi party was openly hostile to his writing and would soon arrest him.16 He was in exile, often in countries where he did not speak the language, for fifteen years, with few opportunities to mount his own productions in the way he wanted. In 1949, when he returned to his homeland and finally had the opportunity to lead his own company with his wife Helene Weigel in the Soviet Sector of Berlin, Germany, he had only seven years to realize his ideas for performance onstage. The heart condition of which he suffered for most of his life finally led to his untimely death in 1956 at the age of 58. However, at the Berliner Ensemble (hereafter also the BE), he had been training his assistants to carry on, sending them out to various cities to oversee productions of his plays, using them to document his work in model books, and giving them opportunities to realize their own projects. Brecht constantly rethought his approaches and the way in which he referred to them. He left behind him enough writing to fill thirty volumes of complete works: plays, prose, poetry, journals, letters, and 3000 pages of theoretical essays. He also left behind a legacy to be realized by his collaborators. While his works were collected in various forms both during his lifetime and after his death, any English translations, particularly of Brecht’s theoretical writings on theatre, had appeared sporadically, beginning with John Willett’s 1964 Brecht on Theatre, a collection limited by Willett’s access to the German material, much of which had not yet been published in any form.17 In 2016, Brecht on Theatre received an update by Marc Silberman, Steve Giles, and Tom Kuhn, through the Writing Brecht Project, and in 2014, Stephen Parker’s biography, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life, a 16  His name appeared on the first Nazi blacklist compiled by Wolfgang Herrman in May of that year. See Johannes F.  Evelein, “Brecht and Exile,” in Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge: The University Press, 2021), 89. 17  At the time, according to the editors of Brecht on Theatre 3rd edition, only the Schiften zum Theater [Writings on Theatre), a single tome of less than 300 pages, had been accessible to Willett. See BOT 1. English-speaking Brecht scholars are indebted to the indefatigable Willett, who translated Brecht’s letters, working journals, collected short stories, a selected number of poems, and many of the plays.

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painstakingly researched volume, did much to correct the errors of the previous English-language biography by John Fuegi.18 With the updated scholarship available to the English-speaking public, a further reassessment of what can be accomplished when engaging with Brecht seems appropriate, particularly as his work can be realized in the theatre, with living actors and a production team in a collective process of discovery. An educational institution is the perfect venue for these ambitions. This book does not promote one particular political agenda. Instead, it shows how theatre for social change can be achieved by adopting a perspective about society that can be effectively communicated onstage. As will be shown, many lenses, and various goals to do with engaging the spectator, can be treated through the same process. However, it would be a mistake to ignore Brecht’s own views as a key to his work, principally that he saw Marxism as the best solution to the ills affecting a capitalist society. For example, one cannot study the history of Mother Courage and Her Children without being aware that  Brecht framed his treatment of events as part of the history of class struggles. And it is true that capitalism still favors those who benefit from the system and punishes those who don’t. It is worth continuing to examine society in this way, with the knowledge that the haves seek more and more power and profits, while the have-nots sink further and further into poverty, becoming hopeless of change in the process. As a dialectical materialist, Brecht was averse to mystical or metaphysical explanations for historical catastrophes but instead insisted on exploring contradictions that revealed social circumstances as concrete man-made constructions. In Brecht’s rendering of the Thirty Years War in Mother Courage and Her Children, the war is not primarily about the varying religious interpretations of the Bible, but a means for the ruling classes to seize power and lands, building wealth while exploiting the common people. The idea of using theoretical discussion to create theatre may seem a dry one. And in fact, though Brecht had very specific aims for the theatre, and created theories and means to support them, more than one colleague 18  John Fuegi, Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (New York: Grove Press, 1994). See the essays collected as John Willett, James K. Lyon, Siegfried Mews, H.C. Norregard, “A Brechtbuster Goes Bust: Scholarly Mistakes, Misquotes, and Malpractices in John Fuegi’s Brecht and Company,” Brecht Yearbook 20: Brecht then and now, eds. Marc Silberman and Maarten van Dijk (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 259–367.

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at the BE attested to Brecht’s eschewing of theory in rehearsal: “Many actors and theatre practitioners who worked with Brecht, especially at the Berliner Ensemble, report that he neither discussed nor asked his colleagues to read his theoretical writings.”19 Practice realized theory without necessarily referring to it directly.20 Meanwhile, Brecht also believed the pursuit of knowledge while imagining new interpretations of art works could be an enjoyable process. So, what are these theories, neologisms, concepts, so important to Brecht but, at the same time, largely unnamed when he worked with his actors in rehearsal? Since Brecht’s concepts have been translated and considered in different ways, here are definitions and applications as they have been used throughout the process of mounting the 2015 Mother Courage, and thus the book. Verfremdung, gestus, Haltung, “Not…but,” Fabel, literarization, historicization, and the Separation of the Elements have all been previously defined and adapted into readable English, while phrases such as “over-egging,” “pre-empting is precluding,” and the “ever-thus” appear in Manfred Wekwerth’s writings as terms Brecht used as well, although they are not included in other translations of Brecht’s own theoretical essays. A brief explanation for these and other concepts is offered in the rest of this chapter.

The Character versus the Figure Throughout this text, roles played by actors in a Brechtian manner will be referred to as Figures, while those offered as examples of other forms of theatre, particularly contemporary, naturalistic, and Aristotelean, will continue to be labelled characters. The former emphasizes behavior based on social relations, while the latter emphasizes the psychology of the role.21

19  Marc Silberman, “The Work of the Theatre,” in Stephen Brockmann, ed. Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge: The University Press, 2021), 115. 20  There are exceptions: Meg Mumford points out gestus was an important term that appeared in the daily reports on the practical work. See Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (New York: Routledge, 2009), 50. I have adapted the non-italic version of the word used by the editors of Brecht on Theatre 3rd ed., although other quoted authors do not. 21  This is a distinction offered by David Barnett in David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), 57–64.

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The Epic Label Brecht used more than one label to name the type of theatre he promoted. In his theoretical writings, Brecht began to refer to his dramatic output and ways of producing it as epic, a term he used to contrast the theatre outlined by Aristotle in The Poetics and one still equated with his work. He rejected a form of theatre that encouraged the audience to identify with the characters onstage for cathartic purposes and proposed instead a theatre that exposed the workings of social systems and encouraged the audience to take a “critical stance.”22 As he developed his ideas in practice, he began to refer to his theatre as “dialectical,”23 and, at the end of his life, as he encouraged “naivety” in the spectator,24 he considered the term “philosophical folk theatre.”25 In this volume, these labels will appear in various quotations, but in general, we will omit them when describing the various processes he developed.26

The Fabel Brecht’s was a collaborative approach, and no more so than when creating a critical framework for a production through a shared analysis of a play. This is a version of the plot from a particular view that consciously seeks to reveal the sociological, ideological, and/or economic implications of the play’s environment and behaviors. Brecht called the product formed from this analysis, a guide for the team members who could refer to it throughout the process, as a Fabel. In Brecht in Practice, David Barnett notes the Fabel is “an interpreted version of events.”27 This adds a layer to the basic narrative. Rather than a listing of the plot points, it becomes an examination of “fictional events 22  According to Manfred Wekwerth, one of Brecht’s favorite phrases. Stance here is “Haltung” in German. See Manfred Wekwerth, Daring to Play: A Brecht Companion, ed. Anthony Hozier (London: Routledge, 2011), 53. 23  See the sections in BOT under the subheading, “Dialectical Theatre,” 283–207. 24  By naivety, Brecht was referring to the reactions his theatre might arouse in his spectators as they receive insights from the production, as a bridge between enjoyment and thought. See Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 53. 25  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 89. 26  In an essay written around 1954, “From Epic to Dialectic Theatre 2,” Brecht explicitly states, “We may now stop using the term ‘epic theatre,’” as, at that point, he had replaced it with the dialectical, BOT 284. 27  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 86.

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through social contradictions.”28 Instead of imposing a singular vision upon their collaborators, the director encourages them to consider the implications behind the Figure’s social relations, especially as they reveal contradiction, to take a closer look at the script from a sociological perspective, with the director, for example Brecht, serving as the mediator between the different views proposed by the team members. The Fabel was the key to unlocking the play and an instrument for agreement between the various artists: it focused everyone’s attention on the same place. “The [Fabel] gratifies only a specific set of many possible interests.”29 Ultimately, the Fabel “is the theatre’s great undertaking, the complete composition of all the gestic incidents, containing the communications and motivations that from now on constitute the audience’s enjoyment.”30

Verfremdung Verfremdung was rendered in English by John Willett in the first edition of Brecht on Theatre as “alienation,”31 a word that may be confused with its Marxist meaning: the worker being alienated from the fruits of his labor. What Brecht meant by Verfremdung was the means of making the familiar unfamiliar, to show the contradictions within a common-place view of the world to demonstrate that the workings of that view are man-­ made rather than inevitable and are susceptible to change. This becomes a political move, as social systems are presented by those in control as natural and unchangeable, while any close examination of them is discouraged. With this technique the spectator critiques these systems in an operation that is “combative in nature.”32 Brecht is here promoting what he calls “interventionist thinking” on the part of the spectator,33 that is, the  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 89.  “Short Organon for the Theatre,” BOT 250. The editors have translated instances of the word “Fabel” as “plot.” 30  BOT 250. For a discussion of gestus and gestic, see below. How gestic incidents are revealed through acting is discussed below and in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. 31  Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, 1st ed., ed. John Willett. (London: Methuen, 1964), beginning on page 71 and then continually used throughout his book. 32  BOT 261. 33  BOT 243, “Short Organon for the Theatre §46.” 28 29

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audience interprets everything they see in order to intercede or interpose themselves in it, just as a sports fan may have enough separation from the competition to comment on a football play.

Ever-thus Conceptually Verfremdung is applied to create a struggle within the minds of the spectators with what they consider foregone conclusions, the view of society as an unchangeable and ineluctable natural phenomenon; Brecht called this idea of inevitability an “ever-thus (Immeriges).”34 From this perspective, current social norms, laws, and systems had always been in place, and therefore the possibility of change was deemed a fruitless endeavor. By giving this view a label, Brecht playfully suggested its opposite, a world ever changing, the ever-thus a useful construction applied by a ruling hegemony to discourage change but just that: a construction that could be replaced, as it had many times throughout history.

Historicization In “On Experimental Theatre,” Brecht couples the idea of Verfremdung with a device he names historicization.35 Brecht defines historicization as “viewing a particular social system from the point of view of another social system.”36 Two processes are involved here: (1) the actor must play the events in history as unique and therefore comparable to later periods, and (2) actors should treat present-day events as historical ones. In each the behavior of people involved in those incidents is shown to be directly connected to a specific social order, one that can be critiqued. At the same time, such changes have occurred between the past and the present, suggesting further change is possible. These processes foster a scientific attitude, “a technique of getting irritated with the everyday, ‘self-evident,’ universally accepted occurrence.”37 In this way, the spectator becomes “a social historian” who can contemplate how yesterday became today.38 This leads to Verfremdung. 34  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 36. I have not discovered this term in other writings about Brecht’s theories in English. 35  BOT 187. 36   BOP 122. 37  BOT 188. 38  BOT 196–198.

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The contrasts and similarities between behaviors are instructive onstage, as the spectator notices different environments lead to different behaviors. Arrigo V. Subiotto outlines the way this might be accomplished: by beginning with the original author’s environment and intent, “the ideas imbedded in the play, the contemporary documents and historical situation, the particular individuality and attitude of the author towards his time,”39 to consider the play dramaturgically. Historicization does not simply refer to works from other periods. As Subiotto puts it, “Crucial in Brecht’s attitude to literature is his belief [that] a work of art is tantamount to a historical event and, once created, belongs to history.”40 Thus, in Brecht’s method, even contemporary plays can be treated as historical documents with an attitude of unfamiliarity, and any dramaturgical treatment of such plays must engage in a form of historical research, unearthing those ever-thuses, such as the strain of patriarchal attitudes or discrimination against the marginalized, that remain as undercurrents in contemporary society. Gestus It is one thing to create a theoretical strategy. It is another to realize it in performance so it is clear to an audience. Brecht did so through what he called “gestus.” An exact definition of what Brecht meant by this word is hard to pin down. It is important enough to Brecht’s work that Hanns Eisler enthused, “The gestus is one of Brecht’s brilliant discoveries. He discovered it in the same way as Einstein, for example, discovered his famous formula.”41 The editors of Brecht on Theatre noted the famed writer “ultimately used the word in such an inflammatory way that gestus could stand in general for Brecht’s entire approach to staging theatre.”42 For the purposes of this book, I apply the term gestus using a definition suggested by the editors: as a procedure that can “connect theatre event, society, and audience by making actions observable, pointing to the structurally defining causes behind them, and enabling critique.”43 More than 39  Arrigo Subiotto, Bertolt Brecht’s Adaptations for the Berliner Ensemble (London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1975), 5. 40  Arrigo Subiotto, Bertolt Brecht’s Adaptations, 9. 41  Hans Bunge, Brecht, Music and Culture: Hanns Eisler in Conversation with Hans Bunge, eds. Sabine Berendse and Paul Clements (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 54. 42  BOT 6. 43  BOT 6.

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a simple “gesture” (the literal translation of gestus when it’s not referring to Brecht’s practice), this form of the term describes a range of behaviors that reveal how society affects relations. The gestus signifies what a motion or action means as social behavior, separating these social relations from hegemonic ideology and language to see them more clearly as historically determined. For Brecht, this is the concrete truth of behavior separated from its bourgeois trappings allowing the audience to more clearly examine reality. The historicized events are the gestic incidents revealed through the behavior of the Figures. This is because the epic theatre “is chiefly interested in the behavior of people towards one another, wherever they are socio-historically significant (typical).”44 In this way, “the scene is played as a piece of history,”45 so that the spectators can consider it from a different perspective, one separated from the everyday. The Fabel is the first attempt to apply gestus to particular moments in the play before they are realized specifically onstage. In this way, all the elements to come, including the design and performances, are aiming towards the revelation of gestus.46 Haltung47 In the actors’ case, behavioral signs must be clearly revealed through performance. Manfred Wekwerth notes that Brecht would refer to the gestus of the actors as “an individual stance taken by a character.”48 This attitude, revealed through the Figure’s comportment, and including vocal and physical choices, is the Haltung. Unlike a character, which may have an overarching attitude and be driven by a particular intent, the Haltung of a Figure is fluid: it may vary from moment to moment based on the relationships of the Figures towards each other and their surroundings as well as the tendency of the Figures to react in a contradictory fashion to various situations. Such contradiction within a display of behaviors, a series of stances the spectators can examine, may lead to Verfremdung because the Figures’ actions prove to be inconsistent. The Figure cannot be pinned  BOT 126.  BOT 126. 46  See later passages in this chapter for further discussion and definitions of gestus. 47  Plural Haltungen. 48   Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 66. 44 45

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down to one attitude but is defined by many: the various Haltungen together make up the complete Figure. At the same time, the actor is encouraged to have their own attitude to the Figure, their own Haltung, which may contradict the attitudes of the Figure they are playing. In later chapters of this book, the Haltung will be discussed using Keith Johnstone’s idea of status as he applies it to the behavior of human beings in social relations. This will serve as a shorthand for the actors when they relate to each other as Figures.49 The “Not…But” In Daring to Play, Manfred Wekwerth explains a Brecht strategy: “The play must be performed, produced and written in such a manner that the spectator is surprised by the plot development and the characters’ behavior.”50 A Figure has options, what they do versus what they don’t do, and Brecht wanted both displayed in such a way the audience could see one choice and imagine others. He gave this idea a name: the “Not…But.” The Figures do not act according to the audience’s experiences and expectations but disappoint them. In this way, as Wekwerth notes, “The expectation that is NOT fulfilled has to be built up by the actor and the accompanying production to such an extent that the BUT is a ‘breath-taking’ surprise.”51 This is another form of Verfremdung, offered by the performance. Many examples of this concept will be discussed in relation to Mother Courage as a play and as realized in performance by the Berliner Ensemble and in 2015 at Texas Tech. Separation of the Elements One way in which specific gestic incidents are highlighted is the employment of all the theatrical elements in conversation with each other. Each of the design elements—lighting, sound, music, props, settings—can comment on the incidents in their unique ways. Brecht sought to counter the overbearing artistic trance created by a Gesamtkunstwerk such as preferred by the composer Richard Wagner: a complete artwork with an overall theme or mood. By allowing the elements to have their own unique  See Chaps. 5 and 6.  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 62. Emphasis Wekwerth’s. 51  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 62–63. Emphasis Wekwerth’s. 49 50

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character, Brecht avoided the seamless combination of each for purposes of Verfremdung to circumvent “the undignified intoxication” that would be produced in the audience.52 At the same time, as each element was subsumed for the purpose of making one statement, Brecht felt it lost its special ability to add to the conversation: “[A]s long as art forms are to be ‘fused together,’ then the individual elements must all be degraded to the same degree.”53 Instead Brecht proposed the Separation of the Elements, the opportunity for each design to interact with and comment on the others.

Literarization One strategy for accomplishing the act of Verfremdung in the early days of Brecht’s epic theatre was Caspar Neher’s use of a half curtain, a light fabric strung with wires across the stage at about head height that could be quickly opened and closed for scene changes.54 More importantly it became a projection surface, for the titles of scenes or films. The space above it exposed the workings of the fly gallery or the lighting instruments but also made room for further screens or signs. Banners, whether flown or projected, became a theatrical form of footnotes, a scheme Brecht referred to as literarization: “the strategy of linking the theatre with other intellectual institutions by incorporating written text…so as to provoke a different mode of reception on the part of the audience.”55 Literarization was a form of Verfremdung because it disrupted the flow of the narrative. The audience was “encouraged to look up and down and from side to side, so that their visual space transcends that of the action on stage in a process termed complex seeing.56 Spectators could use this form of complex seeing as a researcher might, consulting other sources to further

52  Bertolt Brecht, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, trans. and ed. Steve Giles (London: Methuen Drama, 2007), 69. 53  Brecht, Rise and Fall, 68. 54  This practice continued with the Berliner Ensemble until eventually both Brecht and Neher felt it had become a Brechtian cliché. In Zurich in 1941, the names of the countries the family traveled through were projected; the physical signs, constructed as part of the scenery were flown in for the 1949 production. Bertolt  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Methuen Drama, 1995), 280. 55  BOP 5. 56  BOT 184–185.

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interpret the phenomenon witnessed on stage.57 Brecht’s “leafing back,” was applied here as well; the spectator/reader could consult earlier scenes/ pages for comparison, especially when engaged with complex questions and ideas.58 Any of these signs could also inhibit suspense by announcing the scene’s ending in advance, for example, noting Mother Courage will lose her officer’s shirts which are the source of conflict in Scene 5 of the play. This was also a means of encouraging interventionist thinking, as the audience was no longer wondering what would happen, but why, and how it could be avoided. By including those meta-theatrical means, Brecht reminded the audience everything they were seeing on the stage was artifice, built by artisans; craft had been applied by theatrical workers sometime in the past and was now being displayed. The various effects the audience experienced came from specific sources, whether a band of musicians, a row of lighting instruments hung by a technician, or an apparatus that produced sound when an operator used it.

Over-egging and Pre-empting An artwork which aimed to be a Gesamtkunstwerk over-stated a particular mood through a conjunction of all artistic means. Manfred Wekwerth writes that Brecht dismissed these attempts as examples of “over-egging” or “pre-empting.”59 For Brecht, over-egging was the manner in which a production would coordinate the elements of a play so monolithically that they served a single function, all designs bombarding the audience with one mood. To offer endless examples of the same idea was to add too many eggs to the dialectic soufflé and thereby ruin it. Similarly, in his essay “Brechtian Theatre Today: An Attempt in Seven Days,” Wekwerth refers to the old theatre motto “pre-empting is precluding.”60 To spell out a message for the spectator risks short-­circuiting critical thinking and discouraging the spectators from reaching their own conclusions. Pre-empting means doing all the work for the audience, like a teacher who asks a question and then answers it themselves. Ideally, the 57  “This process is modelled [sic] in part on the way in which readers of a book consult footnotes, or flip between its pages in order to compare one situation with another.” BOT 184–185. 58  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 62. 59  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 15. 60  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 16.

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learning would continue not only during the performance but beyond. Peter Palitzsch, dramaturg and assistant director to Brecht, refers to the whole process, the “‘Belehrung,’ or the education of the theatre spectator from the time during the performance to well afterwards at home,”61 as a “fundamental goal.”62 These terms, Verfremdung, historicization, ever-thus, gestus, Haltung, the “Not…but,” Fabel, the Separation of the Elements, literarization, over-egging, and pre-empting will be discussed in more detail and applied to specific productions of Mother Courage and Her Children, at the Berliner Ensemble in the twentieth century and the School of Theatre and Dance at Texas Tech University in the twenty-first. In the latter case, all these concepts undergo testing in the laboratory that is a stage and rehearsal hall in an institute of higher education. Engaging with Brecht To engage is “to entangle, to involve, to cause to stick fast.”63 Ours is an approach of that kind: a direct entanglement with ideas that adhere to you the more you involve yourself with them. Another definition of engage is “to enter into, contest with, to bring to conflict.”64 As the book unfolds, you may question, grapple with, reject, or accept the various concepts we share—you may engage in a direct struggle that could ultimately lead to new approaches. Engaging has two further resonances within this text. The book’s title encourages you to delve into the various ways in which art can be imagined and constructed, to intertwine and engage your ideas with another. A form of the word is also an adjective: to be engaging is to be enthralling, captivating, and amusing, while at the same time intriguing and thought-­ provoking. Theatre that requires you only to do one without being the other runs the risk of being entertaining but trivial, in the first case, or ponderous and pretentious, in the other.

61   Kristopher Imbrigotta, “(Re)Building the Engaged Spectator: The Katzgraben Programmhefte of the Berliner Ensemble, 1953/1972,” Brecht Yearbook 39: The Creative Spectator, ed. Theodore F. Rippey (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 99. 62  Imbrigotta, “(Re)Building,” 99. 63  Webster’s New International Dictionary: Second Edition Unabridged (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Webster Company, 1934), s.v. “engage,” 847. 64  Webster’s, 847.

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Brecht and Stanislavsky After creating the famous table for the essay “Notes of the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” Brecht was accused of rejecting all forms of emotion on the stage to distance the spectators from the characters. In two columns, he compared the dramatic (or as he also put it the “Aristotelean”) with his form of Epic Theater, and in the epic column, he suggested emotions, rather than being preserved, should be “driven to become cognitions.”65 However, he very clearly stated in a footnote, “This table does not produce absolute antitheses, but merely shifts of accent.”66 In other words, some basic dramatic principles still applied and were therefore taken for granted. Regardless, he blamed himself for a misunderstanding that seemed to pit him against Konstantin Stanislavsky in the minds of many, including the apparatchik of the new East German government, who preferred to champion the Soviet system.67 As a teacher of both Stanislavsky’s system and Brecht’s suggestions to actors for realizing his ideas, I’ve found ways to combine the designs of these two masters to coach actors in rehearsal in an exchange which strengthens both. There is a precedent for this, as lead performers in Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble such as Therese Giehse and Angelika Hurwicz could be directed by Brecht while having recourse to their previous Stanislavsky training. Emphasizing the idea of a Brecht acting style misses the point—Brecht leads the performer to a specific attitude towards the material in critical engagement with both the play and, by implication, the outside world. The actor, however, must still act, and in a believable manner. One of Brecht’s favorite sayings was, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”68 This book stands as one example of how to implement Brechtian notions of theatre, to test them under particular conditions in an educational setting. It serves as the record of an experiment: the application of Brecht’s theatrical ideas to a modern production of his play Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years War by a university theatre program in West Texas. In 2015, the School of Theatre 65  Brecht, Rise and Fall, 68. Steve Giles, also an editor of Brecht on Theatre, translates the table, which appears in BOT, differently than in this volume. 66  Brecht, Rise and Fall, 67. 67  See Chap. 8 for a discussion on Brecht and Stanislavsky, both compared and contrasted. 68  Carl Weber, “Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble,” in Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks, The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: The University Press, 1994), 183.

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and Dance at Texas Tech University took on the challenge of producing Mother Courage, with a combination of scholarship and practice that led to many conclusions about the viability of Brecht’s work today, not only on his own plays but as a way of giving political import to contemporary and classical works of many genres. The range of materials now available to the English reader is comprehensive, and you are encouraged to seek it out, perhaps using the bibliography of this book as a start. Most importantly, if this account of a particular process we employed is of interest, the reader is urged to work with others similarly to explore these concepts themselves. Though individual contemplation of material has its value, there is an enormous advantage to group work: Brecht operated from the conviction one could gather a built-in audience of initial “spectators” to test it, to discover deeper and more interesting results. To paraphrase Brecht, we will not know if the pudding is any good until we eat it. The book unfolds as follows: In Chap. 2, I examine four productions of Mother Courage and Her Children, the premiere in Switzerland, Brecht’s two East Berlin productions, and his Munich production, as they relate to my own work on the play. I discuss English-language translations we considered and explain why we chose the Tony Kushner adaptation for our production. Comparing different translations of the same play requires the team to consider which version will best serve as material for exploration while reminding them of the difficulties inherent in adapting Brecht’s writing, a special form he invented and which changed the German language itself. The selection of a version should not be arbitrary, as the differences in texts change the tone of the production and the way it is received by the audience. Primary emphasis on Brecht as classic storyteller of dramatic theatrical events de-­ emphasizes an important facet of his work: his use of satire and irony as Verfremdung and to promote social change. Mother Courage is an ideal play with which to engage the students in Brecht’s work. As a playwright, Brecht had the advantage of creating texts that encouraged or contained his theatrical concepts, and so we can more easily identify how these are applied in that work. At the same time, the production team may study the documentation on the Berliner Ensemble’s premiere production, one of the most thoroughly considered plays in their repertoire, using both the Courage model for 1949, originally published in 1958, as well as the BE’s Theaterarbeit of 1952, a classic text documenting in great detail the processes that led to their first six productions,

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including Mother Courage and Her Children. From there, the students can eventually move on to other non-Brechtian pieces and note their facility for handling those concepts.69 In Chap. 3, I discuss Brecht’s dramaturgical analysis, the Fabel, primarily as applied to Mother Courage but also using examples from other plays and productions. By applying Brecht’s use of contradiction and the concepts historicization, ever-thus, Drehpunkte (or turning points), “Not…but,” and Verfremdung, I demonstrate a means of converting plot points to gestic incidents, as such a strategy requires a new form of critical thinking by the production team. Implementing these keys to a Brechtian interpretation and promoting dialectical thinking requires that all team members come to an agreement about the lens to be applied to the production, the attitude towards society as reflected in the author’s work, and its relevance to contemporary ideologies. In Chap. 4, I discuss how our production team collaborated in ways suggested by Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble and how design is considered as a series of unique interpretations by each artist who contributes to the discourse, as Brecht puts it, in a Separation of the Elements. At the same time, I refer to Brecht’s concepts of literarization and the forms of meta-theatricality Brecht used, as well as suggest new technological forms available in the twenty-first century. Our design examples, based on our view of the environment of the play as a laboratory, led to the creation of an installation that allowed for the interdisciplinarity of art forms—sculpture, painting, and music—and interrupted the progress of the play to allow the audience to examine each of the events more closely. In Chap. 5, the empirical work of mounting the play with actors is accomplished by concentrating on the attitudes or stances (Haltungen) of actors towards characters (Figures), and Figures towards each other. The combination of the different Haltungen of each Figure creates what Brecht calls the Grundgestus of the Figure, an overview of the role. I use Keith Johnstone’s status as a shorthand for discovering Brecht’s gestus through his unique treatment of the concept of Haltung. Brecht studied the relationships between two or more people; Johnstone offers a means of identifying this relationship, depending on the respective parties to affect each other as they respond to levels of dominant or submissive 69  For examples of Brecht concepts used in Shakespeare, Chekhov, Patrick Marber, Arthur Miller, and others, see David Barnett, Brecht in Practice and David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (London: Nick Hern Books, 2018).

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behaviors. Though on the surface status seems to embrace the psychological, it can also contain a political element, as each Figure demonstrates their place within a social system. This includes the personal status of the Figures which contradicts their roles in society. In Chap. 6, I discuss the application of Brecht’s staging process, the Arrangement, or the placement of a theatre element within the framework of the stage—in this case the actors—as a key tool in realizing the Fabel. What further distinguishes our own work from that of the BE is our emphasis on the actors’ contributions to the initial stage groupings as opposed to that of their designers, who added characters to their renderings, creating Arrangementskizzen or arrangement sketches. The actors’ input is accomplished through various tableaux vivant they offer in the rehearsal room for the production team’s critique, with an emphasis on gestus and Haltung. The actors are first introduced to such directorial concepts as picturization and composition to clarify their work before adding a political dimension. Chapter 7 describes how the team worked from detail to detail in rehearsal, trying, discarding, rethinking, and adapting ideas by using Brecht’s Zero Point (Nullpunkt) or the concept of “not knowing,” to take a fresh look at each day’s work in continuous reconsideration of the means to enable critique. I “channeled” Brecht to serve as a devil’s advocate for ideas using this concept to challenge the team to deeply explore the complexity of each Figure and carefully dissect each event as realized by the Fabel. This was the longest period of rehearsal, but an element of fun was added to the proceedings by considering the challenges or puzzles the text offered. In Chap. 8, I explain how I combine the precepts of the Stanislavsky System, a common training practice for American actors, to Brecht’s ways of working, with an emphasis on how the two approaches can be used together in a theatre that promotes social change. My years of experience as both a teacher of Stanislavsky and Brechtian techniques has allowed me to find bridges between the two and provide new exercises for actors to explore in rehearsal and performance. Brecht did not altogether reject principles from Stanislavsky but, given access to the Russian master’s oeuvre in German, especially his later work, Brecht was able to reconsider its usefulness. For example, Brecht found Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Actions approximated some of his own ideas about physicality as a means of communication to the audience. Many of the members of his company,

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the Berliner Ensemble, were Stanislavsky trained; they continued to use that training where useful in addition to Brecht’s own. In Chap. 9, I describe the practice of documentation and archiving by the Berliner Ensemble as adapted for our production of Courage. At the same time, I note early British attempts to create similar forms—in particular by Ken Tynan at the National Theatre. Assistants to Brecht note that documentation was notably arduous. In the Brecht archive, one can examine the typed copies of reports and the physical copies of the model books, where the photos and captions are carefully pasted to each page. The assistants spent hours on these projects, to the point of diminishing returns: ultimately all but abandoning the most exhaustive practices. The thorough documentation of a production is still essential as a means of reflecting on the process and results, particularly as a pedagogical tool, but it can be realized with much less effort on the part of a contemporary team. The instant access to photos or video, the use of word processing and presentation software, the ability to share files among the participants online—all these innovations can streamline the process of identifying and refunctioning the solutions to theatrical problems. I suggest ways in which today’s artists can use modern documentation for further reflection on their work and to derive general principles from Brecht’s solutions to particular problems. In Chap. 10, I discuss the conclusions we reached after presenting the play to the public and ways in which these conclusions may be used to suggest further exploration with other plays by Brecht or other authors. Ultimately, I suggest Brecht’s way of working still resonates and can serve as a plan for applying a historical perspective to the present, creating theatre for social change in a contemporary society that continues to repeat the mistakes of the past. A Note I directed Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years War in the Spring of 2015. Since then, I have had the opportunity to reconsider my work on that production and to add to my knowledge of Brecht’s theoretical writings and practices, taking advantage of more recent scholarship while continuing to implement new ideas and procedures in the testing ground of a graduate scene study seminar in Brecht. Therefore, the narrative that follows both describes what was accomplished back then and further develops that work based on my studies

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since. When Brecht published interviews about his work, on occasion he used fictive interlocuters to pose the questions he wanted to answer, ensuring his control of that discourse. Using a similar strategy, I’ve adjusted the tracking of the 2015 production process, weaving my findings after 2015 into the narrative as part of the means of offering a more up-to-date pedagogical model. It is not my intention to deceive the reader but to further explicate and expand on the work we did at the time. For this, I beg your indulgence. Mother Courage was an important choice for the school. One of the great plays of the twentieth century, it was ideal work for training a large group of actors who would portray the various historical characters in an epic chronicle, testing their skills in a variety of dramatic contexts while narrating the events of a conflict considered one of the worst in human history from the perspective of a common people who lived on the margins of major events. At the same time, it was a prime example of Brecht’s purpose for writing and producing plays, a means of commenting on the underlying motives behind policies that shaped the world. If you are interested in the views of one of the world’s germinal theatre makers and want to participate in the production of works that activate in people a desire for change, read on. I hope you enjoy following our journey as we explored the myriad ways Brecht thought and as we tried out the director’s ideas on our feet with one particular play. Looking back to 2015, I could not have imagined how quickly America could change. Working on this introduction some years later, I realize how even more relevant Brecht is today. A rise in nationalism and authoritarianism during the twenty-first century was something Brecht would have dreaded but could have predicted: having lived through a similar rise, he often worried the snake had been scotched, not killed. In Germany between the two world wars, an emphasis on illusionistic theatre for the masses, and art that grew more and more to promote a fascist and anti-­ socialist viewpoint, prompted him to seek ways in which theatre could counter dangerous political movements through interventionist thinking. Even in a society that he considered the start of the socialist experiment, he feared the GDR was still a haven for ex-Nazis who might rise again. Today’s students will find it even more important to consider how Brecht used theatre to seek change, and how what he did with his own historical moment can be useful today, as we experience a new and troubling time. The twenty-first century still has a place for Brecht, perhaps now more than ever.

CHAPTER 2

Five Productions of Mother Courage: 1941, 1949, 1950, 1951, and 2015

Writers cannot write as rapidly as governments make war, because writing demands hard thought.1 (Bertolt Brecht)

This chapter considers five stagings in the production history of Mother Courage: the play’s premiere in Zurich in 1941; Brecht’s 1949 production, introducing him to the East German public and leading to the establishment of the Berliner Ensemble; Brecht’s 1950 Munich production using the 1949 production as a model; Brecht’s restaging of Mother Courage at the BE in 1951, the production that, in Paris and then London, established Brecht as a world-famous theatre director; and the 2015 production and the choices made by the production team in relation to the dramaturgical study of the earlier productions, including the origins of Brecht’s play and the ways in which works with which he was familiar influenced the perspective he took on the events of the Thirty Years War. A brief synopsis of the play Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years War is provided, along with a comparison between the different productions and why the 1951 production, based on Brecht’s work when he applied his 1949 model of the play in the Munich production of 1950, was considered the closest to Brecht’s intentions. Of particular interest was the way Brecht rewrote the play based on 1  Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years’ War, trans. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1966), xxix.

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the reception of the premiere production in Zurich in 1941. Finally, an explanation for the choice of Tony Kushner’s translation for the 2015 production, as compared to other English-language versions by British authors and the American version by Eric Bentley, is included. Brecht worked on productions of the play over a span of years, but the 1941 production in Zurich, though successful as the premiere of a work by Brecht, was neither supervised nor attended by the author. However, based on the reports Brecht received from those who saw it, the Zurich production was still instructive, as it convinced him of changes that still needed to be made; Brecht’s 1949 production in Berlin, co-directed with Erich Engel and introducing his new company to the East German audience, began to rectify those mistakes. Adjustments continued with the production he directed in 1950 in Munich with Therese Giehse as Mother Courage and using his Berlin model; and his own remounting of the play in 1951 for the BE, based on his work in Munich, revealed how Brecht further rewrote and restaged the play for the effects it might have on the spectator, the ways in which it could prove instructive for a twentieth-­ century audience, and the critical thinking it encouraged about issues that still reverberated concerning war as “a continuation of business by other means.”2 The Mother Courage production of 1949 at the Berliner Ensemble is so famous and so well documented by that company, it still offers lessons that can be applied to contemporary engagements with the play, without strictly adhering to the original staging. Our production in 2015 was no exception. In working through our analysis of the piece, we could look to a thorough explication of each scene and its socio-political implications based on the material in the Courage model book, as well as Theaterarbeit. For example, as the script changed to meet Brecht’s requirements for speaking to a post-war audience, his reasoning was laid out for the reader, the different versions of the play explained with a view to setting down the thinking behind directorial and dramaturgical decisions. While the model books outlined specific solutions to various moments, an emphasis was placed on identifying the challenges that allowed future practitioners to imagine their own solutions.3

2  See Brecht, Brecht Collected Plays: Five, John Willet, 282. This is Brecht’s reformulation of Clausewitz’s war as “the continuation of politics by other means.” 3  See Bertolt Brecht, Brecht Collected Plays: Five, particularly 271–331.

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The Mother Courage team of 2015, therefore, looked to the thought-­ processes that went into mounting the earlier productions of Mother Courage as ways to approach the material anew, using Brecht’s ways of working. These included the identification of contradiction within the actors’ playing through the juxtaposition of different attitudes, for example the varying decisions made by Courage in Scene 3 concerning her son Swiss Cheese that changed as the scene progressed. We did not dutifully copy the work of the Berliner Ensemble, nor did we ignore it. By studying the history of the play’s life on stage, we identified those traps we felt other productions had fallen into when they ignored Brecht’s intentions for both writing and producing the play. Since our goal was to test Brecht’s means for creating a piece of theatre, we were returning to first principles, with the understanding that we were bringing our own perspectives as twenty-first-century artists to the work. At the same time, as Brecht suggested in terms of using his models, we were looking to identify challenges the script offered, to find our own solutions rather than to blindly accept those that had already been applied. The reasons why Brecht first wrote the play had changed when he came to direct it himself; the script he completed in 1939, a warning about the world war to come, became by 1949 a reminder of the costs of war to the citizens of East Berlin, a city bombed nearly to rubble. When the audience in Berlin traveled through this devastation to reach the Deutsches Theatre, the outside world became, in the spectators’ minds, the real backdrop to the production onstage. Today, its effects on a contemporary audience have changed yet again.

Influences Even in his youth, Brecht had been drawn to the events of the Thirty Years War through fictional writings and the study of German history. His first play, Die Bibel (The Bible), was a one-act play set during that time. He was also familiar with the most famous novel from the seventeenth century, Hans Jakob Christoffel Von Grimmelshausen’s picaresque The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus (1668), as well as that author’s The Life of Courage, the Notorious Thief, Whore, and Vagabond (1670). Grimmelshausen experienced the Thirty Years War first hand, and it is believed he was present at the siege of Magdeburg, an event depicted in Scene 5 of Mother Courage.4 Brecht would also have been familiar with  Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, trans. J.A. Underwood (New York: Penguin Classics, 2018) xvi. 4

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Friedrich Schiller’s one-act play, Wallenstein’s Camp (1880), the latter a one-act play from the larger Wallenstein trilogy that had been assigned to him as a schoolboy to inspire feelings of patriotism for Germany’s part in the First World War. His use of these materials for Mother Courage varies. Schiller’s play concentrates on those figures behind the scenes, Courage-­ like sutlers, minor officers and soldiers, camp followers, rather than the major figures who guide the struggle. Indeed, Wallenstein, the famous general who led the Catholic forces as supreme commander until 1634, when he was assassinated, makes no appearance in Wallenstein’s Camp. From Grimmelshausen, Brecht borrows the name Courage for his leading character as well as a skewed view, both horrific and comic, of the war as seen from someone (Simplicius) on the periphery of the main events. In The Life of Courage, Grimmelshausen’s title character is a fortune teller, an activity her name-sake practices in Scene 1 of Brecht’s play.5 And Grimmelshausen’s chapter headings, in both Simplicius and The Life of Courage, resemble the titles that preface each of Brecht’s scenes.6 As Brecht worked on the play, Naima Wifstrand gave him Tales of a Subaltern, also entitled The Tales of Ensign Stål, an epic poem of the Finnish War (1808–1809) by Johan Ludvig Runeberg published in two parts in 1848 and 1860. Canto XXII concerns the story of Lotte Svard, a canteen woman, a more romantic figure than Mother Courage: She loved the war, whatsoe’er it brought,-Of weal, woe, trouble or cheer; And the gray-clad boys had their tenderest thought, And so she to us was dear.7

Brecht’s study of history as a schoolboy certainly included the dark period in the seventeenth century when the Thirty Years War took place. Augsburg, his birthplace, was an important site of contention during that conflict between Catholic and Protestant; there in 1555 the Lutheran church was officially recognized and maintained a peace with the Catholic majority for nearly a hundred years. But a widespread European war 5  Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, The Life of Courage: The Notorious Thief, Whore and Vagabond, trans. Mike Mitchell (Sawtry: Dedalus Limited, 2001). The author’s name varies depending on the edition and title of the work. 6  This latter point is made by Peter Thomson in his excellent study of the play, Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children (Cambridge: The University Press, 1997), 7. 7  Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Collected Poetical Works (Hastings, East Sussex: Delphi Classics, 2015), 1847.

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among the faiths finally devastated the city. By the time the war ended, Augsburg’s population had gone from 45,000 to 16,000 inhabitants.8 Brecht could not have helped but see this division mirrored in the relations between the Catholic citizens of Augsburg and the Protestant faithful, including his mother, “the rebellious Protestant in the family.”9 Meanwhile, his lead character comes from Bamberg, a Bavarian city 106 miles from his hometown. Later his position as an exile, looking at the terrible machinations coming from his home country, inspired the writing of the play. When he left Germany, he first settled in Denmark, buying a fisherman’s cottage along the Svendborg sound, only 62 miles from the German cities of Flensburg and Kiel and sounds of military operations. German patrols along that body of water would point to the gathering storm, and the sense of another destructive war was overwhelming. By April 1938, Brecht’s fears of the advance of the German army had already convinced him to leave his Danish home in Svendborg, and he was fortunate to have friends who could come to his aid.10 Naima Wifstrand, who had played the title character in her own Swedish translation of Brecht’s play Señora Carrar’s Rifles in March 1938, found living quarters in exile for Brecht and his family, including Weigel; his children, Stefan and Barbara; as well as his collaborator and lover, Margarete Steffin. On August 23, 1939, Germany and Russia had signed a mutual Non-­ aggression Pact; any sense that Stalin would stop the tide of Nazi conquest was dashed, especially when Russia, too, invaded Poland. In September, when the Third Reich accepted Poland’s surrender, Brecht began to write his chronicle. The Brechts rented a house from the sculptor Ninnan Santesson on Lidingø, an island near Stockholm in Sweden, where they would live for less than a year. Wifstrand ran an acting school, and she invited Helene Weigel to teach acting classes. Not only did she introduce Brecht to Tales of a Subaltern, inspiring him to drop his work on The Good Person of Szechwan, but he also planned on casting Wifstrand as Courage in a Swedish production. In parallel, he also created the part of the  Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 12.  Werner Frisch and K.W. Obermeier, Brecht in Augsburg (Berliner and Weimar: Aufbau, 1998), 247. 10  Brecht lived in Svendborg for six years, with visits to Paris, Moscow, New  York, and London during that period. 8 9

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speech-­impaired Kattrin for his wife, who spoke no Swedish. Brecht wrote Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years War, in a flurry of activity between September 27 and November 3, 1939. The final product was an epic of twelve scenes, ranging over a period of twelve years. The Thirty Years War (from 1618 to 1648) was a protracted and agonizing conflict fought over a wide swath of Europe, and the cause of an estimated four and half to eight million deaths. On the surface, the war was a struggle between Protestant and Catholic armies supported by the Bourbons or the Hapsburgs, but Brecht highlighted a deeper truth: those religious conflicts allowed the leaders of each side to acquire, by force, great wealth and resources. Brecht concentrated not on generals such as Wallenstein and Tilly, but on the common people, whose homes were invaded by friend and foe alike and who were most brutally and immediately affected by the ravages of the fighting. We follow one of them, Anna Fierling, ironically nicknamed Mother Courage because she crossed a battlefield at Riga, afraid her wares would go stale before she could deliver them. As she leads her offspring through a hellish landscape, they subsist by selling booze and supplies to both sides. As a petit bourgeois, Courage does her part to prolong the war through business, despite the devastation she sees around her and the losses she suffers.

Synopsis The play opens in 1624. Mother Courage plies her trade by selling supplies and serving food and drink from her wagon as she follows the Second Finnish Regiment of the Protestant army. Courage and her three children—sons Eilif and Swiss Cheese, and a mute daughter, Kattrin—encounter two soldiers seeking new recruits for the Finnish Regiment. While distracting Courage, the soldiers convince Eilif to join the army. Two years later, Courage meets Eilif again, as she haggles with an army cook over the price of her chicken. Eilif has proved himself to be a brave soldier and is being feted by the General, but his mother considers his heroic actions foolish. Three years pass. Courage finds herself in the company of the Cook, Yvette (a camp whore), and the army Chaplain when suddenly the Catholics attack the Finnish Regiment, with whom, so far, Courage has cast her lot. The Cook escapes, but Courage and her family are prisoners in their own camp. Swiss Cheese, loyal to the Regiment, hides their cash box from the enemy. He is captured and refuses to betray either his

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regiment or his family to the soldiers. Courage must then bargain for her son’s life, at one point trying to parlay her one source of income, her canteen wagon. But Courage bargains too long; she hears the shots of the firing squad that executes her son. After three years, Courage, Kattrin, and the Chaplain find themselves in Magdeburg during its siege and destruction. The Chaplain forces Courage to hand over her valuable officers’ shirts to be torn into bandages for the wounded. A year later, she is selling drinks to the soldiers during the funeral of Field Marshall Tilly. She rejects the Chaplain’s offer of marriage. She sends Kattrin for supplies, but her daughter is assaulted and scarred. Courage curses the war. Shortly after, as her fortunes improve, she praises the war for what it has given her. Later in 1632, peace has been declared. Courage is reunited with the Cook. Yvette reappears, the rich widow of an old army colonel. Yvette recognizes the Cook as Piping Pieter, whose seduction she blames for her debauched life. After confronting the Cook, Yvette accompanies Courage to the market, where she will sell her wares before their price falls. The Chaplain, realizing that Courage prefers the Cook’s company to his own, decides to return to the cloth. During the ceasefire, Eilif mistakenly kills some civilians and is sentenced to die. He comes to the camp under guard, but Courage is not there. The Chaplain accompanies him to his execution. Just after they leave, news reaches the camp that the ceasefire is over. Courage is back in business, and the Cook decides to keep Eilif’s fate to himself. The Cook accepts Courage’s offer to join her and Kattrin on their travels. In the autumn of 1634, winter has come early. Courage and the Cook must beg for food at a parsonage. The Cook tells Courage of a letter from Utrecht informing him that, due to the death of his mother, he has inherited an inn. He invites Courage to join him but not Kattrin. When Courage and the Cook enter the parsonage for some soup, Kattrin decides to set out on her own. Courage stops Kattrin from leaving. When the Cook reappears, he finds them gone. For more than a year, Courage and Kattrin follow the armies through Germany. In January 1636, Courage and Kattrin have stopped at a farmhouse. When Courage goes into town to buy more supplies, Kattrin stays with the farmers. Soldiers appear and force the farmer’s son to lead them to the nearby town of Halle, which they plan to attack at night while everyone is sleeping. The farmers begin to pray, but Kattrin climbs up on the roof of their hut with a drum and attempts to wake the townspeople.

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The soldiers try to persuade Kattrin to come down. Though they finally threaten her with death, she continues drumming. They shoot and kill her. Suddenly, the bells of the town ring out: Kattrin’s warning has succeeded, and the sneak attack is foiled. Courage returns before dawn to find her daughter’s body laid out in front of her cart. She sings Kattrin a lullaby and pays the peasants to bury her. Mother Courage returns to the road pulling her wagon alone, following the armies and determined to get back to business.

Production History When Mother Courage and Her Children premiered, on April 19, 1941, at the Zurich Schauspielhaus in Switzerland, it was produced without Brecht’s input or his presence in the audience.11 Instead, from his exile, he received reports of its success and its effect on the spectators. Brecht must have been pleased with the choice of his friend Therese Giehse for Mother Courage, and she would go on to play the role for him in Munich in 1950. Brecht noted that, unlike his host countries, it was in Switzerland that theatrical artists were brave enough to produce him. Philosophically, however, since he had not staged the piece himself, it was, according to his own methods, incomplete. Without a chance to test and revise, he had not been able to maintain artistic control or indeed to tinker with it on the stage. This was borne out by the way in which it was received and the mistaken impressions it made. In a 1956 German edition of the play, the following note appeared: “To judge by the press reviews and statements of spectators, the original production in Zurich, for example, though artistically on a high level, merely pictured war as a natural catastrophe and ineluctable fate ….”12 Brecht’s message was confounded. Instead, it confirmed “the belief of the petit-bourgeois members of the audience in their own indestructibility and power to survive.”13 Once the war was over, Brecht was able to make changes in the script before its 1949 East German premiere to rectify this misconception. In this revised version, Courage’s choices demonstrate the contradiction between what spectators might do as humane and engaged

 The production was directed by Leopold Lindtberg and designed by Teo Otto.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 321–322. 13  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 321–322. 11 12

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adults and what Courage chooses to do because of her survivalist instincts coupled with her desire for profit. When Brecht first wrote the play, the possibility of a world war had been on the horizon, and Brecht had seen Mother Courage as a warning of things to come. Ten years later, he would stage the show among the ruins of a Berlin ravaged by that terrible debacle, his predictions having come to fruition in his favorite city, destroyed according to “an etching by churchill [sic] after an idea by hitler [sic].”14 Brecht made changes to three scenes, highlighting the negative consequences of Courage’s behavior to avoid analogous misinterpretations in the future. In a work journal for November 25, 1948, he wrote, “we have to alter the first scene of COURAGE, since it has in it the seeds of what enabled the audience at the Zurich production to be moved mainly by the persistence and resilience of a being in torment (the eternal mother creature)—which is not really the point.”15 He goes on to mention his assistant Heinz Kuckhahn’s suggestion of a rewrite for Scene 1 to clarify that Courage is distracted from Eilif’s recruitment by her intent on selling the belt buckle to the Sergeant, which was incorporated into the 1949 version.16 Similarly, in the earlier draft, in Scene 5 Courage reluctantly donates all her officers’ shirts to bandage the wounded at Magdeburg and even tears them up herself, while in the draft used in the 1949 production, she refuses to give up the shirts. The contradictory nature of her opinions of the war—opposition in Scene 6 versus support in Scene 7—is not so clear in the original, which does not yet contain the latter scene in which Courage pivots to praising war’s profitability. Brecht intended that the audience should see Courage as a small cog in a very large economic machine. In this cog’s-eye view, because Courage only perceives the potential for profits, she is blind to the emotional price she will pay in return. Embracing rather than rejecting bourgeois capitalism means that she learns nothing from her experience. 14  Bertolt Brecht, Journals 1934–1955, ed. John Willett (New York, Routledge, 1996), 401 (October 27, 1948). Brecht’s idiosyncratic use of lower case and upper case letters is kept here to note Brecht’s emphases. 15  Bertolt Brecht, Journals, 404. Brecht’s emphasis. 16  In the earlier script, Courage shows her concern for the Sergeant, who she has spooked with her foretelling of his death. While she revives his spirits with alcohol, the Recruiter leaves with Eilif: this care for another human being is replaced by concern over a sale. See Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 271–272.

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Brecht also added Scene 10 to the 1949 production. In this short interlude Courage and Kattrin, as they pull their wagon, come upon a cottage, in which a young woman is singing the “Song of the Rose,” a song expressing gratefulness for a warm home in winter. According to Käthe Rülicke-Weiler, this reminds the audience of what Courage has sacrificed by choosing her daughter over the Cook.17 These changes apparently had the affect Brecht wanted: “The tragedy of Courage and her life, which was profoundly tangible to the spectators, consisted of the fact that there was a horrific contradiction here that destroyed a person, a contradiction that could be resolved, but only by society itself and only through long, terrible struggles.”18 The tragedy was not just Courage’s but society’s; it was a form of common beliefs that she embraced and that led to her downfall. Mother Courage would be Brecht’s reintroduction to a German audience after fifteen years. Whether East or West Germany would welcome him was a real question in the spring of 1948. Brecht was offered a chance to work with his old friend Erich Engel at the Munich Kammerspiele. However, the U.S. Secretary of State banned him from entering the US Zone. The leaders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in East Germany, on the other hand, offered him many incentives to settle in the Soviet sector, including a venue for his plays and a large budget from which to operate. Brecht also wished to participate in the new socialist society. He decided to make East Berlin his home for the rest of his short life. The play was a personal watershed for Brecht: its premiere in East Berlin at the Deutsches Theater on January 11, 1949 (Image 2.1), was co-directed by Erich Engel and starred his wife Helene Weigel as Courage, Angelika Hurwicz as Kattrin, Paul Bildt as the Cook, and Werner Hinz as the Chaplain, with a new score by Paul Dessau, and settings by Teo Otto.19 It was a directorial triumph and paved the way for the establishment of his own company, the Berliner Ensemble.20 Weigel was recognized as an international star, and Courage became her signature part. She continued   Rülicke-­Weiler, Die Dramaturgie Brechts, 91.  BOT 304. 19  Dessau’s score was first used by the Zurich Company when they played in Vienna in 1946 and then the Berliner Ensemble in 1949: Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, xxxiv. 20  The play did not open the official first season of the Berliner Ensemble, nor was it the first play they produced at their permanent home, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on March 19, 1954. (The former was Mr Puntila and His Man Matti, the latter an adaptation of Moliere’s Don Juan.) See Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 583. 17 18

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Image 2.1  Mother Courage and Her Children rehearsal with Brecht, Helene Weigel (as Courage), Erwin Geschonneck (as Chaplain), and Angelika Hurwitz (as Kattrin), Berliner Ensemble 1951. (Photo: Hainer Hill)

to play this demanding role even as she took on the role of Intendantin of the BE, the operations manager of the company in charge of all business and technical matters, a post she held until her death in 1971.21 In 1950, at the Kammerspiele in Munich, Brecht decided to test the work he had done in 1949, directing the Zurich Mother Courage, Therese 21  Käthe Rülicke-Weiler describes Weigel’s role in detail in “Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble,” int. Matthias Braun, New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 7, Issue 25, February 1991 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3. Brecht served as the artistic director. Intendantin is the feminine form of the noun.

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Giehse.22 He used the model he had created with Ruth Berlau, the extensive documentation he had insisted be kept on the premiere Berlin production. He did not slavishly follow his original findings, especially as he had a very different actress for his lead. Unlike her performance in Switzerland, and on tour in Vienna, Giehse enacted a new Courage closer to Brecht’s intentions than her previous playing of the part, contributing new business and interpretations. He was very pleased with the results, noting, “The moves based on the model are triumphant,” and of Giehse’s performance he wrote, “giehse is quite admirable in the way she completely revamps the moves she had used with such success in Zurich and vienna [sic].”23 Theaterarbeit included an even more glowing review from the Berliner Ensemble. According to the authors, Giehse “showed how a great actor can make use of the arrangement and theatrical material in a model production to devise a unique and distinctive character.”24 The discoveries he made in this production were applied to his update at the Berliner Ensemble in 1951 with Ernst Busch as the Cook and Erwin Geschonneck as the Chaplain and Helene Weigel and Angelika Hurwicz reprising their roles. One of the most important additions was Courage’s penultimate line, added in the Munich production: “I’ve got to get back in business.”25 This was a verbal reminder that Courage had learned nothing from her experiences, but would continue to seek to profit from the war. With Mother Courage and Her Children, Brecht brought his company to the attention of a world-wide audience, appearing at the Festival of Dramatic Art in Paris in June 1954 and being awarded both Best Play and Best Production. This recognition gave him some leverage with the East German government, who preferred the style of Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre promoted by the Soviet apparatchiks, and continually attacked Brecht’s work as “formalist.”26 This was in this same year the company was able to finally move into their own building, the site of Brecht’s first triumph, The Threepenny Opera in 1928, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. They would no longer share a space with the Intendant Wolfgang Langhoff at the Deutsches Theater. 22  For more on models and model books, see Chap. 9. Couragemodell 1949 was published in 1958. 23  Brecht, Journals, 431. 24  BOP 206. 25  David Richard Jones, Great Directors at Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986), 117. 26  The acclaim wasn’t universal, as the Soviet-led government in East Berlin objected to the portrayal of an unheroic protagonist. This was a sign of political trouble to come.

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The Choice of Play for 2015 The choice of mounting Mother Courage was made for a variety of reasons. An application of Brecht’s ways of working using his own script, rather than another author’s, would allow the team to identify those methods, as he wrote the play with his own practice in mind. For example, Brecht divided the play into episodes that could be treated as separate events to be explored in isolation. He created contradictory behavior within the characters and placed them in situations which revealed the constraints placed upon them by their social environment. He wrote the scenes to be compared to each other, and he continued to rewrite the play to highlight his intentions for the performance. If we were to attempt a Brechtian analysis of Mother Courage concentrating on its plot, our work would be aided by the play’s original construction.27 The extensive documentation on the Berliner Ensemble productions also offered our team a dramaturgical model for comparison and study. Courage contains a series of snapshots of the family’s travels beginning six years into the war in 1624, and this appealed to me as an educator, as I often worked with students on individual scenes by various authors in class.28 The strategies I used to coach my students were readily adaptable for exploring the individual incidents between characters for social critique, an important part of the process for realizing Brecht’s play onstage.29 Whether working on scenes in the classroom or the rehearsal room, we also considered them in the context of the play as a whole, as the author offered invaluable clues to the playing, whether through previous circumstances, offstage relationships, the descriptions of some characters by others, or the consequences of earlier scenes on future behavior.30 The fascinating structure of Courage was imbued with an important Brechtian device. Even as he suggested that each of the scenes could be rehearsed and played as miniplays in their own right, it was also important that the scenes called attention to each other in the minds of the audience, 27  Käthe Rülicke-Weiler made the point that this specific form of plot (the Fabel) was so important as to be constructed first. See Die Dramaturgie Brechts, 124. 28  I further divided the parts into French scenes and called portions of the large cast as needed. Further descriptions of the rehearsal process will be discussed in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, and 8. 29  BOT 158. See Chaps. 6, 7, and 8. 30  There are many exceptions to this last idea, as an explanation of Haltung in Chap. 6 will reveal.

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that the incidents from different scenes would comment on each other, so that the spectators—as Brecht put it—could “leaf back” as in the pages of a book, with each new scene illuminating those which preceded it.31 For example, in Scene 11, Kattrin sacrifices herself to save the children of Halle from a surprise attack; this reminds the audience of Scene 5, when Kattrin plunges into a burning house to save a crying baby. Her care for others, particularly the young, dooms her. The two funerals in the play, Kattrin’s and Field Marshall Tilly’s, allow the spectator to consider the significance of each in the larger scheme of events. Though historically Tilly was the one of the most important figures of the war, it is the young woman’s death that moves us. While Tilly’s demise was an accident—he got lost and wandered onto the battlefield—Kattrin dies from a selfless act of bravery. As to the import of the loss of Tilly to the Thirty Years War, the Chaplain notes that he will simply be replaced by another commander. As the spectator never meets him, his death is of less consequence dramatically than Kattrin’s. The very smallness of the characters’ social status and perspective is a brilliant framing device. Through their eyes, Brecht focuses on a family in the immediate observational periphery of watershed historical moments. For example, Scene 5 takes place during the sack of Magdeburg in 1631, one of the deadliest conquests of any city up to that time. Yet Brecht sets the scene in a small corner of the town, where farmers have refused to abandon their barn, now on fire. The wounded need bandages, and the only cloth at hand is from Courage’s store of valuable officers’ shirts; yet Courage, ever the businesswoman, refuses to contribute, even to alleviate wartime suffering. Though she seems far more concerned for her own profits than for the suffering of her fellow human beings, she has no choice; she is operating from a particular economic model in which her survival must be based on self-interest; she can’t afford to give away such expensive cloth. Meanwhile, the actions of Kattrin and the Chaplain serve as a contrast to bring out even more clearly the struggle for common decency in an environment which rarely allows for it. The play is made up of these types of scenes, which can be juxtaposed in the minds of the spectator to reveal the contradictions that Brecht has built into the play. Mother Courage and Her Children contains dark scenes of violence and brutality, but at the same time it is full of irony and humor. Brecht creates a masterpiece of contradictory behaviors among the characters,  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 62.

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particularly Courage. The death of her child Kattrin can’t help but move the audience to pity, though Brecht puts the blame upon their mother, who equates business with survival. And there are many comic moments, which bring humanity to the piece and at the same time entertain the audience, particularly a constant juxtaposition between the behavior required in wartime and Courage’s actions, such as her commandeering an abandoned cannon for hanging her laundry or selling a paltry chicken as a meal fit for a general. Mother Courage also contains a surprising number of songs.32 Despite this fact, it is not a piece of musical theatre—Brecht’s staging of Courage’s first song aside. Brecht quite clearly delineated these songs as “musical insertions,” rather than songs that “‘sprang from the action.’”33 Finding a means to perform those songs as separate entities that comment on the events of the play is an interesting challenge for the students. Unlike songs from musical theatre, the music doesn’t come out of the character, for example, based on a need to communicate in a more passionate way. Brecht does not require that the cast sing well, just that they sing in a tone different than the one the character takes right before and after it. For this we decided to have the actors perform the songs by dropping out of character, allowing the audience to consider what is being sung rather how well it is performed, the content rather than the execution.34

Mother Courage in 2015 Mother Courage and Her Children, translated by Tony Kushner and presented by permission from Jerod Couture of Fitelson, Lasky, Aslan and Couture in New York, New York, was performed in 2015 on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock, Texas, a city just at the bottom of the 32  “Mother Courage Song,” “The Song About the Soldier and His Wife,” “The Song of Fraternization,” “Song of the Hours,” “Song of the Great Capitulation,” the drinking song in Scene 6, three refrains of “Mother Courage Song” (in Scenes 7, 9, and 12); “The Song of Solomon,” “The Rose Song,” and “Lullaby.” For the premiere in 1949, “The Song of the Hours” was cut. See Brecht’s note to Paul Dessau on January 1, 1949, Brecht, Journals, 413. The Berliner Ensemble reinstated it for the 1951 production, Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 329. 33  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 279. 34  For a discussion of the musical sessions for Mother Courage 2015, see Chap. 4. Two exceptions, “The Song of the Great Capitulation” and “The Song of Solomon” are interspersed with dialogue from the characters.

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Texas Panhandle. It played for four performances, from April 30 to May 3. Though the population of Lubbock could be described politically as “conservative,” the university itself tended to display a mix of ideologies. At the same time, the overall attitude of the local patrons tended to be forgiving; the general public attended or not as they pleased but did not censor or protest works they didn’t like. Students, an important constituency for any university-funded production, were offered free tickets for preview nights and could sign a waiting list for the free seats set aside at any of the paid performances. I had wanted to do the play for some time, having taught it for twelve years. In the period from 2003 to 2015, major industrial nations had continued to engage in political and military conflicts around the world, including the Iraq War and the wars in Syria and Afghanistan that, like the Thirty Years War in the seventeenth century, have dragged on and on. As teacher and citizen, I watched as an obscured or forgotten history of wartime destruction was doomed to be repeated again and again, as increasingly questionable arguments were found to justify bombings, genocide, and terror. In this period, the futility of war depicted by Brecht would be evident to citizens all across the globe. At the same time, performances of plays did not necessarily lead to actions on the part of those in power but were protests against bad decisions and their possible consequences. I was intrigued by the idea that we were asking the audience to think critically about what they saw and come to their own conclusions. As David Barnett noted in his history of the Berliner Ensemble, “While there was certainly no sense that the audience would leave a performance of Mother Courage and collectively abolish war, Brecht wanted art to play a role that pervaded the audience’s lives by refashioning their consciousness.”35 At the same time, the play addresses many issues: though the capitalist system has prevailed over other models, such as socialism, it continues to be the cause of huge disparities between rich and poor. The figure of a woman who tries to exploit a system with ruinous consequences is symbolic of a class of people who have the odds of success stacked against them. And yet, like Courage, they continue to support such a system, as other economic models are demonized by the ruling powers, and as the lower classes earn just enough to get by. She is also a woman, trying to navigate a patriarchal society, with mixed results. 35  David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge: The University Press, 2015), 23–24.

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Brecht’s own rejection of religion came from more than one source. He lived in a household in which the battle between Catholic and Protestant was personified respectively by his father and mother.36 However, he attended Protestant schools as a boy and was strongly influenced by his mother’s reading and his own study of Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, whose language he emulated in his poetry and prose, including in the dialogue for Mother Courage. His later Marxist studies introduced him to the idea of religion as “an opium of the people,” a bourgeoisie form of control created by the powerful to oppress the common people, a view he seemed to embrace.37

Choosing a Translation It was essential to find a translation that would entertain an audience largely unfamiliar with Brecht, much less his famous play. I wanted it to have contemporary resonances and its language to be accessible to the twenty-first-century spectator. A variety of English-speaking texts were available. For example, Eric Bentley’s is a widely produced American adaptation. As Brecht directed the play in Munich in 1950, Bentley sat next to him, writing his own translations as he listened to the German actors onstage. He made several versions of the play over the years, including one for the Modern Theatre series in 1955, a text closer to the original German for Grove Press in 1966, and an acting version for Samuel French in 2009. Though each is an American English edition, I don’t find his straightforward translation actable in a way that other versions are.38 In seeking a text for production, I found Tony Kushner’s translation had an earthiness and a scatology missing from the others, including Bentley’s. Besides being more dramatic, Kushner’s phraseology suited the

36  Stephen Parker: “Indeed, Brecht’s later espousal of atheism and Marxism, not to mention his brilliant mock Lutheran tone, can only be properly understood against the background of his deeply religious upbringing.” Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 19. 37  Karl Marx from the introduction to “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” quoted in Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx, ed. Eugene Kamenka (New York: Viking Books, 1983), 115. 38  Hilton Als is one critic who agrees when he, in his review of the 2006 production, says Kushner has “strained the lumps” from Bentley’s version. Hilton Als, “Wagon Train: Mother Courage at the Delacorte,” The New Yorker, September 4, 2006, https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2006/09/04/wagon-train.

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language of an audience in 2015, even though it did offend the ears of some listeners. While Kushner was not skittish about using the crude vernacular of the soldier, Eric Bentley’s standard version of 1955 used euphemisms which would sound forced if spoken by a contemporary actor. For example, in Scene 8, the Cook and Eilif argue about Eilif’s violent behavior. The Cook questions Eilif’s intelligence. In Bentley this reads in part: eilif:



cook:

If I’d been stupid, I would’ve starved, smarty. So you were bright and paid for it.39

Whereas in Kushner, we have: eilif:

cook:

If I was an idiot I’d have starved long before this, you asshole. So you used your brains and now they’re going to cut your head off.40

The latter has a more desperate quality, and the characters are insulting each other in much stronger fashion. Again and again, the lines have more force in the Kushner version for not being literal translations. For example, in Scene 12 Bentley combines dialogue from two characters, the Farmer’s Wife and the Farmer for the Farmer’s line, “She’s not asleep, it’s time you realized. She’s gone. You must get away. There are wolves in these parts. And the bandits are worse.”41 Kushner’s has the Farmer’s wife say, “She isn’t sleeping, stop saying that and look, she’s gone,” followed by the Farmer’s line, “And you have to go too. There are wolves around here, and people who’re worse than the wolves.”42 First of all the second version makes the Farmer’s wife more pivotal to the scene. Meanwhile, the Farmer’s lines feel more unsettling. I also examined other English-language adaptations, but many had a distinctly British feel that obscured some of the points to be made to an American audience and specifically would not resonate with the West Texas community. John Willett uses British dialects to reveal contrasted  Bentley, Mother Courage and Her Children, 92.  Kushner, Mother Courage, 82. 41  Bentley, Mother Courage, 110. 42  Kushner, Mother Courage, 103. 39 40

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social status based on British culture. In Scene 1, the Recruiter refers to “blokes” and “bob’s your uncle”43 In Scene 4, the Young Soldier who feels he has been cheated out of reward yells, “Bouque la Madonne! Where’s that bleeding pig of a captain what’s took my reward money to swig with his tarts? I’ll do him.”44 His British lower-class speech is replaced by Kushner with an even more blasphemous one, full of profanities, but distinctly American.45 Kushner also makes the point of punching up the jokes: “The humor of the play was something I had to make a decision about. I think the jokes are amusing but not ha-ha funny in the original. I’ve made them more ha-ha funny.”46 One example is Courage’s reply to the Chaplain when he describes Kattrin as “comely”: “She isn’t comely, she’s stay-at-homely.”47 Or her reasoning for taking the Chaplain with her to buy meat: he can tell a good cut “because there are little spit bubbles in the corner of his mouth and his lips get shiny.”48 And in Scene 8, the Cook, when Courage accuses him of being broke, replies, “I’m not broke, I’m between money.”49 My favorite moment of humor comes in a very dark scene. When Swiss Cheese pretends to be a customer, the Chaplain tries to play along. Unfortunately, he is a terrible improvisor. In Eric Bentley’s version, the joke doesn’t quite land. The Chaplain says, “He sat there like a law-­abiding fellow and never once opened his mouth. Except to eat. Which is necessary.”50 Kushner’s text reads, “He was an orderly customer and he never opened his mouth, except when he ate. Then you more or less have to.”51 Kushner’s translation was based on his belief in the play as “the greatest tragic drama of the 20th Century.”52 Kushner saw Courage as a work in which, “opposing forces collide, resulting in an absolute devastation from which something new can be born.”53 In his mind, the play did affect  Brecht, Collected Play: Five, 109.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, Willett, 146. 45  See Kushner, Mother Courage, 52. 46  Jonathan Kalb, “Interview with Tony Kushner, Public Theatre, NYC, 17 July 2006,” Communications from the International Brecht Society, 35, (Fall 2006) 95. 47  Kushner, Mother Courage, 32. 48  Kushner, Mother Courage, 39. 49  Kushner, Mother Courage, 75. 50  Bentley, Mother Courage, 56 51  Kushner, Mother Courage, 43. 52  Kalb, “Interview,” 97–98. 53  Kalb, “Interview,” 98. 43 44

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progress, “but progress takes the form of catastrophe piling up in a giant heap of horrors and ruination.”54 In particular, he felt the death of Kattrin in Scene 11 would evoke pity in the audience. He agreed with his mentor Carl Weber, who noted that these moments couldn’t help but be ­emotional, despite the often-touted idea that Brecht sought to eliminate feelings from the audience to his plays. Weber noted, “Look at the drum scene in Mother Courage … It is a highly emotional scene. I’ve never seen as much of an impact on an audience wherever I was in the world.”55 Kushner believed it was impossible to find an approximation in English of the seventeenth-century German that Brecht imitates no matter what translation is used. Having adapted one of his favorite books, the great comic novel The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik in the World War by Jaroslav Hašek for an Erwin Piscator production in 1927, Brecht then adopted that dialect for the dialogue in his own Schweik play, which he referred to it as “a companion play” to Courage.56 Ralph Manheim and John Willett had both attempted to find an equivalent for the effect. Kushner had directed Manheim’s translation in New Hampshire and found it “sounded a bit like Grimm’s fairy tales.”57 And Willett does a very Cockney, northern English. Kushner didn’t find an alternative: “I mean, there’s no American regional dialect that would work. And we don’t have anything that old that would work.”58 For this heap of horrors, Kushner’s language is particularly harsh. The General’s contempt for the church is clear; he won’t offer the Chaplain his  Kalb, “Interview,” 98.  Branislav Jakovljević et  al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 58. The drum scene is Scene 11. 56  Brecht Collected Plays: Five, xxxi. The play in question is Brecht’s Schweyk in the Second World War in Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays: Seven, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Schweyk is spelled in various ways depending on the translation. 57  Kalb, “Interview,” 94. 58  Jonathan Kalb, “Still Fearsome, Mother Courage Gets a Makeover,” The New  York Times, August 6, 2006. However, the stilted, overly formal language of the characters in the novel True Grit, especially as personified in the Coen Brother’s 2010 film, suggests an odd, comic feel of the bureaucratic and seems incongruous with the education and social mores of the characters. Brecht’s language has been described similarly in Martin Esslin, Brecht: The Man and His Work (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 104–106. See Donna Tart, from her afterward to Charles Portis, True Grit (The Overlook Press, 2010), 215–216 and David Ansen, “Joel and Ethan Coen on True Grit,” Newsweek, December 24, 2010 at https:// www.newsweek.com/joel-and-ethan-coen-true-grit-68909. 54 55

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excellent wine. Instead, “Chaplain can lap up the dregs, like the suffering Christ he is.”59 And Eilif is more bloodthirsty in the Kushner version. He isn’t “cutting down peasants,” as in Willett, but “butchering” them, in keeping with the theme of the herd as a commodity to be prepared for sale.60 In Scene 11, the First Soldier threatens Kattrin with the line, “Hey girl, get down or we’re gonna come up and get you!” and the Second Soldier adds, “Yeah, get down here and suck my—.”61 He is interrupted by the Lieutenant, who realizes this strategy is counterproductive. Meryl Streep played the role in a 2006 production at the Delacorte Theatre in New  York’s Central Park, produced by the Public Theatre, directed by its artistic director George C.  Wolfe, and using Kushner’s translation. Scenes were filmed for Theatre of War, a documentary about the production that includes clips from the rehearsals and performance.62 Despite mixed reviews for both the show and Kushner’s translation, the script was eminently playable and had a contemporaneity that would make it more accessible to a twenty-first-century audience.63 And some of the reviews were positive: Hilton Als of The New Yorker called the adaptation “brilliant,” while Ben Brantley, though referring to it as “jocular and uneven,” noted its topicality as “a gallows vaudeville that has an all-too-­ reverberant relevance in these days of war.”64 Though some felt that Streep was miscast, Als found “Streep’s controlled emoting remains firmly in the bounds of Brecht’s vision of epic theatre.”65 He pointed out that she was not “exhibiting her star power—fighting her face time with the audience, displaying maximum emotion—she works in service of the play.”66 This contradicts James Fisher’s critique of Kushner’s adaptation in his study Understanding Kushner, when he claims that Kushner has created empathetic characters while “adding dimensionality and emotional humanism  Kushner, Mother Courage, 21.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 120; Kushner, Mother Courage, 21. 61  Kushner, Mother Courage, 98. 62  John Walter, dir. Theater of War (film) (New York: Alive Mind, 2008). DVD 63  See selected critical reviews included in Jonathan Kalb, “Interview with Tony Kushner, Public Theatre, NYC, 17 July 2006, Communications from the International Brecht Society 35 (Fall 2006), 99–101. 64  Hilton Als, “Wagon Train,” and Ben Brantley, “Mother Courage, Grief and Song,” New York Times, August 22, 2006. 65  Hilton Als, “Wagon Train,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/04/ wagon-train. 66   Als, “Wagon Train,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/04/ wagon-train. 59 60

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typical of American drama.”67 If this was the case, the actors were able to avoid it, as I believe my actors could as well. An important feature of the production was the original music composed by Jeanine Tesori, which we ultimately decided not to use.68 Three years after the George C. Wolfe production, the British director Deborah Warner also chose Kushner’s translation for the National Theatre production starring Fiona Shaw in 2009. Warner had wanted to direct it with her regular collaborator Shaw and found the play itself to be “extremely witty. It’s not a heavy play that deals with the subject of war. It’s almost irreverent the way the subject is dealt with.”69 Meanwhile, Fiona Shaw described her own encounter with the play’s text as the lead actor. In her opinion, Kushner made an attempt to approximate Brecht’s choice of language for the play: Tony Kushner’s translation is also new, although true to the original. Like Brecht, who used a peculiar German for the play, he has written a hiccupy English, which often has the verb at the end of a sentence. For instance, in the play I’ll say to my daughter: “I’ll bandage you up, and in a week you’re healed.” We don’t speak like that, and the effect it has is to make the language, which is often about something tiny like a package or a skirt, poetical. It does make it difficult to learn, however.70

Shaw recommended that the musical artist Duke Special compose a new score and perform the songs for the show. The reviews for the production included Michael Billington’s view of the translation as “sparky” and the production one “that brings Brecht’s play up to date,”71 while Benedict Nightingale for The Sunday Times wrote, “Tony Kushner’s adaptation

67  James Fisher, Understanding Tony Kushner (The University of South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 123. Emphasis mine. 68  See a complete discussion of the music for Mother Courage 2015 in Chap. 4. 69  Deborah Warner quoted in a National Theatre documentary on the play at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6obtAUsju8. 70  Maddy Kosta, “Maddy Kosta interviews Fiona Shaw about Mother Courage,” The Guardian, 8 September 2009. Clips from this production are available on the National Theatre Website, and a documentary of the production on YouTube: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=x6obtAUsju8. 71  Michael Billington, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” The Guardian, September 27, 2009.

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combines with Warner’s staging to catch war’s unpredictability, fever, ferocity — and perverse magnetism.”72 The choice of an adaptation or translation couldn’t be an arbitrary one, as the connection with a West Texas audience had to be as direct as possible. It was worth examining the various versions to determine the most appropriate. All in all, Kushner’s brilliance as a playwright and his love for Brecht’s work made for a playable translation that would appeal to our audiences. A study of the production’s history, the reasoning behind the changes Brecht made to the play after 1941, and documentation of the BE’s engagement with that particular play, were all essential areas of exploration and proved essential to our work. Altogether the dramaturgical process allowed the 2015 Mother Courage production team to consider the BE’s model as a jumping-off point for our own work by identifying the challenges Brecht himself found in producing the script and the various means the BE went about meeting those challenges. This provided us with a series of questions to answer for ourselves, but in our own way and with an awareness of the connections to be made with a twenty-first-century audience. We were also able to solidify our reasons for choosing Kushner’s translation as the text that would help us best to realize our aims. The next chapter concerns the use of this material as part of a larger analysis of the play and the use of such essential Brechtian tools as the Fabel to aim the team towards a sociological view of the play’s events, as well as a discussion of what functions the designs would serve to realize the analysis in performance. After getting the rights to the Kushner version, it was time for the assigned team of designers to work in a Brechtian fashion.

72  Benedict Nightingale, “Why Aren’t We Alienated by Bertolt Brecht?: More than a century after his death the communist playwright still enjoys theatrical credibility,” The Sunday Times, September 14, 2009.

CHAPTER 3

Collaborative Analysis

When he wrote something—whether lyrical, dramatic, or scholarly— [Brecht] performed it aloud to himself, as if he were saying it to someone else in order to bring that person into a concrete situation: to teach him, encourage him, make him curious, abuse, question, distract him, shut him up, surprise or insult him.1—Manfred Wekwerth

One of the keys to Brecht’s approach is the use of collaborators as sounding boards to his ideas and creative output. The Mother Courage team of 2015 applied this collaborative process, shifting the emphasis from the director’s role as the imposer of an overarching, pre-conceived concept to a figure who encouraged dramaturgical work from all members, whatever their primary roles on the production as actors, designers, assistant directors, or stage managers. They would discover the play together by first analyzing the events from a sociological perspective, considering the contradictions inherent in the text. This meant engaging with an important Brechtian tool for analysis, the Fabel, and creating a Fabel for our own production. This chapter includes means for applying his formula of converting plot points into a series of gestic incidents, the

1  Manfred Wekwerth, “Questions Concerning Brecht,” in Re-Interpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film, eds. Pia Kleber and Colin Visser, trans. David Blostein (Cambridge: The University Press, 1990), 25.

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underlying social constructions inherent in the Figures’ behavior and the lens used to examine and realize the play. Collectively these points will serve as a blueprint for the production with the understanding that this analytical process will continue as the rehearsals progress and serve as a means of reflection once the production closes. As John Rouse notes in his essay, “Brecht and the Contradictory Actor,” “The Fabelbau—the building up of the fable—is the principal goal not simply of pre-rehearsal analysis but of rehearsal itself.”2 It is only through the testing of the Fabel with the actors that its effectiveness can be determined. “When problems arise, one can check to see whether the fable is being told in the most effective way, or whether the right fable is being told.”3 Rather than a monolithic, regulatory structure that confines the participants to one vision, it is an initial formulation for thought and the basis for continued experimentation: “At the same time, the concrete discoveries made by the actors, director, and dramaturgs during rehearsals are used to tighten and fine-tune the analysis of the [Fabel] as its concrete theatrical elaboration is developed.”4 In 1927, Uhu magazine, a popular German monthly that focused on trends in science and culture during the Weimer period, asked Bertolt Brecht to pose for one in a series of photos with accompanying essays designed to capture the artist in his natural habitat. Previous subjects had realized this in conventional ways: Theatre director Max Reinhardt sat at his rehearsal desk; painter Otto Dix sketched; Rudolf Belling sculpted. Brecht responded by staging an imaginary scene in his attic apartment: the boxer Paul Samson-Körner played the piano; Brecht’s collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann typed; and various other colleagues, such as the composer Edmund Meisel, lounged about the room. Brecht stood just off-center, framed by a bookcase (Image 3.1).5 Thus, his playful response to the magazine’s theme—“the artist in lonely communion”—was a room full of people.6 While Brecht was one of the germinal thinkers and artists of the twentieth century, when he created, he was hardly “lonely.”  John Rouse, “Brecht and the Contradictory Actor,” Theatre Journal, 36:1 (1984), 37. Rouse uses the spelling “fable” here, though scholars such as the editors of BOT 3rd Edition retain the German form to distinguish Brecht’s practice from the more common definition of “fable” in English. 3  Rouse, “Brecht and the Contradictory Actor,” 37. 4  Rouse, “Brecht and the Contradictory Actor,” 37–38. 5  In fact, it is Moritz Seeler, just to the left of Brecht on the sofa, who is wearing boxing gloves. Seeler was producer of Brecht’s directorial debut, Arnolt Bronnen’s Parricide. 6  Tom Kuhn, “Bertolt Brecht and Notions of Collaboration” in Bertolt Brecht Centenary Essays, German Monitor, no. 41, eds. Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone, 7. 2

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Image 3.1  Collaboration in Brecht’s apartment: Paul Samson-Körner (at piano), Brecht (standing), Edmund Meisel, Hermann Borchardt, Hannes Küpper, and Elisabeth Hauptmann; Berlin, Spichernstraße 16, 1927. Photo: Bilderdienst des Deutschen Verlags

Brecht rejected the classic notion of the writer sitting by himself at his worktable, waiting for epiphanies to arise. In fact, throughout his life, he maintained a working procedure that required an audience. Beginning in his attic room at 2 Bleichstraße, availing himself of his first group of friends in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, he gathered around him the self-styled “Brecht Circle.” His living quarters would always be a beehive of activity within which ongoing and diverse projects were taken up, abandoned, revised, shelved, and brought to fruition. His community of artists wrote and composed together, encouraged each other’s art, and argued over various versions of their works. As Brecht scholar Tom Kuhn studied the diary and early writings of one of Brecht’s friends, Hanns Otto Münsterer, Kuhn realized how performing played a role in Brecht’s writing circle: They engaged in conversational games and role-playing; for example, they took on the characters of their fictional creations and spun spirited exchanges. In some cases these may be understood as improvisations towards dramatic

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situations and dialogues, even “first drafts” of what were to become literary texts.7

These were the earliest attempts to shape their ideas into physical form by putting them on their feet. It was a practice Brecht himself continued in one way or another until his death. It was clear by 1949, when Brecht and his wife and collaborator, Helene Weigel, cofounded the Berliner Ensemble, that the collective had likewise become a model for his directorial approach: though he had the final say, he welcomed advice and criticism from many dramaturgs, assistants, designers, and even stagehands throughout the rehearsal process in an “open and democratic” style.8 Theaterarbeit is full of instances of this collaborative working method, confirming his rehearsal process via notes, and including an essay on Brecht as a director.9

Collaboration through the Fabel A particular tool of collaboration came from Brecht’s desire to reach agreement with his company on an interpretation of the play. The Fabel accomplished this through an examination of each incident with recourse to its gestic content, agreed upon by all parties. “Now it is clear that this function of the theatre is dependent upon an almost total commonality in all the vital interests of those involved.”10 Brecht emphasized the contradictory nature of the events when compared with each other and the contradictory behaviors of each Figure. In various productions, Brecht added titles for scenes, which were then projected as captions that offered the spectators a written view of the gestic content in advance of the scene being played. These captions followed his injunction in the “Short Organon” that those incidents that make up the plot “have to be carefully set off against each other by giving them

7  Tom Kuhn, “‘Ja, damals waren wir Dichter’: Hanns Otto Münsterer, Bertolt Brecht and the Dynamics of Literary Friendship,” in The Brecht Yearbook 21, eds. Maarten van Dijk (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 54. 8  Peter Brooker, Bertolt Brecht: Dialectics, Poetry, Politics (New York: Croom Helm, 1988), 23. 9  In English translation, see “Bertolt Brecht’s Stage Direction,” BOP pp.  226–229 and “Phases of a Stage Direction” BOP 230–232. 10  BOT 59.

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their own structure, that of a play within a play.”11 The best way to do this was “to use titles” which “must contain the social point at issue and at the same time say something about the preferred kind of portrayal,”12 by copying the tone of the situation. In the case of Mother Courage, this would be the tone of a chronicle. David Barnett refers specifically to Courage when defining the Fabel in relation to titles: “In the first sense, the Fabel is equivalent to the ‘epic banners’ with which Brecht opened all the scenes to Mother Courage, for example.”13 Brecht’s use of banners displayed those very captions containing the events that would occur within the scenes to follow, serving as a comment on those events and inhibiting suspense in the spectator for what was to unfold. For example, the banners for Scenes 3, 8 and 11 of Mother Courage, included in the text of the play, reveal the fates of Courage’s children before the spectator sees those moments come to pass.14 Though a thorough analysis of the Fabel would guide the 2015 team to a collective interpretation, it was one that would have to be translated into a performance. Our aim was to clarify the gestic content that would then be read by the spectators, who ideally would then realize the underlying societal influences on the Figures. Theatre professor John Rouse summed up Brecht’s plan: “The ultimate hope is that the spectators will continue to think productively about their relationships and their own society once they leave the theatre—and will set about changing both.”15 Slatan Dudow—the Bulgarian filmmaker who directed Brecht’s play Die Maβnahme in Berlin and collaborated with him on the film Kuhle Wampe (Who Owns the World)—posited that Brecht’s spectator should take the role of a kibitzer: like an observer at a game of cards, standing over the shoulder of the player, making suggestions, questioning moves, rejecting ploys or hesitation.16 Although officially a kibitzer gave unwanted advice, in this case the audience was encouraged to kibbitz over the performance.

 BOT 251.  BOT 251. 13  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 88. 14  “Her Honest Son Dies,” “Her Brave Son Does One Heroic Deed Too Many and Comes to An Ignominious End,” and “Mother Courage Loses Her Daughter and Continues on Alone,” foreshadow the deaths of Swiss Cheese, Eilif, and Kattrin respectively. Kushner, Mother Courage, 27, 71, and 93. 15  John Rouse, “Shakespeare and Brecht: The Perils and Pleasures of Inheritance,” Comparative Drama, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1983), 268. 16  Sergei Tretyakov, “Bert Brecht,” in Hubert Witt, Brecht, As They Knew Him, trans. John Peet (New York: International Publishers, 1974), 73 11 12

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In the meantime, our team would serve as that audience in rehearsals with the actors. As a playwright, Brecht could weave certain devices into his texts to bring out points for consideration by the spectator. Mother Courage and Her Children was no exception. He broke up the play into episodes, in contrast to the dramatic pyramid proposed by Gustav Freytag in 1863 in his book Die Technik des Dramas [Technique of the Drama] of inciting incident, rising action, climax, and denouement used to craft a well-made play. In Brecht’s approach, each scene began with a new situation, sometimes years later than the previous circumstances, with the story purposefully interrupted. In the same way, our analysis and the way it was staged could focus our spectators’ attention on the contemporary American economy, among other issues. At the first production meeting, when the 2015 team was introduced to the concept of the Fabel, I suggested they examine the individual episodes, the plot events for each scene based on the Couragemodell 1949 notes translated by John Willett.17 I then asked the production team to divide the scenes among themselves and imagine a Fabel interpretation for each incident in that scene. In this way, they saw the piece as a mosaic of occurrences. Meanwhile I worked separately on all the scenes to compare them with my own. Each team member could delve into one of the twelve scenes rather than look at the whole Fabel, a reconstruction process we later accomplished together.

Converting Plot Points to Gestic Incidents This was a process that took time to explain and to practice. While the Fabel is described at length in such books as David Barnett’s Brecht in Practice, and Barnett offers examples of Fabel moments and a useful chart for documenting them, understanding how a Fabel works is different from the process required to transform a plot point into an event as a social critique of the prevailing ideology in the author’s time. For the students this took practice and a further method for conversion. At first, I discovered some team members continued to see the Fabel as a list of plot points rather than an interpretation of them. Instead, they were encouraged to look for the Fabel within a Fabel or, as Brecht asked, “What are the events 17  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 288–319. We added some events where needed throughout the complete Fabel.

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behind the events?”18 For example, when we simply reiterated a plot, “The Chaplain suggests that Courage offer less for the wagon so that she will have some money left, but she tells him she can’t haggle over her son’s life,” such a point did not explain the action from a sociological or economic viewpoint. This led us to go below the surface of what we had initially proposed. What we realized was missing in the former instance was the contradiction between Courage’s rejection of the Chaplain’s suggestion and then her later use of it, revealing the desperate pull of economics over emotions. For a plot point in the first part of Scene 3, “Mother Courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers,” we at first concentrated on Yvette: “Yvette laments her life as a prostitute.” We realized, however, that Yvette serves as a successful business model for Kattrin, despite her mother’s protests. The final Fabel interpretation read: “Kattrin works hard while Yvette, selling herself, can lounge about and drink.” There was a deeper implication here than a simplistic one such as, “Prostitution leads to depression and disease.” Our team ultimately created a Fabel by considering the titles of events in relation to contradiction, historicization versus presentism, and the “Not … but,” while noting the existence of rituals and ceremonies. The formula: identify the plot points, consider each point from a historical, sociological perspective (by identifying the ever-thuses), look for contradictions and “Not … but,” eliminate psychological interpretations insofar as they become substitutes for sociological analysis, and consider the contrasts between the different behaviors of individuals.

Contradiction As David Barnett explains in Brecht in Practice, “the Fabel helps to identify the contradictions at work in a scene and to understand the character’s roles within them.”19 He noted that this was “to identify the way a scene itself develops dialectically.”20 For Brecht, the world could be explained through the use of dialectics as “discovered by Marx and Hegel.”21 Brecht

18  Brecht quoted in Dickson, Towards Utopia, 245. In personal correspondence with David Barnett, he also encouraged us to go deeper. 19  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 88. 20  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 88. 21  Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Art and Politics, eds. Steve Giles and Tom Kuhn (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), 103, hereafter BAP.

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found dialectics a useful means for his own ends: “The dialectic is a method of thinking, or, rather, an interconnected sequence of intellectual methods, which permit one to dissolve certain fixed ideas and reassert praxis against ruling ideologies.”22 For Brecht, one major form was theatre praxis, to train the audience in thinking dialectically: “the theatre of [Verfremdung] is a theatre of dialectics.”23 Such a type of theatre could not be accomplished, “without pointing to the contradictory, ongoing character of conditions, events, figures, for unless you recognize the dialectical nature of reality it cannot be mastered.”24 How is this accomplished? Through the Verfremdungseffekt which “makes is possible to enact this dialectical nature.”25 As David Barnett notes, for Brecht via Marx, any social system is unstable containing within its thesis the contradictions which are its antithesis; when the conflict between the thesis and antithesis becomes too great, it leads to new synthesis, a new system in which lies its own antithesis. This process continues throughout history.26 Verfremdung was useful for the creation of gestic incidents, as it encouraged dialectical thinking: “Even when deciding on the titles that determine the blocking, it is not enough to demand eg [sic] merely a social quality; the titles must also contain a critical quality and announce a contradiction.”27 In this way, the dialectic “must be able to become concrete, the mysteries of the world are not solved, they are demonstrated.”28 Brecht’s overall gestic aim or Grundgestus is written into Mother Courage, a contradiction between economic pressures and the concern for their fellow human beings which he finds in the figures of the historical conflict and then highlights. The actions of persons in a play are revealed as a series of contradictions based on dealing with the constructed world they inhabit: “Characters can no longer exist as if they were in some way wholly natural and independent but betray their debt to their relationships with society.”29 However, the team could only offer these gestic points through performance; it was up to the audience to make those connections.

 BAP 104.  Brecht, Journals, 120. Entry: 20 December 1940. 24  Brecht, Journals, 120. Entry: 20 December 1940. 25  Brecht, Journals, 120 (20 December 1940). 26  See Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 18–19. 27  Brecht, Journals, 120 (20 December 1940). 28  Brecht, Journals, 120 (20 December 1940). 29  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 36. 22 23

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One example comes in Scene 3. The plot point is “The Chaplain asks for a cloak to hide his clothes, which Courage reluctantly gives him.” Courage gives the Chaplain merchandise—the cloak—gratis to hide his Protestant garb from the Catholic soldiers. The actress made a show of giving the cloak begrudgingly, as a great sacrifice she was making in giving up some of her inventory. In Scene 3, Courage has shown charity to a fellow human being, in Scene 5 she has stressed the value of the shirts outweighing the needs of those who are suffering. Her choice in Scene 5 also contradicts another act of compassion in Scene 9. In the latter, given the opportunity by the Cook for a new life in Utrecht, she chooses to stay with her daughter Kattrin rather than accept the Cook’s offer. While feeding Kattrin soup, Courage claims she is making this decision based on her business rather than on personal feelings, though this is an example of the “Not … but”: her harsh words contradicted by her compassionate actions. Anna Fierling is a complex character who acts differently (contradictorily), dealing with each situation as it arises rather than trying to reconcile new choices with previous ones. It is hoped that the audience will then leaf back and consider her behavior in each scene as compared to the others. Scene 3 was full of contradictions. For example: as Courage warned Kattrin about the life of a prostitute, her daughter compared her own hard work to that of Yvette, who lounged about drinking brandy in the mornings. It was clear from the behavior of the actress playing Kattrin that she was fascinated by Yvette’s indolence. When the Catholics attacked, though Yvette and Courage’s family had been following the Protestant army, the characters onstage noted that the Catholic’s victory might actually be better for business. In the same way, in Scene 1, the soldiers on the “friendly” side were enemies to Anna Fierling because they planned to recruit her sons. And when Courage told Kattrin her life would improve when the war ended, Courage’s actions contradicted this hopeful sentiment, as she followed the war wherever the battles took her and suffered when cease fires were announced. We offered up these contradictions for the spectators’ consideration and used various means of staging to emphasize them, for example, in Scene 3 by standing Kattrin in the same position that Yvette would take a few minutes later, first when Kattrin tried on Yvette’s hat and then when Yvette recovered it and examined her own looks to assure herself she was presentable to the approaching soldiers.30 30  In the Berliner Ensemble production, when Regine Lutz as Yvette walked away after her song, she swayed in the seductive gait of Mae West. Later, when Kattrin tried on her shoes, she imitated that gait. See Carl Weber “Vaudeville’s Children and Brecht: The Impact of American Performance traditions on Brecht’s Theory and Practice,” Brecht Yearbook 15 (1990): 60–61.

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Fabel Example: Scene 2 Here is a partial example of the Fabel for Scene 2 of Mother Courage and Her Children. The gestic incidents, like Stanislavsky’s beat changes, were Brecht’s “individual occurrences,” (Einzelgeschehnis),31 divided for closer inspection. Plot Event

Gestic Incidents

In the Swedish camp, Mother Courage tries to overcharge an army cook for a paltry chicken.

War depletes all resources. Courage offers a scrawny chicken to the cook, since there is no better food around. Whatever the market will bear is a fair price, regardless of which side is buying or selling.

The cook and Courage begin their relationship by haggling.

The haggling is a form of attraction: They are impressed with each other’s ability to negotiate.

The cook decides to prepare a rotten piece of meat for the general instead.

The cook plays his trump card. He is Courage’s equal in terms of buying low and selling high, as the use of the rotten meat implies. He doesn’t have to buy her chicken because the cost of war changes the value of less-than-desirable foodstuffs.

The Swedish general invites Eilif The general encourages Eilif to continue his acts of into his tent on account of his bravery even as they increase the odds he will be killed. bravery. He wants Eilif to help take the fort they are besieging. This is an example of the social hierarchy during wartime. The common soldier does all the dirty work, and the general keeps his hands clean and reaps the economic benefits. This is worth a drink and praise, as the army counts on empty honors to continue to motivate its troops. The general really loses nothing. Eilif is impressed by the attention. As the general drinks with Eilif, he denigrates the chaplain.

Though this is a holy war, the general treats the man of the church with contempt. The general offers Eilif a special wine without realizing it can’t be appreciated by the common soldier. Also, he holds his liquor better than Eilif because, being able to afford it, he’s used to it.

Mother Courage hears her son’s Courage is excited for Eilif’s arrival, but even more so voice and listens in on their because she realizes her food has suddenly risen in conversation.32 value—the general must have a good meal to celebrate the bravery of Eilif. Only the chicken will do. To celebrate his victory, the general orders the cook to prepare a meal, and the cook is forced to buy the chicken.

The cook buys the chicken at an even higher price, but he is impressed with Courage for seizing the advantage, as he would have done himself if the shoe had been on the other foot.

 Rouse, “Brecht and the Contradictory Actor,” 30.  As luck would have it, Eilif and the Cook serve in the same unit, the Oxenstjerna Regiment. 31 32

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Contradictions abound in Scene 2 of Mother Courage as well. One of the messages of the play is that wars can only be won on the backs of the disadvantaged, such as recruits like Eilif. The army celebrates bravery in a hollow way, with rewards that are ultimately worthless. The General’s own reward of wine is valueless to someone who can’t appreciate it; it has intrinsic, not real, value.33 The spectator, meanwhile, is encouraged to make the symbolic leap from expensive wine to other rewards, such as medals: the latter—meaning so much to those who receive them—by Courage’s economic calculation don’t equal the proper payment for such dangerous work. Indeed, the merit of the entire conflict is itself questionable, as the General’s treatment of the Chaplain reveals; for the most part, he either ignores or insults him. In 2015, as in Couragemodell 1949, the General “accidentally” spilled wine on the Chaplain’s robes, though not as extensively as he seemed to in the earlier BE production.34 In the main he focused on Eilif to the exclusion of his companion, although he begrudgingly gave the Chaplain a cup of wine for his theological argument supporting Eilif’s theft. At the same time, Eilif clearly swigged the wine without savoring it, downing it merely for its effects rather than its quality. Setting the play during the Thirty Years War was a form of Verfremdung, a critique of capitalism using historical events to point out the flaws in current systems. The idea that the combatants are fighting a religious war is quickly dispensed with. In Scene 2, though the Chaplain as a church leader symbolizes the combating theologies that have brought about the siege, the General points out it is soldiers like Eilif, not prayer, that will conquer the fort. In the same scene, echoing Brecht’s famous aphorism, “Food is the first thing. Morals follow on,”35 Eilif asks the Chaplain if the brutal acquisition of food is excused by the commandments, as if war could trump Biblical edicts. The Chaplain corrects him, noting that no such

 It’s value in this case: it makes Eilif pliable, especially when the General tells him to “bolt it down.” Kushner, Mother Courage, 21. 34  BOP 205. 35  “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral,” a lyric from The Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays: Two, ed. John Willett (London: Methuen Drama, 2007) 145. Brecht was famous for his slogans. Consider the phrase in the song “The Great Capitulation” in Scene 4 from Proverbs 16.9, “Der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt” (“Man proposes and God disposes”) is rendered by Brecht with a colon: “Der Mensch denkt: Gott lenkt.” In this way, the colon allows him to question the argument that God will provide by suggesting that man merely thinks He will. See Bertolt Brecht, Die Stücke von Bertolt Brecht in einem Band 6th Ed. 33

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passage exists in the Bible, although “You can command people to love their neighbors and if they are full of bread they may comply.”36 However, he adds, “That was then and this is now.”37 Even the Chaplain questions how religious teachings are forgotten during the current reality. For this he receives the wine. It was clear that the actor playing the General was rewarding the Chaplain with the attitude of a master patting a loyal dog.

Engaging the Spectators in Critical Thinking Brecht wanted his spectators to serve as critical observers of a play’s action, “by abstracting it from the context of the play and applying it to their own circumstances, to learn from it.”38 One way to encourage their engagement was to highlight the way in which a specific environment required the characters to make decisions. This was in contrast to a modern conception of analysis many of us had learned: a psychological approach to characters and their motives. Instead, Brecht concentrated on the way society’s forces constrained or impelled the figures to act. He referred to this as “the ensemble of all societal relations.”39 In the original context, the Berliner Ensemble used a Marxist lens to examine those economic forces at work on the Figures and, at the same time, how these forces affected their feelings and decisions. By focusing on economic forces within the text, we discovered many interesting points, for example, when the General in Scene 2 brings Eilif into his tent and offers him some wine. This relatively simple and short action contains a complex series of messages: first, the General is impressing upon Eilif his economic superiority by offering him wine from an expensive bottle. The lesson is lost on Eilif but should be clear to the audience: Eilif knows nothing about wine, so its economic value is meaningless to him. What he does know is that it makes him drunk more quickly, which also supports the General’s mission to inflate the boy’s sense of self. While the General savors his own wine, it quickly intoxicates the young soldier, who then obstreperously displays his singing and dancing abilities. The General himself is not affected, as he is used to the better vintages— but his inability to relate to his soldiers is clear from the fact that he believes

 Kushner, Mother Courage, 23.  Kushner, Mother Courage, 23. 38  BOT 91. 39  BOT 79. 36 37

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anyone would be able to recognize superior wines and in turn appreciate the private stores they are given.40 The second message is that the wine is a bribe: The General is praising Eilif, so his young soldier will in turn attack more highly defended positions and take greater and greater chances with his own life, motivated by a false sense of loyalty and the possibility of glory. The pointlessness of this position is suggested by his mother, who punishes him with a slap across the face and berates him for risking his life so carelessly. Finally, Eilif is his mother’s son, a product of the environment in which he has been raised: a market economy. He describes how he is able to defeat the farmers who set upon him by acting as a businessman, confusing them with his bargaining prowess by questioning the value of their cattle. His mother’s lessons allow him to survive the encounter.

Ever-thuses in Mother Courage To examine the society of the play meant focusing on those elements the Figures took for granted as the natural order of things. Brecht felt theatrical art needed to call attention to those conditions of life that seemed to have always existed, to be natural offshoots of development over time. Being ubiquitous, these influences on people’s lives were largely unnoticed. These were the ever-thuses.41 During the Thirty Years War, a conflict that seemed never-ending, the people of Europe could not be blamed for thinking the conditions of war were an ever-thus. Combat had been going on for so long, with no end in sight, it seemed to have always been a way of life. Mother Courage actually worries the war is not an ever-thus; having been in business before the war began, she counts on the fighting to last as long as she can take advantage of it.42 If there are pauses in the fighting, these are interruptions in her business. The Chaplain reassures her, in a point that would not be lost on twenty-first-century spectators, that wars can go on indefinitely as they “satisfy every need” anyone could desire in

40  The sharing of wine in the 1949 production was quite different. The General first checked to see that there was little left in the jug before passing it. BOP 206. Brecht asked Ekkehard Schall as Eilif not to overplay his inebriation in 1951. See Ekkehard Schall, The Craft of Acting: Seminars and Discussions, trans. Jack Davis (London:Methuen Drama, 2015), 207. 41  Manfred Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 37. 42  In Scene 3, she says she’s been in the business for thirty years and had the wagon for seventeen.

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peacetime.43 In the same way, the Recruiter and the Sergeant extol the effects of wartime behavior: people are more organized because they have to be. For example, they claim some villagers don’t even have names in peacetime. The implication seems to be that only a reckoning of the living and the dead would require the distinguishing of people from each other. The idea of ever-thuses dovetails well with the theory of Cultural Hegemony, proposed in the early twentieth century by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. It suggests the dominant class has created a complex system that promotes the prevailing ideology—the very one protecting the dominant class—as the only natural and normal way of thinking. As Anthony Squiers writes, “Brecht, like Gramsci and Barthes, conceived of a dominant ideology which … serves particular interests, not universal ones.”44 Our self-evident living conditions are not a norm but a carefully constructed environment that maintains systems of class, economics, and power. If we are content with our lives, it is because we have benefited enough from these systems that change seems unnecessary, and alternatives do not occur to us. Only on closer inspection can we see the system was created to maintain itself, despite any injustices or oppression that might be operating on certain parts of the population. If we notice unusual conditions, it is because our attention has been called to them. In Mother Courage, an underlying hegemony exists. It is taken for granted by their soldiers that the generals are in command, but it is only because the soldiers are willing to follow them, to obey their orders, no matter how dangerous or contradictory they may seem, that the officers have power to order people about. It is Courage’s role to point out in Scene 2 that only moronic officers need excellent and brave soldiers, and the King is saving money by relying on fewer people to fight his battles for him, adding extra burdens to those smaller numbers of troops who serve. As Brecht writes in his Me-Ti: Book of Intervention in the Flow of Things, “The weaker the farmer’s brain, the stronger must be the muscles of his ox.”45 The lower orders accept they do not live under the same conditions as the higher ups. In Scene 2 the General takes for granted he can order up whatever tasty morsels are available. Meanwhile the Cook and Courage  Kushner, Mother Courage, 64.  Roessler and Squiers, Philosophizing Brecht, 82. 45  Bertolt Brecht, Bertolt Brecht’s Me-Ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things, ed. Antony Tatlow (London: Methuen Drama, 2016), 73. 43 44

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are arguing over unappetizing remnants of food that will have to be doctored to appear appetizing. Such is their view of the world they take for granted their offerings will be accepted by whomever they serve them to. Famine is the order of the day, an ever-thus. In this particular world, a rotten piece of meat fished out of the trash by the cook is equivalent to a scrawny chicken with little meat on its bones. They bargain over these scraps in as spirited a manner as if they each possessed delicacies of the highest order.46 This odd behavior towards terrible food shows yet another of the war’s ill effects, a starvation diet. Brecht focused our attention on ever-thuses in order to question their stability through a procedure he called Verfremdung.

Verfremdungseffekte in Mother Courage The Verfremdungseffekt (or V-effekt) may cause a seeming ever-thus to become recognized as a social construct that may be changed. To analyze our world is to investigate what we take for granted through a form of complex seeing that reveals an underlying societal influence. For Brecht, this was the lens of dialectical materialism. The contradictions leading to Verfremdungseffekte are built into Mother Courage. For example, in Scene 2, one might assume Mother Courage would be proud of her son Eilif’s heroism. At first, she is impressed he is given special recognition by his superior officer. She also gets a good price for her chicken from the Cook because of him, and his timing is impeccable: the twenty head of cattle he has acquired won’t arrive in time for tonight’s meal. However, ultimately her attitude towards him is quite different: she’s angry with him for foolishly risking his own life. The slap that ends the scene is a surprise: not the greeting he or the audience were expecting. In the playing, our actors brought out this unusual behavior with the stunned look on Eilif’s face, and how the General and the Chaplain responded to the slap and Courage’s accompanying insults: they laughed at her, dismissing her reaction as hysterical. For the audience, Mother Courage’s pragmatism served as a contrast to the idealization of heroic deeds. Courage’s reaction to seeing Eilif again and then slapping him is also an example of “Not … but,” a means of pointing out the

46  Courage gets 100 Hellers, or 1 guilder, for the chicken. This is after the Cook offered her 30, she countered with 60 and then went down to 40. The arrival of the General more than doubles the price she receives.

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contradiction within her Figure.47 Her initial expression reveals her love for her son, but this contrasts with the severity of her reaction to his behavior, which she sees as foolish and counterproductive. Her feelings as a mother are contrasted with her pragmatism, a constant comparison used by Brecht in the play. Courage is also the gadfly who questions the order of command: generals order soldiers to fight, but do not participate themselves. Her attitude serves throughout the play as a Verfremdungseffekt to the events of the war. Eilif’s father was a soldier, and Courage has taught him a song about a wife who loses her husband in battle. The General makes the mistake of asking Eilif to sing it. In our production, Eilif became wilder and wilder as he performed the saber dance that accompanied the song. The General became more and more alarmed at the show of violence: unlike on the battlefield, he watched it unfold in front of him instead of surveying it from a safe distance. When Courage joined in the song, the General became angry that Eilif had been distracted from his mission. The song was clearly anti-war, at cross-purposes to his designs. The General dropped his veneer of concern and fondness for the young man as Eilif left his tent to greet his mother.47 We acted out an example of Verfremdung for the spectators using a Figure onstage: in Scene 9, when the Cook emerged from the parsonage, finding he had been abandoned by Courage, he was so surprised, the pipe he held between his teeth fell to the ground. This was both an uncomfortable moment for the audience and, based on the actor’s performance, comic relief. Thus, they had two feelings about the end of the scene based on their contrasting views of the Cook: disappointment at his pragmatism followed by sympathy for his abandonment. This came in large part from the charisma of the actor in the Cook’s role.48

Historicization in Mother Courage Brecht wants the spectator to operate as a historian; his theatre seeks to accomplish this “by showing what was different then from today and suggesting a reason. But you also have to show how yesterday became

 See Chapter 1 and below.  Laura Bradley points out that Eilif stresses the militaristic view of the song and that it is Courage who reminds him of the fate of the soldier. Laura Bradley, “Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship.” In The Modern Language Review 11, no. 4 (October 2016): 1039–41. I 49  A charisma he shared with Ernst Busch, who played the role in 1951. 47 48

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today.”49 If we see our performance of Mother Courage as a historical event, we must imagine how the figures of that time would respond in various situations rather than how we ourselves would behave. Mother Courage’s family has been taught a different view of love and loyalty. She models the idea of looking out for one’s self over others: rather than being proud of Swiss Cheese for not betraying his unit in Scene 3, she considers his loyalty foolish. And, rather than understanding Kattrin’s desire to save a baby from a barn in Scene 5, she castigates her for risking her own life. In the 2015 production, in order to focus the team on historization, I found it helpful to introduce them to Sam Wineburg’s idea of presentism in his book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, where he defines the word as a tendency to look at the past from one’s own point of view. Presentism ignores social factors that explain historical behavior, trying instead to apply a contemporary mindset to Figures from another era.50 All of us were prone to presentism, which is after all the natural fallback position when determining a Figure’s behavior—to consider our own. This tendency towards presentism also falsely presumes a Figure will be consistent in their attitudes towards situations, when in fact human beings with contrasting historical experiences are more complex than that. From a modern standpoint, we might believe the Cook and Courage are rivals in business to the point they are fighting over of the price of the chicken. In fact, they admire each other’s ability to haggle. The Cook may protest he has been robbed, but he begrudgingly respects Courage for taking advantage of him. He would have done the same under similar circumstances. This is the beginning of their relationship. Kelsey Fisher-­ Waits and Randall Rapstine, the actors playing Courage and the Cook in 2015, quickly picked up on the fun they had in each other’s company. This was a thread winding through Scene 8, when they traded innuendos over her playing of the harmonica, and lasting until Scene 9, when the Figures parted for the last time. Using the phrase, “Isn’t it strange how the underclass supported an economic system that had little benefit and worked against them?” the actions of Courage would be further defamiliarized. Behavior the actor used to illuminate the idea that a petit bourgeois would seek to benefit from such a scheme and fail to do so would be a Verfremdungseffekt. By  BOT 196–197.  Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001) 90. 50 51

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the same token, since such a system continues to flourish today, with support from people of the middle class, by inference it too is a behavior that might seem counterproductive.

Ritual and Ceremony As another point of entry to this level of analysis, we read that Brecht concentrated upon the rituals and ceremonies performed by the historical Figures, often insisting historical details had to be displayed with as much contextual accuracy as possible. One form of ritual that is implied in the play is the funeral for Field Marshall Tilly. The pomp he deserves is deadened by the fact he has destroyed all of the church steeples; the bells cannot ring to announce his passing. At the same time, his soldiers do not attend the funeral procession but treat the event as a holiday and drink at Courage’s makeshift canteen. Even the Regimental Secretary excuses himself to play checkers with the Chaplain because it is raining and he will ruin his uniform. And he points out the men were paid in advance, so they are less likely to attend to their duties. These are signs ritual has broken down. In Scene 11 of Mother Courage and Her Children, an event such as “The farmers pray for the city of Halle, while Kattrin climbs onto the roof of the hut with her drum,” was rendered by us in Fabel form as, “The farmers still rely on a ritual appeal to a higher power that will not help the situation but also will not jeopardize their safety. Meanwhile the outsider takes action: people are causing the problem and she, a person, must solve it, not a deity. Her drumming will wake up the townspeople, but it may draw the attention of the soldiers, which is dangerous.” Comparing the two interpretations—the incident versus the Fabel event—we saw a contradiction between a comforting ideology leading to useless inaction versus an action to save lives, particularly those of the children of Halle. The farmers pray; Kattrin risks her life. A further distinction between the action and event will be in how the actors perform them: At first the farmers encourage Kattrin to join them in prayer. She then specifically rejects this course of action, giving the impression it is absurd. This is Brecht’s attitude, placed in the mouth of a Figure he has created: as Keith Dickson notes, “Prayer, as the most intimate expression of the religious attitude, is seen in all cases as an impotent substitute for action.”51

 Keith Dickson, Towards Utopia: A Study of Brecht (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 135

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“Not … But” in Mother Courage Brecht likewise presented dilemmas that required Figures to make decisions, then showed them making different choices than the audience expected. He gave this idea a name: the “Not … But.” Though “Not … but” is conventionally understood as an actor’s technique, it can inform every stage of the production process from the Fabel to the blocking. Brecht uses “Not … but” both in terms of the actors and the text. This is because the Figures may not always feel they may do as they please.” Mother Courage is constrained by a survivalist code based on the vagaries of the war. She survives by relying on underhanded tactics: with recourse to the black market, she buys and sells such items as contraband bullets. She also bribes soldiers with supplies. If she can get a good price for meager food, it is because famine has swept through the countryside. She can’t afford to be charitable nor can she hope for peace. Both would ruin her. In contrast, when Figures disobey the rules of society, they suffer the consequences. Swiss Cheese could have followed his mother’s suggestions and turned over the strong box. That he doesn’t tells us something about him. His mother has modeled the role of the opportunist, and we might expect him to give up the box to save his own life. Instead, his loyalty to his regiment is strong enough to overcome his fear, and he is executed. Brecht introduces a number of these surprises in the plot of Mother Courage and Her Children. The accumulation of these “Not … buts” is startling. At the same time, it is instructive for those who wish to create a Fabel. For example: In Scene 1, Courage does not keep a close eye on her sons but allows one to be drawn away. In Scene 2, Courage is not proud of her son’s exploits but horrified Eilif would put himself in harm’s way. In Scene 3, Courage does not offer the initial price of the ransom but haggles over the amount. In Scene 4, Courage does not support the young soldier’s protest but convinces him and herself it is pointless. And so on. Each of these “Not … but” decisions is meant to surprise the spectator who, Brecht hoped, would criticize an environment that would cause such unexpected or counterintuitive decisions to be made.

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Most importantly of all, the audience learns from Courage by what she does not do. Despite the fact she undergoes many experiences demonstrating the price of the war is too high, she doesn’t make this connection, and is still following the armies to ply her trade at the end of the play.

Drehpunkte and Brüche: Turning Points and Ruptures Another step in our realization of the Fabel was to note where change takes place, where the Figures discover new information about themselves or the environment and are affected by it. Brecht referred to these as either turning points (Drehpunkte) or ruptures (Brüche), the former being changes in the Figure’s view of the play’s world, the latter being even more impactful.53 Whether a change is considered a turning point or a rupture is based on degree. Regina Lutz, an actor trained by Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble, discusses this concept in her book on acting, explaining that a turning point causes a change in the character: either in behavior or in thought. Using geometry to explain herself, Lutz suggests a 90-degree change or less for this type of turn. A rupture constitutes a major change in the character’s behavior so unlike their previous actions that it will be far more dramatic and constitute a kind of reverse, a 180-degree change.54 Mother Courage contains Drehpunkte (turning points) and Brüche (ruptures). Two Drehpunkte in Scene 2 are the meeting of the Cook and Courage and the General’s ceremony of rewarding Eilif for his bravery. In the former case, this meeting will lead to a more intimate relationship between them but also the heart-rending decision by Courage to choose between the Cook—and the comfort of a permanent home—and her daughter. In the latter case, Eilif is executed for being a war criminal, who considers the enemy anyone who is an obstacle to his mission. Thus, non-­ combatants are also targets of the kind of violence we are warned lies within him as he dances the saber dance. He is not just a soldier but a

 For a discussion of this concept, see Regina Lutz, Schauspieler—der schönste Beruf: Einblicke in die Theaterarbeit (Munich: Langen Müller, 1993), 120–129. Lutz was directed by Brecht at the BE. 54  Lutz, 120. This would also constitute a Haltung change. See chapter 5. 53

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homicidal maniac. An example of Brüche: when Kattrin decides to save the children, though she has been threatened with death, it is a complete rejection of the survivalist instinct her mother has instilled in her.

Putting It All Together Our initial work as a production team involved examining each event as a Fabel incident, conscious of its symbolic intent, of its historicizing specificity, of its use of the “Not … but” and turning points and ruptures, and of our own tendency towards presentism. Employing this awareness, our team could discover contradictions within Brecht’s play and in turn base our staging and designs on these ideas and test them on our own spectators. When we developed the Fabel, the production team learned we should approach our roles as social historians, looking for those small but important details that distinguish the age we are studying from other periods. This means we must understand contextually specific social systems in order to compare them. A whole range of behaviors, necessitated by living in a certain environment and obeying its laws, may be discovered, studied, and then applied to the events of the Fabel. These details also create useful contradiction, since in the mind of the spectator, comparisons will occur automatically, one behavior being rejected for another. By presenting incidents in a way that amazes or surprises the spectator, Brecht’s approach disrupts the play of empathy and identity and returns the audience to the position of critic.

Couragemodell 1949 The extensive notes from Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble, about their work on the play, as included in the Couragemodell 1949, were published in a variety of sources translated into English,55 so we were able to compare our Fabel to the work the Ensemble had done. For example, as we rehearsed Scene 6, our event of the Fabel read, “Mother Courage declines a proposal of marriage and insists on firewood.”56 The actor playing the Chaplain, Anthony Burton, saw this is a genuine opportunity to make his feelings for Courage known. This may have been one motive, but I asked him to consider what he was doing during that moment. He was

 These included Brecht Collected Play: Five and Brecht on Performance.  Brecht Collected Plays: Five, 277–323.

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chopping wood. Courage suggests sarcastically he is not putting effort into the job, and the Chaplain has previously complained he isn’t meant for such work: “I’m a pastor not a woodcutter.”57 It is true the Chaplain wants to stay with the business as a survival strategy. It is also true he doesn’t want to do this type of manual labor. The actor decided to half-­ heartedly make little strikes at the kindling and then change the subject by making his proposal. The relationships between various partners were shown here as expedient rather than romantic. His actions were also funny. The final Fabel incident read, “The Chaplain avoids hard work chopping clumsily and then distracting Courage with an offer of marriage.”58 By Scene 8, Eilif is a different man, having been hardened by his years in service. He is also an officer, and dressed in an expensive leather doublet, a far cry from his meager clothes in Scenes 1 and 2.59 The Thirty Years War has rewarded him and punished him in equal measure.60 The Fabel read, “If the recommencing of the war had been announced, Eilif would still be a hero, not a war criminal. He dies a rich man, as he has, up until now, benefited from his actions.” The actor at the BE portrayed Eilif in Scene 8 as “coarse, surly and degraded by violence” just as Yvette was “snooty, vulgar, and grotesque.”61 In each case, the war had taken a physical and mental toll on the two characters. We decided instead to stress their abilities to use the war for great profit; Eilif and Yvette were more successful than Courage and her family, and the ravages of war were less evident in the two Figures. As a further contrast, Scene 8 is the nadir for the Cook. When he meets up with Courage again, he is destitute. The event reads, “The Cook reappears.” This moment might be described as a reunion of two people who care for each other. But it is also about survival. The final Fabel read, “The Cook is broke because the army has been out of money to pay the soldiers for a year. He is here in hopes Courage will let him stay with her. He compliments her and insults the Chaplain.” The Cook must eject the Chaplain

 Kushner, Mother Courage, 67 and 66 respectively.  Brecht Collected Plays: Five, 306: “He chops clumsily, complaining that his talents are lying fallow, and, probably with a view to avoiding physical labor, asks her to marry him.” 59  The BE’s costume designer for the 1951 production added an interesting feature to this idea: “Palm has the boy dressed in rags and barefoot at the beginning. Now he arrives in expensive black armor (black like the SS uniform).” “Kurt Palm,” BOT 273. 60  In Collected Plays: Five the following note appears in a discussion of Scene 2: “Not until scene 8 (the outbreak of peace) does he wear expensive clothing and gear; he dies rich.” 292. 61  Jones, Great Directors, 111. 57 58

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from the business and take his place. That event was titled, “The fight over the feedbag.” The Fabel read, “The Cook and the Chaplain vie for Courage’s affections (and the security of the business). The Cook points out the Chaplain is not good for business as the Chaplain has advised Courage to stock up on goods just as peace is declared. The Chaplain realizes he is losing his position and begins to insult Courage and her business.”62 Studying the script closely, Randall Rapstine as the Cook decided his constant references to Courage’s brandy seemed to suggest his alcoholic tendencies. Rapstine took any chance he could to ask for it, subtly and otherwise. The Cook was suffering the effects of long exposure to a terrible conflict. At the same time, lest the audience have sympathy for him, the Cook is revealed to be Piping Pieter, the man who impregnated Yvette and, as he tells her, “helped you find your calling.”63 The Cook gloated over his conquest, until she put him in his place. The event read, “Piping Pieter is unmasked.” The Fabel read, “Yvette identifies the Cook as the man who jilted her years ago. (He impregnated her along with four other girls and left town). This jeopardizes his relationship with Courage, or so the Chaplain hopes.”64 Using the concepts of contradiction, historicization, ever-thuses, and “Not … but,” we constructed a Fabel for Mother Courage 2015 that we consulted constantly as we proceeded through rehearsals and later as a means of reflecting on the performance. The next step was to use the Fabel in our discussions of the designs.

62  The latter two sentences are also plot points. We decided to frame this moment in relation to commerce: “The Cook compares his business acumen to the Chaplain’s; he is better for business.” 63  Kushner, Mother Courage, 80. 64  Here the team might have pointed out that the Cook was an opportunist, even as a young man.

CHAPTER 4

The Design Team, Meta-theatricality, and Literarization

The stage designer draws up the scenery within which the Fabel’s possibilities will be brought to life. The musician further challenges the Fabel, as it must also support the interpretation. The director, in charge of the performance and the “audience’s delegate,” co-ordinates the various art forms and sister art forms as they contradict one another, communicating their different intentions and ensuring “that everything can be easily seen.”1 (Manfred Wekwerth, Daring to Play)

It is one thing to create a Fabel within a like-minded group of artists; it is quite another to realize that Fabel onstage, concretely and with immediacy, so the spectator can follow it. This chapter explores how a production team, using a Fabel as a blueprint, considers how the mise-en-scène will create an environment for realizing the gestic incidents. Included is a discussion of how literarization was incorporated and how Brecht’s concept of the Separation of the Elements was applied as a form of artistic interdisciplinarity, while comparisons are made between the work of the 2015 team and the early work of the Berliner Ensemble, on Mother Courage. Once we had an initial analysis or Fabel of Mother Courage, our team had to make the various elements—design, music, and acting—correspond to our intent, while at the same time remembering, as Manfred Wekwerth 1

 Wekwerth , Daring to Play, 164.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_4

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writes, they may contradict or comment on each other, further creating Verfremdung and critical reflection by the audience. Our designers had to make the leap between a sociological analysis and a work of art that could interest, entertain, and inspire a theatrical public. They did so in the same way we had worked together to create the Fabel: by considering how Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble might have managed the process of design. Then, rather than producing the staging that the actors would test out, they created a separate environment within which the Figures could be examined as in a laboratory. This allowed the actors in rehearsal to consider their own ideas of staging for examination in light of the Fabel, a further collaboration within the whole team rather than an imposition of the staging on the performers. Brecht’s designers weren’t trying to complement each other; rather, they were encouraged to use unique means, which, when juxtaposed, might create more complex and individualized webs of significance. The desired complexity of the stage production, for Brecht, came from the presentation of divergent messages, each its own kernel of information within the mosaic: a montage of meaning. Brecht referred to this collage approach as the Separation of the Elements.

Design as Disruption Brecht sought to counter the overbearing artistic trance created by a Gesamtkunstwerk. Our team attempted to avoid the same possible effect on the spectators by applying the Separation of the Elements and Brecht’s use of meta-­ theatrical devices to create critical distance, aiming for more complex seeing, for example, through added commentary or literarization. Particularly in the hyper-mediated twenty-first century, where so many senses are constantly activated at once, we felt we might better engage our audience by offering separate and contrasting stimuli. Moreover, this willing juxtaposition of elements meant the designers were free to operate individually and even contradict each other. All decisions still had to serve the Fabel; how the designers got there could be widely divergent. Brecht’s intent, shared by his collaborators, was to interrupt the narrative as a way of preventing the audience from forming an empathetic connection with the protagonist. In enumerating Brecht’s judgment of

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Aristotle’s theatrical views, Angela Curran notes, “Dramatic practices that feature empathy with characters (some kind of affinity with the tragic protagonist and shared feelings as a result of this connection) impeded the adoption of a critical perspective on the social dimension of the character’s situation.”2 To avoid this, all theatrical means were employed, including design, particularly as introduced by Brecht’s friend and colleague, Caspar Neher. The Berliner Ensemble continued to use Neher’s devices, including signage, songs, titles, minimal scenery, as well as meta-theatrical maneuvers that placed the action in the past, i.e., as a construction by a group of artists who labored to create the piece the audience was watching. Brecht’s theatre thus resembled a kind of laboratory, designed to promote the examination of behavior onstage using means of disruption and commentary to test his principles.

Literarization in Mother Courage Literarization was introduced by Brecht as a way of encouraging “complex seeing.”3 One of Brecht’s strategies was to write scenes that could be compared to each other, encouraging the spectator to consider later scenes in light of earlier ones, and vice versa, as a reader might compare passages in a book. This is why Brecht added Scene 10, to remind the audiences of the effect of Courage’s decision in Scene 9. However, he also suggested how another literary form could be applied to the theatre. By using titles, either in banners or projected on screens, Brecht linked the theatre to the academic process of footnoting: “The use of footnotes and the comparing of points on different pages need to be introduced into dramatic writing too.”4 Literarization for the 1949 BE production was realized through two types of signs, those that described the plot elements to come and those that told the audience where the scenes took place: in Poland, Saxony, and so forth. They gave context to what would be played. Brecht’s staging of Mother Courage also included the intrusion of songs; before these musical pieces began, the BE announced them through  Angela Curran, “Brecht’s Criticisms of Aristotle’s Aesthetics of Tragedy,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59:2 Spring 2001, 172. 3  BOT 72. 4  BOT 72. 2

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a device: they lowered a symbol from the flies containing a flag, drum, and trumpet along with its own lighting source. When it appeared, the audience were reminded the songs were a contrasting artistic element, not a part of the action.5

The Frame Teo Otto’s design from the Zurich production included a series of screens that were realistic in design and construction, using appropriate materials as might have been used in the seventeenth century. However, these showed “artistic abbreviation,” providing only as much as was necessary for the action.6 In 1949 at the BE, Otto’s setting limited the amount of scenery, allowing for smooth transitions between scenes, and had the added merit of focusing attention on events rather than décor.7 Changes of scene, required of the epic journey of Fierling and her children, were partly aided at the Berliner Ensemble by the use of a turntable that covered the stage.8 The wagon traveled in the opposite direction to the turntable.9 Pieces could be added as needed for each scene, but sometimes the stage could also be blank, except for the cyclorama upstage.10 Covered with bright white light, the bleak landscape reminded the spectators of war-torn Berlin just outside the Deutsches Theater. Moreover, every scene centered upon the placement or movement of Courage’s canteen wagon.11 Even using the turntable, the number of scene changes required for Courage meant transitions between scenes had to be specially staged to avoid long pauses in between. For the Munich production of 1950, Brecht, with a stopwatch, would have in mind how much time he wanted  BOT 184–185.  Brecht: Collected Plays: Five, 279. 7  The exception was Mother Courage’s canteen wagon, so ubiquitous as to serve as a character itself. See Brecht: Collected Plays: Five, 280. 8  In February 1951, in the small town of Döbeln, a local theatre collective did Courage without a turntable according to Brecht’s instructions. See “From the Correspondence of the Berliner Ensemble on the Model,” in BOP 244. 9  Eric Bentley, Bentley on Brecht (New York: Applause, 1999),365 10  Teo Otto introduced physical set pieces as required. See below. 11  See Brecht: Collected Plays: Five, 280. 5 6

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to pass before a new scene began. If the stage crew did not manage to make these changes in a timely fashion, Brecht was known to scream at the stage manager, making him reset everything and try again.12

Scene Design: Mixing Art Forms In the 2015 production we wanted to both honor Brecht’s intent and develop our own solutions. When we decided on a setting for the play, it met our criteria as both an abstract background and a space that allowed the spectators to frame the story. We had been talking about the idea of behaviors being observed in a lab, with the Figures (or Subjects) unaware they were being watched. This led us to develop a white model that could be imagined as an antiseptic lab, a museum, or an archive.13 In keeping with this overall concept, Travis Clark designed four-sided rolling towers that could be moved about on the flat white floor. Also employing stationary walls and flying panels, he could create any number of configurations: enclosing, narrowing, or widening the space as needed. The towers and set pieces were moved by a crew wearing white Tyvek suits (similar to Hazmat suits); in keeping with the atmosphere of detached observation, we referred to these Figures as “archivists.” During scene changes in dim light, the actors, as Figures in their historical dress, walked into position and froze in place until the scenes proper began (Image 4.1). During these same transitions, the archivists placed objects of art on the floor that evoked warfare’s devastation, examples of sculptural art as commentary. Each scene thus introduced a diorama, as in a Natural History Museum, that would then come to life on cue. Instead of Teo Otto’s use of Neher’s half curtain in 1949, in 2015 Travis Clark hung plastic sheeting to cover the proscenium opening.14 12  Bentley, Bentley on Brecht 368. Brecht also carried a light meter so he could test whether the lighting offered the necessary intensity. 13  He constructed two columns at 12′ (H)-4X4.2 (W) and two at 16′ (H)-4X4.2 (W), as well as eight stationary walls of varying heights: two walls at 16′ (W) and 12′ (H), two walls at 4′ (W) and 12′ (H), and four walls at 4′ (W) and 14′ (H). Travis also altered the height of the space using four panels 12′ (L) 4′ (H) that hung from the pipes and served as trim, such as in Scene 4, when one horizontal piece flew in to hang just above Courage and the young soldier as she sang to him and to the audience the “Song of the Great Capitulation.” 14  The half-curtain on stage appears in 1916. Neher begins using it from 1923 onwards. See Susanne de Ponte, “Stylistic Devices of a Set Designed by Caspar Neher for Brecht’s Epic

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Image 4.1  The Actors Take Positions Before Lights Rise. This happens before Scene 5, during the Siege of Magdeburg. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

This semi-transparent curtain was raised to start the play and didn’t come down until the end of the show. As the audience took their seats, they could discern shadowy figures setting the first scene. In parallel, after Courage exited with her wagon for the last time and the plastic curtain was lowered, the actors arranged themselves in a final tableaux vivant, all the paintings from the show were lowered into positions above them and, when the curtain rose, the cast was found standing in place, staring at the spectators in lieu of a curtain call (Image 4.2).15 Though the 2015 background was more abstract, certain important pieces were employed as connotative signs that focused and concretized the story. Brecht insisted that the costuming and props at the BE be Theatre” trans. Romy Fursland, in David Barnett, ed. Bertolt Brecht Critical and Primary Sources Volume Three (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 115. 15  Clark also used plastic sheeting to hide Courage’s wagon at the end of Scene 9, when Courage and Kattrin abandoned the Cook. The configuration at that point was a completely enclosed space, and so they drove the wagon upstage left and the sheeting was lowered in front of it.

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Image 4.2  The cast of Mother Courage with Travis Clark’s paintings flown in for the curtain call. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

historical clothing, tools, and other objects.16 These provided both a narrative function and an artistic aesthetic. The key set piece, the wagon used by Courage as her mobile home and business, was specific to the period: as a story-telling device, the condition of the cart and its contents—full or empty depending on her success, in good condition at the beginning of the play and more and more worn as the play progressed—would reflect the vagaries of Courage’s vocation. We continued this tradition ourselves, dressing the set and the actors as needed with detailed, unique objects and clothes, and giving emphasis to the wagon and its permutations. We made one exception to the wagon’s realistic design. During rehearsal, the technical director had added casters behind the wagon wheels so the actors could more easily practice “driving” the vehicle. When it came time to remove the casters, we decided to retain these extra wheels as a nod to the theatrical nature of the set piece. The wagon was 16  The chicken Weigel plucked, for example, had to have real feathers she could pull from its carcass.

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much easier to maneuver, but that concession to the actors reminded spectators they were watching pre-rehearsed events and artificial solutions designed to aid the performers rather than the Figures. The museum idea encouraged us to intertwine different media, not only by adding music, but through the addition of visual art as well. Travis Clark used both sculpture and painting as separate but intertextual elements. Inspired by a visit to the “Bodies Human” exhibit, a display of human bodies and their remains artistically arranged and sculpted17; from his admiration for Julie Taymour’s puppet characters; and by his research into modern sculpture, he constructed four body sculptures from chicken wire and muslin placed on Masonite and gliders (carpet). These likewise emulated disturbingly organic forms by Berlinde De Bruyckere such as “Romeu” (2010), “Krepelhout-Cripplewood” (2012–2013) and “Lange eenzame man” (2010). Clark painted the carcasses white and gray and placed them in various positions on the floor or hung them on clothing racks. Though they were a stark and striking visual element, the carcasses were intended specifically for the spectator, and the actors were directed to ignore them. This heightened the sense that the performers played Figures living in a different environment, one that they imagined to be seventeenth-century Europe, while the spectators remained in the present with the art works. As Clark noted, “They [the Figures] were in the real world and we were in an art gallery (Image 4.3).”18 As a corollary, Clark used paintings in two ways: as social commentary about the war and as an attempt to deflate suspense and heighten artifice. He flew in two types of paintings on battens to hang above the stage: anti-­ war art from various periods, as general commentary on the continued attempts by human beings to destroy each other, and a second thematic set of images depicting scenes of execution tied to specific moments of death in the play. For Scene 1, for example, Travis painted a variation on an AP photograph captioned, “Decommissioning after the Treaty of Versailles” in which a man is in the act of destroying hundreds of helmets from the First World War with a pickaxe. This made a comment on the Scene 1 plight of 17  “Bodies Human: Anatomy in Motion,” created by Real Bodies The Exhibit, toured to Lubbock in 2011. The remains were preserved in liquid silicon rubber. See, for example the FAQ on the museum site for the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium: https://www. coxsciencecenter.org/sites/default/files/Real%20Bodies%20FAQ%20sheet_V3.pdf. 18  Travis Clark interview with the author.

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Image 4.3  The setting for Scene 5 with the actors and artwork in place. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

the Army Recruiter and Sergeant, who are having so much trouble refilling the platoons: in its sixth year, the war creates more fodder than glory. Similarly, for Scene 2, Travis painted a woodcut of Gustavus Adolf to adorn the column in the General’s tent, thus reminding the spectator who controls the movements and decisions of the Protestant army. In Scene 5, at the siege of Magdeburg, Travis rendered Francisco Goya’s “A heroic feat! With dead men!” (1810–1815), as metaphorical title and artwork appropriate to the destruction of a city. For Scene 10, when Courage and Kattrin pulled the wagon through the countryside, Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” (c. 1819–1823) hung above them. The scene is an idyll where, in the original text, they hear the singing of “The Rose Song” through the window of a hut. Yet the horror of Goya’s painting above them seems to foretell they cannot ultimately escape the wartime devastation but will continually roll towards it. Finally, in homage to one of Brecht’s inspirations for the character of Courage, Travis’s rendition of Pieter Bruegel’s 1561 painting, “Dulle

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Griet (The Mad Meg)” appeared at the end of the production, flying in as Courage, now alone, exited upstage with her wagon to follow the army. Clark also reimagined famous depictions of execution as foreshadowing for the deaths of Courage’s children. In Scene 3, he signaled Swiss Cheese’s death with a rendition of Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” lowered from the flies, while a drum roll from the band heralded the firing squad. As the painting stopped in position above center stage, the drum roll and Swiss Cheese’s life were cut short (Image 4.4). Similarly, a recreation in paint of Eddie Adams’s 1968 photo of a summary execution by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan foreshadowed Eilif’s own execution offstage as he was being escorted away by the soldiers in Scene 8 (Image 4.5). In Scene 6, when Kattrin went to the market for supplies, Clark’s sketch of her face covered with black paint visualized the attack and disfigurement she was to suffer in town. Finally, in Scene 11, when Kattrin was shot, a painting, Travis’s red and black recreation of a woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz, Hunger (1923), fell onto the platform, hiding her body. There was no doubt that the bullet had been a fatal one (Image 4.6).

Sound Design 2015 As with the setting, sound design was crucial to our production’s impact. Seth Warren-Crow established a Foley table just off left, in an alcove intentionally visible to the spectators. Like an old-time radio production team, our crew used various devices to create the sound effects, including cellophane of three different thicknesses for the sounds of crackling fire in Scene 5; a wind machine for Scene 9 using a crank with fabric around a big wooden wheel; two rain sticks for Scene 6; a slapstick for the gun shot that kills Kattrin in Scene 11; and two bass drums for cannon fire; in addition, a member of the band played a bugle call in Scene 11 (Image 4.7). Microphones were added for a main archivist to announce the title of each scene as described by Brecht and provided a vocal boost for those who sang. The audience noted how all of these sounds were being produced by people within the artifice of performance. For scene changes, Warren-Crow added the ringing of an electrically controlled bell which explicitly signaled the end of each scene. Each time, this cue was followed by an archivist using a microphone to announce: “Next set-up.” This idea was inspired by the movie All That Jazz: in a

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Image 4.4  Scene 3: Just before Swiss Cheese is executed, a rendition of the Goya painting, “The Third of May,” is flown in. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

dream sequence Roy Scheider’s character, a famous director, films various musical numbers as a goodbye to himself and an indictment of his bad behavior, seeking approval from his real self who is dying in a hospital

Image 4.5  Scene 8: The Introduction of a painting representing Eddie Adams’s 1968 photo, foreshadowing the death of Eilif. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

Image 4.6  Scene 11: When Kattrin is shot, the painting of Käthe Kollwitz’s woodcut Hunger falls on the roof of the barn, covering her body. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

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Image 4.7  The Foley table is clearly visible to the audience just right of the proscenium during the production of Mother Courage in 2015. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

bed.19 In All That Jazz, the sound of the bell was an intrusive and irritating comment on his constant need to self-dramatize as he quickly moved to the next shot. In Mother Courage, the bell was an intentional interruption of the action and a reminder of the episodic nature of the play, a series of scenes which were visibly set and reset before the spectator (Image 4.8).

Costume and Makeup Design Though Leigh Anne Crandall was a late replacement as costume designer and joined us only after the production team had begun meeting, she later noted that, because she could see the scenes as they were being mounted by the actors, she was able to make up for lost time, and she made countless invaluable contributions. Her costumes were designed to clearly evoke a story set in the Thirty Years War and to distinguish the characters from

19  Bob Fosse, dir. All That Jazz, prod. Robert Alan Aurthur, twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures, 1979.

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Image 4.8  The crew resets for the next scene of Mother Courage in 2015. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

the archivists and crew members. Crandall described being inspired by the attention to detail that Clark had brought to the props, especially Courage’s wagon. The setting of the play in a museum convinced Crandall that hyper-realistic costumes, against the abstract background, satisfied many storytelling requirements: for example, the wear and tear of clothing worn by people who rarely changed out of it or washed it, and which deteriorated as the play progressed, could also represent historical artifacts. She conceived the costumes for Brecht’s characters as museum pieces, as if the actors were wearing the original clothing from the seventeenth century being displayed within the museum’s white walls. Therefore, principal sources of inspiration for her research were period paintings. The characters come from different countries and appear at different times of year, and all of these permutations had to be found and realized. Crandall chose to work with real fabrics and leather, as she felt that synthetics might otherwise ruin the tactile effect. With the help of Amanda Staats, our costume shop supervisor, Crandall then distressed the fabrics using various methods to tear or degrade them and paint to add sweat and dirt stains. As she expressed it, the challenge was to create such beautiful

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Image 4.9  Scene 8: The Chaplain and the Cook reminisce together during a ceasefire much the worse for wear. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

doublets and then, in a sense, wreck them. Crandall’s makeup likewise added to the effect of Figures who were poor, unwashed, and tired, people who had been dealing with war for many years (Image 4.9).20 An addition to our designs, and thus to Crandall’s responsibilities, was the concept of a group of archivists who ran the museum and set each scene, ran the sounds, and handed microphones to the performers: this meant she suddenly had to provide costumes for nine more people. Her effective and inexpensive solution, which also heightened this effect, was the purchase of a number of Tyvek suits, to be worn by various-sized crew members, and sometimes actors, who were drafted to move scenery and could thus hide their costumes beneath the suits. This seamlessly expanded the personnel available to assist in scene changes, but also enhanced the feeling of a laboratory setting in which various onstage archivists studied the performances.

20  Indeed, actors who played a variety of roles prided themselves on the different layers of dirt they meticulously added. Leigh Anne Crandall interview with the author.

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Lighting Design In terms of emulating Brecht’s intentions, the lighting design presented the greatest challenge. Brecht’s preference for pure white light at the Berliner Ensemble could not be used for an extended period of time on our white set.21 Lighting designer John Conner instead employed colored gels and gobos to “relieve the visual strain,” but did resort to unfiltered white light for scene changes as a sort of “palette cleanser”; thus, when each scene started, it was a “play unto itself.”22 In this way, Conner could give each environment its own look, colors, and textures, absolved of the responsibility to create an arc for the whole play. He used the upstage cyclorama as a lighting surface and also made his own gobos for patterns on the walls. These were slightly unfocused and employed a cloud-like pattern that could be replicated in various scenes. Conner isolated the paintings and singers using spotlights, and in Scene 2, divided the tent area on stage right from the Cook’s outside kitchen on stage left by isolating the pattern on the “tent” walls. Conner too was inspired by the stagings being made during rehearsal by the actors. As he expressed it, these choices gave him a story he could contribute to telling.

Music It is clear from the details of the BE’s 1949 production that the music also served as a form of literarization; that is, an added comment on the events. For example, in his music for Scene 5, Paul Dessau contradicted the feelings of the audience concerning the horrific siege of Magdeburg by scoring the event from the perspective of the attackers. BE Dramaturg Käthe Rülicke-Weiler recalled that while the destruction of the city was being depicted—as the Chaplain tries to help the casualties and Kattrin threatens Courage for the shirts that could serve as bandages—they were accompanied by a victory march composed by Paul Dessau.23 Here the

21  Brecht preferred an unfiltered white light, According to Carl Weber, “Brecht hated mood lighting. He felt the audience should see the smallest details onstage, observe the smallest details of a performance.” Barislav Jakovljević et  al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 8. 22  John Conner interview with the author. 23  Rülicke-Weiler, Die Dramaturgie Brechts, 217. Kushner includes this notion in the dialogue in Scene 5. See Kushner, Mother Courage, 58.

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hyper-ironical musical choice contrasted the triumph of one army and their celebration of victory with the devastation caused by their looting. I had hoped to find a partner from the TTU School of Music who would embrace the Brechtian, at least as I understood it then. I was fortunate to find in Dr. Christopher Smith a perfect collaborator in this enterprise. When I asked Dr. Smith if he would be interested in working on the show, putting a band together to play the nine songs, at first we were both thinking that he would play one of the available scores. We did some research on previous settings by other composers, including Paul Dessau’s music for the 1949 production, and contemporary settings by Jeanine Tesori for the 2006 New York Shakespeare Festival production and Duke Special for Deborah Warner’s 2009 production at the National Theatre. Though we both admired the work of each of these artists, Smith felt he might try his hand at composing a grittier score, one that would give the feeling of what he called a “junkyard cabaret” and evoke the sound of a group of musicians cobbled together trying to perform during the Thirty Years War using found and damaged instruments. Over the winter break between fall semester of 2014 and spring semester of 2015, Smith used the software program Sibelius to compose thirteen pieces: settings for the nine songs (and two reprises) as well as four further moments required by the text, such as the funeral march for General Tilly in Scene 6. In terms of the songs, he sought to avoid “shoehorning” the lyrics into predictable musical structures. He noted, “The music inside Kushner’s language dictated pretty clearly what the rhythmic shapes should be. And everything followed from the melodies and the melodies followed from the rhythmic language. A different translation would have led to completely different results.”24 He began by reciting the Kushner lyrics aloud, getting a feeling for their rhythmic structures. He then laid out a blank score with a combo instrumentation. Having discovered key poetic rhythms within the texts, he experimented with different pitches based on what the lyrics suggested in terms of shape and inflection. He then added a contrapuntal bass line and selected a drum pattern. One of the more difficult lyrics was for Courage’s first song. For Smith, the first two stanzas in the lyrics suggested the pattern 4/4, but the third moved into 3/4, and so Smith sought to create a bass line that accommodated this change. It was his view of the overall work that  Christopher Smith interview with the author.

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Image 4.10  Scene 9: The band for Mother Courage in 2015, to the right of the proscenium and clearly visible to the audience. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

offered the solution: he saw “the historical setting as a place of tremendous entropy, like everything falling apart.”25 Thus, the end of the second stanza seemed to wind down to a stop; an unpredictable variety of choices could follow it. Smith found he could separate the songs into unique pieces of music. Each had its own flavor, its own schema, and he was able to adjust each song to the particular persona of the singer/Figure. Because he knew the actors well, he could tailor his work to them. The band played just to the left and front of the proscenium on the floor of the auditorium (Image 4.10). Ultimately, he used a 7-person combo that played cello, drums, keyboards, trumpet, guitar/mandolin, bass, fiddle, and saxophone.26 He chose to bookend the show with contemporary themes of a political bent. The prelude was a version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun.” The finale began as a reprise of the Courage’s first song (sung by soldiers offstage) and then went from the 4/4 meter to  Christopher Smith interview with the author.  The band also provided a bugle sound during the Catholic attack in Scene 3 and a drumroll for the execution of Swiss Cheese. 25 26

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3/4. Intending a John Coltrane sound, Smith wrote a 3/4 chord progression which allowed for solos within the piece. “The emotion I was taking away from that ending–and I like to think Brecht would have approved— was absolute unbridled rage, that the world should be like this, that the world should present people with such dreadful choices.”27 The music got angrier and angrier, climaxing with screaming electric guitars, until the moment the curtain came down. Suddenly the music shut off completely, and in the silence, the curtain rose again to reveal the tableaux of the full cast, glaring silently at the audience.

A Detail Early in the rehearsal process, I had mentioned to the team that I did not see Brecht’s piece as a musical, but I learned over the course of our work together that, if the actors were singing, we needed to offer them as much music direction as possible. Also, to give the actors a sense of performing the songs for the spectator, we arranged a small cabaret at a wine bar in Lubbock called Host and Toast. In the context of this cabaret evening, the performers sang each piece out of context, as an entertainment in and of itself. They began to feel how they could step out of the play and present their songs directly to the audience. Smith felt that the songs had the ersatz feel of cabaret to begin with, and although we had mixed results, this experiment bore that out.28

A Note Originally, the use of devices created and/or adopted by Caspar Neher and Brecht as distinctive tools for a specific time period were new and innovative for their moment and ultimately became part of a larger theatrical vocabulary world-wide. But the use of Verfremdung was still a successful way for us to interrupt the narrative and allow critique by the audience. For example, the set changes created pockets of reflection time for the  Christopher Smith interview with the author.  Because of the limited time provided for music direction by the stage director, the actors were in various stages of preparedness for the cabaret performance. However, later I read a note by Carl Weber: “If one compares the dramaturgical use of songs in Mother Courage with their function in Brecht’s earlier work, one can’t help but notice that they are quite integrated into the action, not unlike the way American musical theater employs singing on the stage.” Weber, “Vaudeville’s Children,” 62–63. 27 28

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spectators through the sudden cessation of onstage action and the minutes required to reset the stage. The changing of the set very deliberately required a stoppage, when the actors would leave the stage to the work of the archivists (crew) and then place themselves within the new environment as the next title was read out. This was not just because we had eschewed the Berliner Ensemble’s use of a turn table, but we wanted to model those changes as accomplished by practiced workers who were clearly visible. The performance of the music was also a break in the action and even in character, when, for example, the actor playing the mute Kattrin moved to the periphery of the stage space, faced the orchestra and audience, and clearly sang “The Rose Song.” At the same time, it was important to separate the purpose of Verfremdung from the idea of meta-theatrics, because the trappings of Brecht’s approach have sometimes clouded people’s thinking about what he was trying to do. When contemporary theatre artists refer to their productions as “Brechtian,” they have sometimes simply overemphasized their own use of meta-theatrical tactics. Some devices for which Brecht is known—the half curtain, the exposure of lighting equipment, narration, speaking directly to the spectators—do not by themselves tell the whole story. They are simply a means to signal sociological implications. As Brecht scholar David Barnett has reiterated in more than one publication, “Brechtian theatre is a method and not an aggregation of devices.”29 We did not abandon the basic principle of Verfremdung in the designs but found contemporary substitutes for devices used by Brecht and Neher in the past to accomplish Brecht’s Literarization in the twenty-first century. We also contrasted our contemporary solutions with old technologies as a form of contradiction in practice. For example, the Figures sang the songs through microphones to enhance their voices, but the sound effects themselves were provided by the stage crew at a Foley table that might have been used on the radio in the 1920s. Paintings and photographs from different periods were emulated, but this was accomplished because of the designer’s ability to access images online, which he then adapted and enlarged in order to create the scale needed to present the images on drops and to use them as comments on the action. Therefore, 29  David Barnett, “Performing Dialectics in the Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian Does Not Mean Postdramatic” in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, eds. Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll, and Steve Giles (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 48. Gelber emphasis.

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the audience recognized that photographs, etchings, and paintings had been recreated by contemporary means. The lighting itself was a mixture of the bright light that Brecht desired with colored light and a greater number of instruments and brighter bulbs than would have been possible in the 1940s.

Contemporary Examples of Meta-theatre and Literarization Contemporary devices we might have used would have added to Brecht’s range of effects. New technologies can now provide notes or in-­ depth information that add to the subject, rather like the audio commentary in special editions of films in DVD or Blu-ray formats. Anne Washburn applies this device to her play 10 Out of 12, where she suggests a wireless headphone unit used for backstage communication be given to each audience member. In this way they can listen in on the conversations of the actors playing stage manager and stage crew, as these characters watch the final technical rehearsals of a new production and comment on what they are seeing.30 This provides an extra layer of interpretative possibility for actors and for the spectators. Similarly, even if the play doesn’t require it, these wireless devices for their audience would allow commentators to enrich an audience’s experience through carefully timed information about the background of the play, or important points to be highlighted and compared to analogous situations in their own lives—just as Brecht did with scrims, supertitles, and half-curtains. These comments would also take the audiences out of the play. Now that smartphones are ubiquitous in the theatre—and almost impossible to completely silence—the audience might use their phones to connect to a website that would share footnotes or other meta-­commentary or receive text messages from a backstage crew member.31 In this spirit, for examples of Literarization in the twenty-first century, I referred my team to Lars von Trier, who applied Brechtian devices

30  Anne Washburn, 10 out of 12 (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 2016), 25. Her stage direction reads, “Each audience member has a headset or earbuds, and they hear conversations taking place over the headsets.” 31  This would take some planning, as the phones would still be turned on, although ideally silent.

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throughout his 2003 film Dogville.32 Linda Badley has commented upon von Trier’s work and cites his earliest introduction to Brecht—“His mother ‘was crazy for Brecht and dragged me to the theater to see his plays.’”33 Badley has likewise enumerated von Trier’s use of Brechtian methods, including title cards before each scene that “foretell events and underline their import.”34 Dogville … unfold[ed] from a perspective of Brechtian Verfremdung in which far-away period settings enabled audiences to analyze characters and issues dispassionately as part of a Marxist dialectic ….With characters out of Steinbeck, Twain, and Anderson, the film’s anachronistic/archetypal setting (a former Colorado mining town), Brecht-meets-Our Town stage design, condescendingly urbane narrator (John Hurt), captioned chapter divisions, and conspicuous deployment of music (from the somber strains of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater to the end-credit sequence featuring David Bowie’s deliriously irreverent “Young Americans” over a montage of “sacred” Depression-era Farm Security Administration photographs, Dogville was its own manifesto.35

This is one example of how, whether through obvious imitation or subtle homage, Brecht continues to influence contemporary films and stage productions and the forms that twenty-first-century artworks can take. The designs for the 2015 production of Mother Courage were based on a number of principles, including the collaborative effort of the designers along with the injunction to them to imagine their own response to the play in line with the theoretical blueprint, the Fabel. By considering the set, lights, sound, costumes, props, and music as separate elements, the presentation of the gestic incidents was multi-valent; the team provided the twenty-first-century audience, one familiar with many different sensory inputs operating at once, with a multitude of signs to read onstage. This contemporary audience, through its exposure to various overlapping media, was less likely to experience overload. At the same time, certain Brechtian devices were so common, such as the emphasis on meta-­ theatricality, there was a danger that, rather than serving as Verfremdungseffekte they would serve as comfortable contemporary 32  His plan was a trilogy of films, but as of this writing, he has finished one sequel, a comment on race in America, Mandalay. 33  Linda Badley, Lars von Trier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 101. 34  Badley, 106. 35  Badley, 102–3.

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examples to be noted but ultimately ignored. This led us to consider larger disruptions, such as the loud ringing of the bell and the announcement of the scene’s conclusion as on a movie soundstage. The use of the Separation of the Elements and the meta-theatrical was one approach. Our team likewise relied on Brecht’s concepts of gestus, Haltung and Arrangement to now add the next and essential element, the actors.36 These determined the attitudes of Figures in a scene and the stage positions of the actors within them. As will be seen, rather than emulating the Berliner Ensemble practice, whereby the designers offered the initial sketches for staging, the actors were given the opportunity to offer their own ideas about placement and attitude. Our designers, as they worked, were impressed with the benefits they gained from examining the depictions that emerged from the actors’ work. For example, the costumer, Leigh Anne Crandall, had the advantage of watching the actors’ movement and gestures before she finalized the clothing that would allow them to realize bodily activity more easily: the costumes would support what the actors were already bringing to their roles.37 The next step would be to examine and test the performance of the actors, to ensure the audience actually noticed the contradictions, the Verfremdung, the role of society in the lives of the Figures. In her book on the history of dramaturgy, Australian professor of artistic research Mary Luckhurst identified “two levels of enquiry”38 for the Brechtian dramaturg when critiquing a performance: “Are the laws posited for the actions of human beings living under specific historical and social conditions clearly discernable? And are the alternative courses of action open to the actors on stage clearly identifiable?”39 Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 will discuss how Brecht and then the Mother Courage team of 2015 addressed these questions.

36  See Chap. 5 for further discussion on gestus and Chaps. 5 and 6 respectively for our work on Haltung and Arrangement. 37  This was one of designer Teo Otto’s rules: “Design your costumes for those particular bodies, those specific personalities.” In this way, one won’t make costumes, “they will be clothes.” Bentley on Brecht, 365 38  Mary Luckhurst, Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (Cambridge: The University Press, 2006), 115. 39  Luckhurst, 115.

CHAPTER 5

First Rehearsal: Tools for Actors, Status, and Haltung

I used the word ‘status’ because I was too shy to shout, “Dominate!” and “Submit!”1 (Keith Johnstone)

The designs for Mother Courage in 2015 were based on Brecht principles and were intended to create the sense of Verfremdung: producing a montage effect by juxtaposing separated design elements to confront spectators with contrasting and even contradictory information. The 2015 team looked closely at the text for its ideological and socio-economic underpinnings and took a position towards them. That is, the events of the play were funneled through the attitude of the team, who saw each moment as reflecting a deeper structure of sociological relations. The attitude towards the material was a skeptical one; every aspect of the plot was to be questioned and underlying sociological structures revealed through the Fabel and the effects of the structures on people. The Figures in Mother Courage were not operating independently of each other with an emphasis on their separate psychologies but were affected by the constructed environment in which they found themselves and their interrelations within that environment. Their decisions were based on responses to external stimuli. The actors, therefore, had an important role to play above and beyond the embodiment of characters: they reflected societal constraints through the behaviors of people towards  Keith Johnstone, Impro for Storytellers (New York: Routledge, 1999), 219.

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each other in particular circumstances. The gestic incidents had to be shown in physical ways, i.e., through behavior with a specific attitude, what Brecht referred to as the Haltung.2 Meanwhile, the gestus of the team towards the play was also an attitude taken by the actors, who displayed their own attitudes towards the Figure as well. After all, they were a primary means of revealing gestus to the audience during the performance. For those working in a Brechtian mode, Haltung is an important conceptual framework in the messaging system for spectators. The Haltung is the attitude or stance a Figure takes towards each specific situation in a play through a combination of external forms, a series of behaviors—posture, facial expression, and gesture as well as vocal nuance—combined to reveal the mien of the Figure;3 the actor provides the audience with this series of signs, either towards the other Figures or to changing situations. The playing of Haltungen is a fluid process in which the Figure’s attitudes are not static but change through the course of the play based on the circumstances. Marc Silberman notes that these different Haltungen, caused by different situations and relations, together add up to what Brecht called the Grundgestus of the role.4 A complete Figure is achieved when all these Haltungen are recognized and played. This Grundgestus is also comprised of “surprising reversals or the unexpected identity of opposites.”5A change in Haltung brings out contradictions in the Figure as well as Verfremdung, since Figures cannot be pinned down to one attitude, and the way in which they change can be remarkable or jarring, catching the audience off guard. Brecht therefore gave great attention to Haltung when directing. In looking for a means to further explain this idea to student performers, I lighted on the idea of using Keith Johnstone’s status relations, the 2  At times during his career, Brecht would interchange the words “gestus” and “Haltung”: Marc Silberman notes: “Especially in his work on the Lehrstucke [Learning Plays] Brecht himself did not clearly differentiate his own use of the terms Gestus and Haltung.” See Marc Silberman “Brecht’s Gestus or Staging Contradiction,” The Brecht Yearbook Volume 31, Stephen Brockmann et  al., (Pittsburgh: The International Brecht Society, 2006), 324. Silberman goes on to note, “Both Haltung and Gestus are generated in and by the body, and Gestus, as the smallest element of Haltung, condenses the dialectic of balance and movement.” Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 324. 3  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 97–100. Meg Mumford offers the word “comportment” as a synonym and defines “Haltung” as “the socially conditioned relation to time, space and people of a thinking body.” Mumford, Bertolt Brecht, 54. 4  Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 326. 5  Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 326.

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ways in which human beings over time take certain attitudes towards each other in order to navigate the world of social relations, to maintain civility rather than show blatant aggression, to successfully operate within hierarchies of dominance and submission. Johnstone had not invented status transactions; he had observed how human beings play attitudes and adjust them as situations and interactions change. He then brought attention to them and gave the concept a label. By relating Johnstone’s status to Brecht’s Haltung, we created a shorthand for the team that served as a bridge between the theory and the practice. Bertolt Brecht’s Mr. Keuner, an alter ego and protagonist for the writer’s parables, is an observer of people. In the short story, “What’s Wise About the Wise Man Is His Stance,”6 Mr. K. notices a philosopher’s behaviors are at odds with the importance of his message. Keuner suggests to the philosopher his message cannot be heard because of the stance—the Haltung—in which it is presented. The philosopher’s attitude works against the content in a way he hasn’t noticed or taken seriously. Mr. Keuner has detected the tendency of the philosopher to diminish his own authority in subtle and not so subtle ways. The philosopher fails to make a positive impression because of this. To put in acting terms, an actor playing the Figure of the philosopher would note that the gentleman would see himself as having a certain successful attitude, which the actor, commenting on the Figure, would bely by offering a series of behaviors which undercut that impression. To put in Johnstone’s terms, the philosopher tried to play a dominant attitude but displayed a submissive one instead. The primary element for the performance, the actor, was engaged in the rehearsal process in two ways. First, they were enjoined to take a critical attitude towards the Figure they were playing. Second, they experimented with the production team on the positioning of their Figures onstage to reveal narrative and message and identify the Haltungen of the Figure.7 The Figures, as portrayed by the actors, in an environment constructed by the designers, would thus complete the series of signs which together amounted to a critique of society. In 1949, Helene Weigel’s gestus towards Anna Fierling’s behavior was a skeptical one: “How am I supposed to say the line ‘I have to get back to business’ at the end of Mother Courage, for example, after ‘business’ has cost me the last of my children, if I am not genuinely shocked by the fact 6  See: “What’s wise about the wise man is his stance,” Bertolt Brecht, Stories of Mr. Keuner, trans. Martin Chalmers (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001), 1. 7  The staging of each scene, using Arrangement, will be discussed in the next chapter.

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that the person I am playing is incapable of learning?”8 This reflection led Weigel to select certain behaviors that called into question Courage’s probity. The protagonist of the story surprised the audience with her anti-­ heroic actions, those gestures that made her a less sympathetic character.9 Brecht’s approach reminds us that human experience is more complex than can solely be revealed via a psychological character analysis that seeks an overarching motive for a character’s behavior. In his thinking, social, political, and historical factors create situations that require Figures to make choices, and these choices in turn may collectively contradict each other. He rejected the idea of the actor bringing in a predetermined character to rehearsal, preferring to encourage the actor to respond to the other Figures and situations as they arose during the work. Such responses in turn yielded a form of Verfremdung in performance, as spectators, accustomed to observing a character’s behavioral consistency, might be usefully startled by a Figure’s contradictory reactions from scene to scene. Contradiction thus helped the actor to portray not only nuance but critical attitude, revealing the gestus towards behavior discovered in the Fabel analysis. In the Fabel, if the team wanted the spectator to question Courage’s behavior, they could compare her alert watchfulness of Kattrin when soldiers are near with the number of times she allows her to go it alone. In the latter two cases, her daughter is severely wounded in one and killed in the other. What separates the two types of contradictory behavior? Not the presence of soldiers—they are everywhere. It seems where business is concerned, someone must guard the wagon and someone must get the supplies. This is a pragmatic attitude, if dangerous. The idea of Haltung change was so central to Brecht’s conception that leading actors from the Berliner Ensemble like Therese Giese came to rely upon it. Stage director Egon Monk, for example, said that Giehse “found it impossible to learn her part by rote until she knew what Haltungen the character she was playing was supposed to adopt in what situations.”10  BOP 262.  This was still a difficult mission to accomplish, as Helene Weigel was such a skilled and charismatic actor. As Carl Weber noted, the audience tended to forgive Courage’s actions despite her faults because of the playing of the lead actress: “Weigel’s performance was so strong, inevitably the audience has to fall in love with her as a character.” Branislav Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row: Carl Weber and the Berliner Ensemble,” The Drama Review Vol. 62, No. 3, T239 Fall 2018, 63. 10  John Willett, Caspar Neher: Brecht’s Designer (London: Methuen, 1986), 106. 8 9

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The Work of Keith Johnstone As I sought a means of physicalizing gestus and Haltung in the classroom, and later in Mother Courage, I turned to the writings of Keith Johnstone. I first read his book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre11 in 1985 and immediately began introducing his concept of status to my actors. In 2003, I decided to use status as a way of explaining gestus to the students in my Brecht seminar. This quickly became a means for identifying certain types of behaviors related to social interchange. Johnstone articulates a particular take on the interactions between people as a technique for theatre artists. First of all, he separates the word “status” from its definition as a positioning within a caste or means of social organization such as a military ranking or post within a corporation. Instead, he relates the word to a strategy of behavior used when interacting with others, “It’s not your social status, it’s what you do to someone else.”12 He refers to status as a series of learned behaviors by human beings that offers them a sense of protection within society: as he has noted, “The personality is the defense against other people.”13 This defensive posture does not have to be demure, cautious or withdrawn, but may be assertive, decisive, self-assured, or even aggressive. At first glance, Johnstone’s insistence that status can be a behavior contrary to the role of a Figure in society would seem anathema to Brecht’s purpose. After all, these roles contain certain basic attitudes within them. For example, a general takes for granted that he will be obeyed by a private. By definition, the private is subservient within the military system. What Johnstone finds interesting is the way in which a Figure’s behavior can contradict their social role. A human being can reject an assigned role regardless of its traditional behavioral requirements: the rank of an officer doesn’t guarantee that they will be automatically obeyed; the officer may, like the philosopher in the Keuner story, present submissive signals that counteract their position of power. In Brecht’s view, the working class doesn’t have to accept a low status just because of their economic position

11  Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (New York, Routledge, 1979). The first chapter is devoted to status, how Johnstone applied it in playwriting workshops and as an improvisational tool. 12  Notes from “10 Days with Keith,” a workshop I attended by Keith Johnstone held in Calgary, Canada July 11–20, 2017. 13  Notes from “10 Days with Keith.”

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but has the numbers to seek better treatment by their so-called superiors. The traditional agreement about social roles can be broken. Johnstone saw that stance, gesture, facial expression, speech, and so on, were a means of survival, a way of negotiating a territory naturally divided between the dominant and submissive. If a particular strategy of behavioral signs is useful, the individual consciously or unconsciously embraces it, whether it means they are leading or following others. In each case, it becomes a natural behavior over time. For the purposes of revealing Brecht’s gestus, it is useful to note Johnstone’s belief that all people are experts at reading status signs, because it is one way humans have learned to negotiate difference and avoid conflict. For example, people don’t often bump into each other in a busy hallway because they intuit from the behavioral signs around them how they should adjust—whether to make way for others or not. Similarly, the signs that Figures display onstage are readily grasped by an audience who themselves are conditioned to recognize them, consciously or even subconsciously. They will notice, for example, how the soldiers in Scene 11, who would normally dominate a Figure such as Kattrin, will lose status when they fail to stop her from waking the town of Halle. In the case of Mother Courage, Brecht presents us with different types of soldiers. Beyond symbols of rank, they can be distinguished by the spectator according to their different statuses, as some will dominate others to maintain order. They will also interact with civilians by displaying statuses, usually higher ones. Johnstone creates a taxonomy, a status scale of behaviors from lowest to highest: in this configuration, the “high-status” Figure displays signs that are meant to dominate, the “low-status” Figure those that are meant to show submissiveness. In interpersonal situations, each of these types sends out signals that are picked up by others, who categorize those signals and then respond accordingly. For example, the high-status person tends to send signals that discourage confrontation and suggest their sense of control, while the low-status person signals a willingness to follow, to acquiesce to other’s desires. An important caveat is that actors should develop a sense of status in Johnson’s terms, separate from considerations of specific occupations or roles such as the various military ranks or positions on the economic ladder. A poor Figure can display high-status behaviors, while a rich Figure may do the opposite. This is the case in Brecht’s Mr  Puntila and His Man Matti, where Haltung  or status transactions are the key to Brecht’s study of class

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relations.14 Matti is Puntila’s chauffeur and must obey his commands. But Puntila constantly tests Matti to see if he will assume a higher position, and the driver knows it is a ruse. The spectators realize Matti is too clever to ever let Puntilla see him acting above his station. Matti is a high-status person who plays low to avoid trouble. As a key point, Johnstone notes that status is not something one is but what they do. It is possible to be one status and play another. “Status seems to me to be a useful term, providing [that] the difference between the status you are and the status you play is understood.”15 This supports Brecht’s idea of the “Not…but,” but also the Haltung change. Someone may have a common series of signs that they offer on a regular basis, but they are also capable of changing those signs. Kattrin tends to play lower to her mother in most scenes but raises her status when she realizes Courage will not offer material for bandages from her stores. She and the Chaplain acquire the officers’ shirts by defying her because of an emergency situation, the siege of Magdeburg. Johnstone’s idea of status was revelatory for me as a director in many ways, not the least of which was that it became a shorthand for teaching about Brecht’s gestus—or, at least, the physical forms gestus could take through Haltung. Status/Haltung is a practical and intentional application of semiotics: a display of signs that indicate meaning and which, when combined with the positioning of Figures within the stage picture, more thoroughly and richly explain the story. It can be a form of contradictory subtext which operates at odds with the Figure’s dialogue. Status itself is played, not just by the actor but by the Figure, and a Figure incorporates the needed behaviors to fit the situation. Johnstone argues that all human beings send status signals as they interact, so having the Mother Courage actors work to determine the status of their Figures made it easier for them to imagine the forms their speech and actions might take. I also wanted the actors to be aware of their own normative behaviors and their accompanying signals because the status of the Figures they were playing might be different from their own. To train people in status, Johnstone began by having them concentrate on each other. He first introduced the idea of status by suggesting, “Just try to be just a tiny bit more important than the other person or a tiny bit 14  See Bertolt Brecht, Mr Puntila and His Man Matti in Collected Plays: Six, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Methuen Drama, 2009). 15  Johnstone, Impro, 36.

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less important.”16 This meant identifying the other person’s status and then adjusting one’s own. From a Brechtian standpoint, status transactions require the actors to adjust their Figures’ Haltungen according to the Haltungen of the other Figures. The next crucial interpretative concept is the Haltung change. Because Brecht wants the spectators to notice contradiction within the Figure, he places Figures in different situations that require marked changes in Haltungen. Carl Weber noted that each was to be an “abrupt rupture of behaviors rather than a smooth transition.”17 These ruptures are central to Brecht’s theories. In Brecht’s theatre, Haltung changes aid the performance of the Fabel through social critique. In Mother Courage, for example, Yvette’s change in status through the course of the play reveals a contradiction: the same sexuality that has branded her as a lower-class citizen early in the play ultimately allows her to rise economically. Once she has employed her sexuality to seduce a colonel and marry him, her fortunes reverse. The Cook took Yvette’s virginity when she was a young girl, in a moment when he exploited his dominant status. By Scene 8, thirteen years later, she is rich and he is the submissive one. This is made explicit when she commands him to stand in her presence, and he obeys: she now has the literal and figurative higher status. In Brecht’s original staging, this status/Haltung change between Scenes 3 and 8 juxtaposed Yvette’s economic rise with physical and moral descent; though she was now of high status, she was played as a fat old woman corrupted by her wealth and status.18 In 2015, Tawny Westbrook as Yvette wore black as a sign of mourning for her dead husband. However, though she was padded to be heavier than in the early scene, the actress and the costumer played up the idea that the clothes were flattering and showed off her best features. The clothes were also expensive, in contrast to her worn and simple clothes from Scene 3; Yvette’s mourning black flattered her.

 Notes from “10 Days with Keith.”  Carl Weber, “The Actor and Brecht, or: The Truth Is Concrete: Some Notes on Directing Brecht with American Actors,” in Brecht Performance: Brecht Yearbook 1984, eds. John Fuegi, Gisela Bahr, John Willett, and Carl Weber (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 73. Weber’s emphasis. 18  This is a stage direction in Brecht’s original script and also appears in Kushner. 16 17

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Theory into Practice: Teaching Status/Haltung For our first rehearsal of Mother Courage, I offered a status workshop for the actors as a way of introducing them to gestus without directly referring to the term. I began by modeling two teachers, signaling status for one as high and for the other as low.19 In terms of social rank, two teachers may have the same formal title of authority in a classroom, yet one may be better or worse at managing the students. In Johnstone’s model, this is because each is sending out signals of dominance or submission; in turn, these high/low signals determine student responses. As a result, the dominant-­signaling teacher tends to exact greater control, while the submissive teacher fights to maintain discipline. I asked one of the actors to note down which signs I presented in each case when, as each type of teacher, I interacted with the cast. After a few moments of playing low status, I asked all of them to describe what I was literally doing—the physical manifestations rather than my attitude— because I was most interested in the actors’ ability to identify and then mimic the physical signs that attitude created. I then played a high-status teacher and again asked for their feedback. The students proposed such comments as “poor posture” or “mumbles” for the low-status teacher, and “steady eye contact” or “deeper voice” for the high-status teacher,20 I asked them to avoid adjectives like “timid” for the low-status teacher or “confident” for the high-status teacher; again, at this early stage, it was a series of physical markers that I wanted them to concentrate on, since those signs were instantly reproducible and readable. Once I switched from the low-status teacher to the high-status teacher, the students found the differences between the two personas striking, especially because, as the high-status teacher, I exhibited a dominance they hadn’t seen from me before in my normal interactions with them. I then asked the cast to improvise some suggested scenarios, referring to these two lists of behaviors, which usually contained eight or nine suggestions and to which I could add as necessary. I pointed out that training in status required a more nuanced approach. In general people displayed a mixture of status signs rather than exclusively “high” or “low” signs.

 See Johnstone’s description of three different types of teachers. Johnstone, Impro, 35–36.  For a fuller list of behaviors, see Keith Johnstone’s Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre and Impro for Storytellers. 19 20

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To demonstrate further differences within an improvised scene, Johnstone suggests assigning each of three participants a different status through numerical “ranking,” from one to three, with a high-status person (the one), a low-status person (the three), and a person ranked somewhere in between (the two): “The one is the most powerful, the three is the least. The two wants the one to go down and the three to go up.”21 To practice more complex variations within a wider range of status behavior, the director Max Stafford-Clark suggests ten numbers, with the number ten indicating the highest status, the number five being an equal balance of low- and high-status markers, and the number one being the lowest status.22 I had my actors perform scenes displaying behaviors from status numbers two through nine. They did this by selecting and adding just a few high-status behaviors to the behaviors from the low-status list for rankings two through four, and a few low-status behaviors to the high-­ status behaviors for six through nine. High dominance and low submission were easily recognizable. The middle numbers, on the other hand, required careful consideration. As might be inferred, the hardest ranking to play was status number five: because it required an equal combination of low and high behaviors, the collection of signs was harder to read. During such exercises, actors should first become familiar with the various behaviors by reproducing them in the body. In turn, they discover that the physicality of high or low status naturally induces an attitude. This includes variations in vocal production, for example, that can add to a sense of status as well: lower status might be signaled by pitching the voice in a higher, breathier register, while the high-status speaker might have a deeper, more grounded sound. In the teaching, I discuss certain archetypal female characters who existed in films of the past, low-status exemplars of feminine attractiveness as a norm in gender relations. These sex symbols used a low-status strategy, pitching their voices higher and expelling more breath as they spoke.23 Once the Mother Courage actors were familiar with those signals I wished them to employ, I put them into what Johnstone called “status  Notes from “10 Days with Keith.”  Max Stafford-Clark, Letters to George (London: Nick Hern Books, 1989), 25–7. During development workshops for Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, Stafford-Clark used playing cards to designate a range of numbers. When an actor pulled a card, that was the actor’s status during improvisations. 23  Marilyn Monroe is a classic example, but there are many others. 21 22

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parties,” dividing them evenly into two types of status groups. The scenario was a social gathering, requiring interaction between the party-­ goers.24 As Johnstone points out, the actors don’t enjoy these improvisations because they “feel very awkward because the situation isn’t real.” This is actually a means for identifying what behaviors they find most useful in such situations, a point that would be made during the exercise. I gave one group low-status behavior instructions such as “don’t maintain eye contact, turn your toes in until they are almost touching, slump.” The high-status group received such instructions as “choose to look or not look but maintain eye contact when you make it; keep your head very still and maintain good posture.” I asked the actors to mingle with as many of the partygoers as possible and, as they did, to consider two questions: “Does your behavior change as you meet different people?” and “Is the particular form of behavior you are playing comfortable to you?” In practice, the actors tended to change status as they encountered people with a different status from their own: some high-status performers took pity on low-status peers and lowered their signaling somewhat. Others couldn’t help but play even higher when confronted by particularly low-status-sending Figures. Similarly, the low-status groups, when confronted with high-status Figures, played even lower, or, in the party situation, even shyly removed themselves altogether to the periphery of the action. The comfort or discomfort of each behavior helped the actors to determine the status to which they were naturally drawn, and which, not coincidentally, they usually exhibited in real life. Extending such exercises into a second round, I switched the status of the two groups. I suggested the low-status group smile with their top teeth or come out with a goofy laugh, while the high-status group, still maintaining eye contact and erect posture, also put their hands on the shoulders of the person to whom they were talking, or employ other signals of physical or status dominance.25 Once the actors had a chance to play both types, we discussed the answers to the initial two questions. Johnstone comments that, in exploiting these low- and high-status behaviors for purposes of improvisation, “The problem is not how to teach the skills (since we already have them), but how to consciously

 Johnstone, Impro for Storytellers, 221–2.  Johnstone offers a list of behaviors to project high status and low status in Impro for Storytellers, Appendix 1: “Fast-Food Stanislavsky Lists,” 352–3. 24 25

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manipulate them.”26 Humans innately learn the idea of status almost from birth. Sending out status signals is a defense strategy: the signals that work are the ones tried very early in life that tended to be successful and then developed over time. This is precisely the same reason it is at first difficult for an actor to play a status different from their own—in their own lives they have been using the same strategies for so long that they are comfortable, and any change in the routine can be unnerving and disorienting. At the same time, through such status exercises actors achieve the valuable insight that, throughout their lives, they have been changing status behaviors depending on interpersonal interactions. As they matured as social humans and became experts at reading others’ signs, their relationships with others would also change reciprocally. By performing the exercises, they discovered a broader range of signs they could exhibit depending on the role and the situation. If they felt, for example, that they were constantly being taken advantage of, they might have been emitting lowstatus signs. If they had been typecast in certain roles, it may have been according to an inherent status they were in the habit of displaying. This realization also helped them to become more versatile actors. Instead of being cast according to their normative status, they realized that they could flip the audition script: they could change an auditioner’s perceptions of them by offering alternative signs. To test the Mother Courage actors’ ability to play or recognize various status/Haltung numbers, I then created smaller group improvisations based upon specific scenarios, such as five people in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, or five people being monitored by a sixth as they performed community service. In the first case, as a means of pushing the improvisation in a useful direction, I served as the disembodied voice of a case worker who took the patients’ insurance information and payment for services; eventually, I intensified the experience, by announcing that the doctor’s schedule was repeatedly delayed, and then I finally cancelled all appointments. This gave the participants an opportunity to highlight their status numbers as they reacted to the changes in circumstances. In the second scenario, the community service operation, an actor playing the supervisor–with a high-status number—issued instructions that changed the stakes for the group, continually questioning the workers’ commitment or imposing additional or ever more strenuous duties. 26  Keith Johnstone, Don’t Be Prepared: Theatresports for Teachers Volume 1 (Calgary: Loose Moose Theatre Company, 1994), 124.

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In these status-signaling group improvisations, half of the group played one of the two scenarios, while the other half served as spectators who noted the signs they saw the performers exhibit. The observers’ assignment, once the performance was concluded, was to assess status and arrange the improvisors in order, ranking them from highest to lowest by lining them up stage right to stage left in the space. Only after the observers had determined an overall hierarchical order did they then try to guess the specific numerical rankings of individual performers. These exercises led to additional and useful discussion: when the spectators assigned numbers, they disagreed among themselves, and so I advised them to defend their choices through example: the signs they saw that led them to categorize each person. By repeating the exercise with two scenarios, all participants learned both to play the signs as performers and to read the signs as spectators. Finally, the performers revealed their actual numerical rankings to the spectators, thus validating the spectators’ observational choices, or suggesting the disconnect between the sending and receiving of intended signals, which led in turn to additional and useful exploration. In general, the actors quickly picked up on the signs for different numbers and surprised themselves with the accuracy of their predictions and the skill with which they displayed signs. Once the actors had worked in larger groups, I had them improvise in groups of two, playing new scenarios more than once and continuing to practice shifts in status. This accomplished a number of goals: for example, actors were reminded that social roles did not always dictate a stereotypical series of status behaviors. In a scene where an employer had to lay off a worker who was, at the same time, asking for a raise, the employer was assumed to hold a higher status based on their position in the company. Yet paradoxically, in one iteration, the worker was a dominant personality who browbeat or intimidated the boss into acquiescing. Thus, actors were asked to play both ends of the spectrum, as reinforcement, contrast, or contradiction between presumed societal roles and the actual status played. Analogous scenarios included someone who had been injured requesting help from a sibling, or a parent questioning a child who had arrived home past curfew. In each case, the performers were asked to vary the status manifestations despite the natural social positioning presumed to be inherent in the roles themselves. Extending these insights further, I asked the cast to develop complementary strategies for playing a particular status by imagining what

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Johnstone referred to as a “see-saw effect.”27 That is, an actor playing low could either lower their own status or raise that of the partner. When playing high, the actor could raise themselves or lower the partner. If raising their partner, the actor might compliment or place them in a superior position, or defer to their choices, or give them more space. If lowering their partner, the actor might denigrate or mock them, place them in inferior physical positions by invading their space, or make contact with them without permission.28 Johnstone meticulously created these status transactions to express the invisible but very real status dance that continuously takes place between Figures. In practice, some of my student actors, who tend to be imbued with the Stanislavskian character-oriented approach, imagine, and even label, the psychological behaviors which status suggests, for example, that a high-­ status character has a Napoleonic complex. Brecht, on the other hand, insisted the actors should identify not psychological individualisms, but rather those shared social-historical conditions that the world of the play imposed upon behavior, the statuses that Figures played as strategies to negotiate their economic, sociological, ideological environments. One way in which Brecht rejects the naturalistic acting system of Konstantin Stanislavsky, is that the latter encourages the use of “organic actions” to capture real life behaviors,29 but these do not serve as useful signals for an audience, they are habitual and without intent. As Meg Mumford notes in her thesis, “By claiming that the small nervous features of the Western actor are more or less of private origin, Brecht again suggests that there is a private realm of behavior separate from the realm of the socio-economically significant.”30 This is naturalistic behavior but muddies the waters with non-gestic signs. For Brecht, none of these behaviors were ever-thuses, though these had been encouraged to maintain a power dynamic among the classes: Figures “naturally” fell into certain behaviors based on the power structures inculcated by social norms. Those at the top, the hegemony, had established physical and vocal markers that allowed them to maintain dominance in a way taken for granted by all and therefore seemed difficult to break. Such 27  Keith Johnstone refers to the “see-saw effect” throughout Chap. 1 of his book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, 33–74. 28  Carefully, and with respect for the other actors. 29  Jean Benedetti, Stanislavski and the Actor, (New York: Routledge, 1993), 3. 30  Meg Mumford, Showing the Gestus: A Study of Acting in Brecht’s Theatre (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 1997), 15.

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markers were about etiquette but also about superiority: at certain points in history, a person could never turn their back to the monarch even when exiting, and children were required to speak to parents only when spoken to. However, Mother Courage may have felt privately about the General, she lowered her status to him in public. In 2015, our Courage saluted him as well.31 These are examples of status behaviors as survival mechanisms. Importantly, in Brecht’s view, though a class system can attempt to impose status levels, the Figures do not have to accept these categorizations. Brecht used Haltung to argue that the working class had been conditioned to assume certain status/Haltungen—not that they had been born to them.32 Brecht, a Marxist, questioned the ever-thus of submission by the working class. One of the ideas he hoped to instill is that the behavior of the proletariat could vary. Those who were lowered could rankle at or silently resent disparaging treatment or revolt against those who kept them down. Servants might subtly or not so subtly push against their masters—this is a source of comedy in many eras—and might try to turn the tables on them or find passive/aggressive or outright blatant forms of civil disobedience.33 As Johnstone points out, “Audiences enjoy the contrast between a status played and a social status.”34 Both Johnstone and Brecht admired Charlie Chaplain’s profound skill in using this strategy as a source of humor. Comedy is an important tool for opening the minds of the audience, and Brecht’s play is full of comedic transactions of this kind. Since, from Johnstone’s perspective, “A comedian is paid to lower his or other’s status,”35 the effect on an audience of Figures who use status undercuts the sense of the tragic in Courage. Even in Scene 11, when the soldiers are threatening Kattrin with death, Angelika Hurwicz received a round of applause when she defied them. The timing of the pause after the threat, and then Kattrin’s choice to drum even harder, delighted the spectators. Mother Courage presents a formidable presence to the common soldier, a superiority that has little to do with her social status as a tradeswoman, trailing behind an army, but allows her to negotiate her way through interactions with armed combatants. For example, Courage takes  At the Berliner Ensemble, Courage curtsied. BOP 246.  As Brecht pointed out, these could still vary. For example, a worker could just as well become stronger through manual labor rather than be broken by it. Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 96. 33  In Commedia dell’arte, for example, the servants even found ways to beat their masters! 34  Johnstone, Impro, 36. 35  Notes from “10 Days with Keith.” 31 32

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a brassy attitude towards the Sergeant and the Recruiter, confusing them with her tales about her children’s origins and offering inappropriate forms of paperwork to justify her business. When the soldier in Scene 5 takes a bottle of her alcohol without paying, she grabs the stolen fur off his back without repercussions. The spectators are thus encouraged to enjoy her ability to lower others. The actors used status as a means of identifying the power dynamics between the Figures. Who has the power in the scene, and where does that power come from? Where does the ultimate power lie within the play’s society? What is each Figure’s role in maintaining that power? Could others have power of their own or actually seize power under different circumstances? Does each Figure accept the given position they occupy, or are they rebelling against it? Brecht, following Hegel, points out that, “The master is only the sort of master his servant lets him be.”36 If those oppressed members of the society realized that the oppressors were only able to impose their will if the oppressed, of their own volition, allowed them to, they might understand that they have agency and might affect change. When Johnstone and his students first began to explore status work, “All our secret maneuverings [sic] were exposed.”37 In particular, “No one could make an innocuous remark without everyone instantly grasping what was behind it,”38 and “If someone asked a question we didn’t bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked.”39 When examining Mother Courage and Her Children for clues to Haltung and Haltung changes, we therefore focused on the dialogue. We discovered that, here too, Brecht’s sense of the centrality of Haltung is revealed in the degree to which he also wrote Haltungen into the lines. Manfred Wekwerth notes, “Indeed, even language, the spoken word, only becomes comprehensible when a certain gestus underlies it.”40 In this respect, Brecht’s emphasis on staging went hand and hand with his writing: the Latvian actor and director Asja Lacis noted of his adaptation, early in his career, of Marlowe’s Edward II, “[Brecht] shaped dialogue and verse differently than actors were used to. He wanted to break  BOT 247.  Impro, 33. 38  Impro, 33. 39  Impro, 33. 40  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 66–67. 36 37

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their habit of fuzzy, nebulous, general expression. That was the beginning of gestural speech.”41 Similarly, in a passage titled “On gestural language in literature” from Brecht’s Me-Ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things, the Figure of Me-Ti explains in detail how the poet Kin-jeh (and their creator, Brecht) reveals Haltung through dialogue: “[Kin-jeh] employed a way of speaking that was both stylized and natural. He achieved this by paying attention to attitudes, which underlay the sentences: he introduced attitudes into sentences and always let the attitudes show through the sentences.”42 These attitudes are the gestus or Haltungen taken by the speaker. Brecht allows Yvette, for example, two types of dialogue in Scene 3, when she is trying to buy Courage’s wagon. To the Old Colonel who may front her the money, she speaks in an overly familiar and childish fashion, calling him by his nickname.43 With Courage she is higher, bolder, and terser. She knows that Courage must take her offer, while she continues to seduce the Old Colonel by raising him and lowering herself through the play of status signals. Swiss Cheese had to speak with a high-status attitude when captured to save his family. For some of the actors, Status/Haltung was a key to Figure construction. For example, it helped Kelsey Fisher-Waits to find the Figure of Mother Courage. She noted: I remember one moment near the [Song of the Great] Capitulation, there was a chair onstage and I was like, “I don’t know why, Dr. Gelber, but can I please use this chair?” and you said, “Sure. Let’s see what happens.” Somewhere in that song I swung it, clunked, put my foot on it and I was like “Oh! There’s Mother Courage.” And in that moment a big shift happened for me, a kind of confidence.”44

Her stance became a key to her performance, as she used this confidence to manipulate others. Of course, for Brecht, this philosophy of performance, revealed in the writing, had a fundamentally socioeconomic basis. In a discussion with the Marxist cultural essayist V. J. Jerome during work on the Theatre Union’s production of The Mother, Brecht remarked, “the position of the whole  Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 212.  Tatlow, Bertolt Brecht’s Me-Ti, 158. 43  He, in turn, infantilizes her. See Kushner, Mother Courage, 46–48. 44  (Image 5.1) Fisher-Waits interview with the author 41 42

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Image 5.1  Scene 4: Kelsey Fisher-Waits in the Haltung that defined her Figure. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

process of production determines the language of the person.”45 He similarly referenced the capitalists in Saint Joan of the Stockyards who speak in the verse form of Goethe, calling it “the adequate language form for the capitalists that show the same dualism as Faust: Strive upwards, kick downwards.”46 Most relevantly to our current considerations, he shaped the dialogue for Mother Courage to emulate the dialect, and the wiliness, of the title character in one of his favorite novels, The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek. A Haltung was built into Courage’s lines in this way. Finding status/Haltung within the words is obviously a subtle operation. Because dialogue is a kind of shorthand, and because so much of what the actor reveals is subtext, one must consider the context in which each line is spoken. For example, when two or more Figures are interacting, the one with the most dialogue may be marked as either low or high status: perhaps they would be labeled as low if they were talking non-stop without responses from others or using a torrent of words to fill awkward  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 376.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 375.

45 46

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silences. The Figure with the most dialogue might be high status if they spoke with the expectation that others would listen without interrupting, or by browbeating or overwhelming others with language. The modern concept of “mansplaining” is an example of playing a status, and also of a Haltung, as the gestus of domination by a man over a woman exemplifies the presumptions of a patriarchal system: the man overelaborates for the woman’s benefit, thus suggesting that she won’t understand him otherwise. In Scene 4, the actor playing the Clerk used just such an attitude towards Courage. He served as the gatekeeper to the Captain’s tent when visitors came to make their complaints, and therefore was in control of the situation, lowering the status of those who sought an audience. Similarly, when the Young Soldier entered in a rage over his ill treatment, despite his overpowering presence, the Clerk, with his superior status/Haltung, completely cut him down to size. In terms of speech, a high-status character tends to speak more directly, making statements and demands, whereas a character reveals low status through modest requests and hesitant speech indicated by verbal fillers and ellipses, which in turn signal a willingness to defer to others. Subtle variations in text, gesture, blocking, or delivery can convey very different status: for example, a line such as “Bring me that chair right now” is higher status than “Would you mind terribly bringing me that chair?” Though both are directions, the latter, a question rather than a command, is obviously lower. Of course, questions in dialog must always be considered in context. The very different context of an interrogation might involve a very high-status interlocutor, and the question “Would you mind sitting down?” would be understood as the high-status Figure’s playing lower to lull the other Figure into a false sense of security. The ability to use a minimum amount of words to accomplish an action can also be high: the Clerk in Scene 4 of Courage used one word to lower the Young Soldier: “Sit.”47 This sort of subtle analysis operated at the Berliner Ensemble, where Helene Weigel used it expertly to create her Figures. Weigel’s grasp of Haltung made a higher-status Figure more effective in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Käthe Reichel had been cast as the Governor’s wife until she became ill, and so Weigel offered to take over the role in time for the opening. As Hans Bunge, Brecht’s assistant for the production, remembered, “[Reichel had] dominated the stage with her many quick

 Kushner, Mother Courage, 55.

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movements.”48 Conversely, although Weigel was unfamiliar with the status concept, her understanding of gestus and Haltung, when she took over the role, suggested to her quite a different approach from Reichel’s, which nevertheless was entirely consistent with the subtle complexities of status-­ signaling behaviors. Bunge wrote, “Instead of the hysterical changes in speech used by Reichel, Weigel…spoke almost quietly, but in a hard and sharp voice. Instead of flying movement she chose a deliberately static position.”49 Instinctively the actor knew her stillness would give her even greater strength; as Bunge observed: “She sat in one place for almost the whole scene and controlled the situation from that place. She did not lift a finger to help but rather just gave orders.”50 Reichel had lowered her status through unnecessary movements and strident speech. Bunge also described what amounted to a see-saw effect which entailed Weigel lowering another actor. “The Governor’s wife was accompanied by a slave who was then used as a human chair”: she literally lowered the slave and raised herself.51 Similarly, in Scene 1, the character Anna Fierling uses her reputation as Mother Courage to raise her status and impress the Army Recruiter and Sergeant. She then pulls a knife on the men to protect her family (which could be interpreted as low- or high-status behavior depending on the level of her desperation—Brecht suggests it is perfunctory) and later lowers the Sergeant’s status by telling his fortune. This attention to detail likewise during rehearsals for the 2015 TTU production showed how a very small moment could reveal a major status/Haltung change. In Scene 11 when the soldiers accosted the farm family, the farmers assumed subservient, low-status, positions, as might be expected. Yet as soon as the soldiers left with the son, the father and mother resumed the higher-status positions they affected when alone: a major shift of Haltung which was entirely, intentionally, and consistently reflective of the socio-historical circumstances Brecht sought to reveal. After the production opened I read the following note on the farmers from Couragemodell 1949 as it appears in Great Directors at Work by David Richard Jones: “The lamentations of the peasant woman…must 48  Hans Bunge, quoted in John Fuegi, Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, According to Plan, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: The University Press, 1994), 155. 49  Fuegi, 155. Reichel also rushed about the stage, gesticulating feverishly as she ordered her servants about. 50  Fuegi, 155. 51  Fuegi, 155.

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have a certain routine quality about it [sic]; it must suggest a set behavior pattern.”52 In other words, the peasant woman was playing certain behaviors, using a low Haltung, that were expected of her: “Begging, lamenting, and informing have frozen into fixed forms; these are the things you do when soldiery arrive.”53 Throughout the rehearsal process, the actors of our Mother Courage production identified examples of status and status changes in dialogue and nonverbal behavior, including blocking and other business. In this way, they added the sociological element, marrying the idea of status to Haltung, to reveal the gestus, suggested by the Fabel, to the spectator. The use of status was one of the more effective practices used by the actors in Mother Courage 2015. For them, status was a revelation they continued to use in other contexts. They not only became expert at looking for status clues within the play but of analyzing the behavior of each other and the behavioral choices of people they encountered outside of the rehearsal room. Once the actors were able to grasp status/Haltung, they were able to apply this framework to the next stage in the process, the creating of stage pictures. Both clarity of the narrative and gestus were aims for the team, and the actors were given the opportunity to consider the Figures’ attitudes as they might appear in the staging, positioned in what Brecht referred to as the Arrangement of the gestic incidents. This is the subject of the next chapter.

52  David Richard Jones, Great Directors at Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986), 132. 53  Jones, Great Directors, 132.

CHAPTER 6

Rehearsing the Actors I: Arrangement

Nearly all the blocking of the Berliner Ensemble productions derived directly from Neher’s sketches. If there was a particular scene, or a particular moment within a scene—“a nodal point” as Brecht and Neher would call it—that had no sketch, or if Neher for once was not there (a rare occurrence in the first years of the Berliner Ensemble), then that rehearsal might well have to be broken off.1 (Egon Monk, “Neher and The Tutor”)

Brecht provides a particularly useful approach to staging that we adopted during the rehearsals of Mother Courage in 2015. Arrangement is Brecht’s term for the placement of elements on the stage, in this case, the actors, to reveal narrative and gestus. It was an important step in “visually highlighting” the Drehpunkte.2 He differentiated between the Bühnenbildner, the scene designer who created stage pictures, and the Bühnenbauer, or scenographer, who collaborates with the other participants, including the actors, to build a scene according to the overall intent

1  Egon Monk, “Neher and ‘The Tutor,’” in Willett, Caspar Neher, 109. Neher didn’t design as many of the productions for the Berliner Ensemble as might be inferred here. Karl von Appen and Teo Otto also worked at the Berliner Ensemble, and the designs for the 1949 production of Mother Courage were based on Otto’s earlier work on the Zurich production. 2  As Kristopher Imbrigotta notes, materials offered to the audience before the performance collected in Progammhefte, included photos from the production for this purpose. Kristopher Imbrigotta, “(Re)Building the Engaged Spectator,’ 108.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_6

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of the entire group.3 He preferred the latter, “Now ahead of the actor, now behind him, always together with him.”4 This was someone who “builds up the performance area, just as experimentally as the actors.”5 We took this idea a step further. What separated our own practice from that of the Berliner Ensemble was that, in the former case, the Arrangements were initially proposed by the designers and then given to the actors to test in rehearsal. Instead, though the production team in advance had created a Fabel suggesting the attitude of our production towards the events, we allowed the actors themselves to experiment with their own ideas for staging meaning and gestus, creating tableaux vivant of each event before they were shown the Fabel. This was a further layer of meaning the actors were encouraged to find rather than an imposition for them to recreate. All of us then made adjustments to the actors’ work, using directorial techniques, such as picturization and composition, to clarify the story, and adding the tool of status/Haltung as a means for adjusting those Arrangements, revealing the gestus of the Fabel. Bertolt Brecht placed great importance on the careful selection and orientation of the various elements in the stage picture. Brecht didn’t directly refer to the techniques of semiotics, “the study of the production of meaning in society,”6 or the science of signs and symbols and how they are interpreted, as proposed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce.7 However, those proponents of semiology, such as Roland Barthes, found within Brecht’s work semantic systems, and “Brechtian dramaturgy postulates today at least, the responsibility of a dramatic art is not so much to express reality as to signify it.”8 For Barthes connects Saussure’s semiotics with Brecht’s gestus: “The Saussurean principle that a sign has no value outside the system from which it differentially derives meaning harmonizes with the gestus of Brecht’s epic theatre, which reveals how the characters’ thoughts and

3  Christopher Baugh, “Brecht and Stage Design: the Bühnenbildner and the Bühnenbauer,” in Peter Thomson and Glendry Sacks, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: The University Press, 1994), 252. 4  Baugh, “Brecht and Stage Design,” 242. 5  Baugh, “Brecht and Stage Design,” 242. 6  Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London: Routledge, 1980), 1. 7  Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, 2. 8  Roland Barthes, Critical Essays, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Illinois Press, 1972), 74.

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actions are shaped by the social, economic, and political relationships in which they are mired.”9 Brecht believed that spectators received key information through specific objects, spatial relationships, and the positioning, gestures, and facial expressions of the Figures. As Brecht notes in the Antigone Model 1948, “the actor’s sole task,” was to present their Figures in the staging suggested by the designers and, in consultation with the director(s) and by referring to the Fabel, to test its effectiveness and determine where adjustments were needed.10 Since the primary objective of the Berliner Ensemble was to produce a live action form of the Fabel that could be read by the audience, and since an audience tends to provide meaning to signs onstage regardless of whether specific intent exists, features of the stage picture cannot be arbitrary or left to chance, as the range of possible impressions could be so variant as to be confusing or counterproductive.11 By controlling those signs as much as possible, Brecht hoped to further control what the audience perceived. This was especially true of the positioning of Figures onstage, the Arrangement. This process began before the actors began rehearsal. Brecht relied on his designers to produce Arrangementskizzen or arrangement sketches, to include the play’s Figures within the drawings to suggest what scenes might look like when staged. According to Brecht, the stage set was not complete without the grouping of the Figures within it. “The unfolding of the grouping is an unfolding of the stage set and a main task of the stage builder.”12 Caspar Neher, and later Karl von Appen, drew sketches resembling the storyboards for a film, the elements within each frame s­ uggesting 9  Timothy Scheie, Performance Degree Zero: Roland Barthes and Theatre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 53. At the same time, Scheie finds Barthes later writings on Brecht to be divergent: “However, a contradiction simmers between a theatre that leads a spectator to participate in history and to form committed responses that will rectify the troubling status quo, and a structural analysis intended primarily to offer an understanding of the system.” Barthes concentrates on Brecht’s “masterful deployment of signs,” rather than the latter’s politics. (ibid.). 10  BOP 169. 11  For this reason, Brecht rejected Naturalism as a form because, through its recreation of a realistic space, it included a plethora rather than a selection of signs. 12  Brecht, Quoted in Pia Kleber, Exceptions and Rules: Brecht, Planchon and “The Good Person of Szechwan” (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987), 53. After the sketches, the stage builder would create a model using the same materials as would make up the set and would attend and participate in rehearsals, all part of the collaboration between design and direction. Kleber, Exceptions, 53.

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an episode of the play.13 These sketches served as a guide for the actors, who studied the renderings and recreated them in rehearsal, so the team could judge their effectiveness as tableaux that revealed the Fabel to the spectators. “Neher’s episodic sketches served as a basis for arrangements, while most of the suggestions put forward by the collective and by the actors were tested out, usually in accordance with instructions shouted from the stalls, even at the most delicate moments.”14

Image 6.1  The old friends finally work together again: Brecht and Caspar Neher in Zurich 1948. (Photograph: Ruth Berlau) 13  Though Neher did not design Courage in 1949, his color sketches for a later production can be found in Susan DePonte, Caspar Neher—Bertolt Brecht: Eine Bühne für das epische Theater (Berlin: Henschel, 2006), 183–185. 14  (Image 6.1) These are notes on The Tutor: “Results of the Rehearsals,” in Bertolt Brecht, Berliner Ensemble Adaptations, David Barnett, ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 409. For examples of a variety of sketches and color renderings by Neher and von Appen, see Susanne de Ponte, Caspar Neher—Bertolt Brecht: Eine Bühne für das epische Theater (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 2006) and Friedrich Dieckmann, Karl von Appens Bühnenbilder am Berliner Ensemble: Szenenbilder Figurinen, Entwürfe und Szenenphotos zu achtzehn Aufführungen (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1973).

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The actors were not simply living place markers to be added to the designers’ overall conceptions. They still brought their theatrical craft to the scenes, using their own observations of human behavior to fully flesh out the Figures they were playing and bring them to life. The scenes immediately became alive, changed by the addition of the flesh and blood Figures and were now ready for additional explorations. The actors took up their positions while offering their own suggestions for increasing their usefulness in performance, whether still or in motion. At the same time, they also responded directly to those interruptions—those recommendations for improvement—from the team of designers, assistants, and director in the stalls. At any time during rehearsal, the Arrangements could be adjusted, by either party. This way of working served more than one purpose: “This testing meant that the usual psychological discussion could be dispensed with, while the shouts hampered the (equally usual) establishment of a ‘creative climate,’ in which consciousness comes off second best.”15 The Ensemble could encourage critical thinking by throwing suggestions to the performers, interrupting their possible attempts to forget themselves while getting into character. Brecht called these important early rehearsals Stellproben, or placement rehearsals, within which the team constantly considered various means to provide maximum clarity to the narrative. These Arrangements were absolutely essential to Brecht’s process: in rehearsal, if a scene wasn’t working, he returned again and again to its staging; as actor Angelika Hurwicz recalled, Brecht was always willing to change an Arrangement based on the audience’s response.16 In 2015, I compared the Arrangements to the kind of picturization or composition directors would suggest with their movement of actors around the space, but with Brecht’s added function of not only focusing attention on narrative, but suggesting the way tableaux vivant, carefully arranged, could reveal the gestic, the sociological, ideological, and economic meaning.

15  Brecht, Berliner Ensemble Adaptations, 409. Carl Weber tells us Brecht sat on the tenth row, behind a desk and surrounded by assistants and colleagues. See Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 106. Brecht was about 15 feet from the stage. 16  Angelika Hurwicz, “Brecht inszeniert Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis,” Riehe Theater heute 14 (Hannover: Friedrich Verlag, 1964), 3.

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The Actors Create Living Sketches For our rehearsals, we made two alterations to the Brechtian method: to realize the tableaux in those early rehearsals, we did not refer to design sketches, and we limited the number of comments from our seats to the days of Stellproben, when the actors needed those moments of feedback to adjust their tableaux. In the latter case, I wasn’t yet ready to dismiss the creative atmosphere when we came to moment-to-moment work on detail,17 which would have been even more jarring to my contemporary actors. In the spirit of collaboration, instead of asking the designers to provide such Arrangement sketches in advance, as Brecht’s designers had done, I asked the actors to create their own pictorial ideas from scratch: in essence, to contribute their own living sketches, to arrange themselves onstage to signify meaning through careful attention to their own positioning. These initial tableaux served as substitutes for Arrangementskizzen. The designers were working to create environments in which the Figures could be placed, but the actors in rehearsal provided their own initial staging for each moment in each scene, then took input from the full team on ways that this staging could be improved to clarify the Fabel.18 One immediate advantage to this practice was that the frozen pictures conceived by the actors could be reconfigured immediately for further testing. To stress the nature of collaborative creation, it was important that our actors be able to choose their own places within a composition, but this required they have some idea of directorial composition. To work with general principles of composition, they began by recreating the works of famous painters, identifying ways in which the story might be told through the placement of visual elements. Then the actors practiced connotative staging, using simple stories and arranging these for maximum clarity.19 Finally, the cast worked on their tableaux for the scenes of the play.  See Chaps. 7 and 8.  When the production team looked back on our process in hindsight, they highlighted one particular element: our use of Brecht’s form of blocking, Arrangement. 19  Picturization and composition are not new tools in directing. Examples of exercises highlighting these concepts are found in directing texts such as Alexander Dean and Lawrence Carra’s classic book, Fundamentals of Play Directing revised edition (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965) 109–188. See further discussion about these scenes below. 17 18

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At the Berliner Ensemble, the Arrangements were a way of realizing the Fabel in performance, of “making the Fabel flesh,”20 but they had lasting value for the productions themselves as documentation. By juxtaposing the sketches and the final production photos, the team could compare one to the other to note the progress made between rehearsals and from rehearsal to performance. For example, many of Caspar Neher’s sketches for the BE productions of Mr Puntila and his Man Matti and The Tutor, when compared with the photographs of the realized production, are nearly identical.21 In fact, we found our initial Arrangements were the foundation for the final staging, and in our tableaux rehearsals, as at the Berliner Ensemble, the photographs we took served as documentation of the staging process.22 Since scenes were rehearsed out of order, the digital photos were collected in a file in their proper sequence, with notes and titles then added to presentation software for review.23 We shared this file with the actors and production team, who could refer to the file at any time during the process.

Limited Movement Brecht’s emphasis upon static pictures is reinforced by his notion that actors often move too much and simply for the sake of doing so. He argued instead that when an actor stayed in one position, this allowed the spectator to more easily read and absorb the meanings in the picture. An essay from the Courage Model 1949 likewise supports the premise that actors were discouraged from moving for variety’s sake: such moves risked obscuring what had been carefully worked out, and the spectator might ignore a telling move because it was one among too many: “The spectator ceases to look for a specific meaning behind each movement, he stops taking movement seriously.”24 This is because “the full force of a change of

 For a discussion on this point, see Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 90–93.  David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge: The University Press, 2015), 56. 22  (Images 6.2 and 6.3) The photographs from the 2015 production of Mother Courage and Her Children were much less expensive and time-consuming to use as they were taken with smart phones rather than the camera apparatus available to the BE. 23  In this case, we used Microsoft PowerPoint™. 24  BOP 198. 20 21

Image 6.2  Rehearsal Arrangement for Mother Courage 2015 at TTU. Scene 8, in which Yvette confronts the Cook while the Chaplain, Mother Courage, and Yvette’s servant look on. Original Title: “Putting Pieter in His Place.” (Rehearsal Photo: Bill Gelber)

Image 6.3  The same moment from Scene 8 of the 2015 TTU production but in its final form at the final dress rehearsal. Note that Courage is now between the Cook and Yvette, further enjoying the confrontation. The servant doesn’t feel it is his place to watch. (Photo: Andrea Bilkey)

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position is particularly necessary at the pivotal moments in the action.”25 These pivotal moments, or Drehpunkte, or nodal points, are thus highlighted by the actors as they move to new positions. For example, when Swiss Cheese is taken away from his family for the last time, Courage suddenly starts to follow them, begging the soldiers not to wrench his arm. She goes from disinterested canteen worker to mother, revealing her concern for her son. Restricting extraneous or superfluous movement meant that the few carefully planned movements would instead receive the focus they deserved. Each picture was like a goalpost that the actors aimed for as they moved through the play. This approach had an added benefit for the Berliner Ensemble, which was lauded for the clarity of their staging, especially when performing for spectators on tour in foreign countries. Their productions could operate on two levels: through the text and through the stage picture, and the BE was able to overcome the language barrier for non-German speakers through the Arrangements. For the 2015 production of Mother Courage and Her Children, we took this idea to heart and established our own Brechtian rule: no extraneous movement was allowed unless it clearly aided the narrative. This also inhibited the students from adding their own movements where none were called for, a practice we wanted to inculcate in class as well.

Composition: Brecht’s Use of the Artist Bruegel Because the cast would be heavily involved in the staging in a much more directorial role, I introduced them to a number of processes to create effective Arrangements. First, I showed them examples of famous paintings and the way the artists composed the elements within them. This mimicked an influence on Brecht, who likened the Arrangements sketched by his designers to the compositions in paintings by the old masters, particularly Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c1525–69). One of Brecht’s prized possessions, which he carried with him throughout his exile, was a Christmas present he received from his wife, Helene Weigel, in 1936: Gustav Glück’s Bruegel’s Gemälde, a book of the master’s paintings. In Tom Kuhn’s article “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” he demonstrated how Brecht was inspired by the Flemish artist and found him, like Neher, to be

 BOP 198.

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Image 6.4  Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” c. 1588 (oil on canvas) (Bridgeman Images)

an essential model in visualizing works on stage: “From this point on Bruegel would play a significant part, both in Brecht’s theoretical deliberations and in his visual imaginings of his plays.”26 For Brecht, the book of Bruegel’s work contained examples of both Verfremdung and gestus. According to Kuhn: “He was captivated by it, and it was probably very shortly afterward he wrote several short notes on Verfremdung in Bruegel’s work,”27 including “Three Notes on Verfremdung and the Elder Bruegel.”28 In that essay, Brecht saw in Bruegel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” how the artist concentrated his attention on the everyday workers and their menial tasks rather than on the legendary event of the failed attempt at flight (Image 6.4). A familiar story was rendered unfamiliar by taking away the focus from the original protagonist. Icarus was de-­emphasized by placing him in the lower, right-hand corner of the

26  Tom Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel: Verfremdung, Gestic Realism and the Second Phase of Brechtian Theory,” Monatsheft 105, no. 1 (Spring 2013), 101. 27  Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” 101. 28  BOT 159–61.

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painting, after his tragic descent, with just his feet flailing in the water.29 The epic tale was seen in a completely different way, with a concentration on the quotidian actions of the workers who weren’t directly affected by it. In the same way, in Mother Courage, Brecht foregrounded the little people while the momentous events of the Thirty Years War happened just off stage. For example, while General Tilly’s funeral proceeds in the background, Courage sells drinks to the soldiers, who are not attending it. Count Johan Tserclaes Tilly, a devoted Catholic, at one point commanded twenty-five thousand men for Maximilian of Bavaria, but here he is a minor figure who now has little effect on those he commanded.30 Another Verfremdung example in Bruegel’s works is “The Procession to Calgary.” Based on the story of Jesus being led to his crucifixion, the artist depicts aspects of contemporary politics by clothing the soldiers who control the crowd in garb from his own period. Kuhn’s point: “As Brecht recognized, the red coats of the accompanying soldiers keeping order are the red uniforms of the Walloon horsemen in the service of Margaret of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands since 1559.”31 Placing contemporary soldiers in a biblical setting creates a social comment on Bruegel’s own time, comparing the actions of AD 33 with those of the Spanish occupiers. At the same time, according to Kuhn, Bruegel shows Figures whose social relations are revealed, for example, through attention to their chores rather than to historical events that have less importance to them. Kuhn said, “Above all, [Bruegel] is drawn to a depiction of social behavior, more or less realistic in its gestures and more or less satirical in intent.”32 This had a direct correlation with one of Brecht’s important concepts: “It seems clear that Brecht could observe in Bruegel something akin to his own behaviorist interest in what he called social [g]estus.”33 Not only did Brecht bring Neher’s Arrangement sketches into rehearsal but also examples of Bruegel’s work. Kuhn recounted: “It is even said that Brecht sometimes sat in the theatre through rehearsals with Glück’s Bruegel book on his lap.”34 In rehearsal, I divided the actors into groups and gave them paintings with interesting compositions to emulate through tableaux vivant. Each  Image 6.1.  C.V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2005), 118. 31  Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” 104. 32  Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” 116. 33  Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” 116. 34  Kuhn, “Brecht Reads Bruegel,” 118. 29 30

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group had to guess what the others were trying to convey through the composition. They then compared their ideas to the paintings themselves and discussed both successes and missing elements that would have conveyed further meaning.35

Beginning Rehearsals: Status/Haltungen to Reveal Gestus Eschewing tradition, on the first night of rehearsal I dispensed with a read-­ through of the script, preferring to plunge into the work directly, to examine the semiotics of each scene. This alternative approach was also a useful strategy for what lay ahead, because I wanted the group to come to this next phase of work with minds open to new staging suggestions without referring to the play as a whole.36 Though the actors had all read the play, I didn’t want to remind them of every moment of the plot. Instead, I presented the cast with the tools for staging. The physical subtleties that attention to status/Haltung can bring out are so important to actors that gestus and status/Haltung signaling were introduced that first night as an additional aid: while the spectator can make assumptions about staging based on spatial relationships, props, and costuming, the actors can clarify signs as they assume Haltungen within the frame.37 When all other means have been mobilized to clarify a moment, the Haltungen of the Figures is the final ingredient most likely to reveal gestus. For example, the dominance by one Figure over another may be clarified by having one invade the other’s space; the higher-status Figure might put a hand on the lower’s shoulder or stare at the lower Figure while the latter looks away. The actors’ physicalization can introduce useful contradiction and complexity: if a higherranking Figure displays low-status signs, this implies a contradiction between their position in the army and their Haltungen. Such a picture 35  Some examples I used were Jacques-Louis David’s “The Intervention of the Sabines,” “The Death of Socrates,” and “Oath of the Horatii,” William Hogarth’s “Marriage A-la-­ Mode: 4, The Toilette,” Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “The Duel After the Masquerade,” Thomas Eakins’s “The Agnew Clinic,” and George Caleb Bingham’s “The Jolly Flatboatmen.” 36  Perhaps for analogous reasons, Brecht often omitted initial read-throughs at the BE. For the 1949 production, Angelika Hurwicz recalled they did have a read-through, but the actors “were instructed to simply read the play, ‘that was it.’” See David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble, 31. 37  See Chap. 5 for a full discussion of status/Haltung.

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can likewise contradict the dialogue, if a low-status superior tries to give a high-status subordinate an order. Mother Courage, for example, is constantly trying to raise her status in order to get the upper hand. Sometimes she succeeds, forcing soldiers to respect her, as the Quartermaster does when she pays less for his bullets. Sometimes, others lower her status, as the soldiers do when they are interrogating her about Swiss Cheese later in the scene. Something further should be said about Haltungen here. On the surface, “playing” a Haltung seems to be the opposite of what we consider “good” acting, especially when it involves facial expressions. Making faces to indicate feeling is traditionally considered a form of mugging, i.e., overtly indicating the character’s intentions to the audience through exaggeration. Yet facial expressions are important nonverbal behaviors that reveal inner thoughts and feelings and, for Brecht, the performance is a display of previous work, an assumption of pre-planned behaviors. It is still possible to display honest reactions in that instance: if a scene’s main point is that one character is offending the others, the offended party can display Haltungen of disgust with myriad natural facial expressions, by recalling their own experiences as targets of such behavior or using their observations of real people in similar situations. When a Figure secretly reveals their true feelings to an audience, this can be a source of humor, an important part of Brecht’s plan to entertain the spectator while engaging their critical faculties. These “pictures of attitude” are thus essential storytelling devices that help to explain the important moments when Figures react to one other in ways that can have great consequences—that change the nature of relationships or destroy the plans that one character might have for another; that reconcile two parties or forever separate them through mutual animosity. Playing Haltungen also works best when these signs are derived from the character’s intentions.38 Status/Haltung is also a useful shorthand for adjusting elements in the picture. Status/Haltung helps to clarify initial tableaux pictures presented by the actors. In 2015, for a moment in Scene 1, when Eilif offered to punch the Recruiter, even as the Recruiter was unimpressed with this threat, the Figures’ attitudes towards each other served as a substitute for dialogue in the silent picture. For example, the Recruiter was clearly amused by Eilif’s 38  For a combination of Brecht’s and Stanislavsky’s ideas of acting and, for examples of status versus intention, see Chap. 8.

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offer to hit him. His experience as a soldier gave him higher status, and though Eilif was a match for him physically, the Recruiter was not intimidated. Eilif displayed the intense posture of a hot head, straining against the wagon he was still yoked to, trying to get in the Recruiter’s face, while the Recruiter took on a more relaxed posture and a smile played across his lips. This signaled the danger that the family was in; the Recruiter was a high-status expert in convincing young men to join him and wouldn’t be put off easily as he worked on Eilif, despite the mother’s resolve to keep her children out of harm’s way.

Composition and Connotative Staging Actors can practice connotative staging by creating simple scene pictures in response to prompts provided by the director. For the audience, common groupings connote situations with which they are familiar. For example, it is easy for the spectator to identify the participants in a traditional wedding by positioning alone. However, revealing social gestus is another matter, especially with the limited means available to the actors in early rehearsals. I first gave the actors simple scenarios to reveal in tableaux without the added element of gestus: a bridge game in which one of the players is caught cheating; a meal for two guests who discover the entrée is badly cooked but seek to be polite; a woman on a bus trying to calm an unruly child while other passengers look on or attempt to ignore the disturbance; a trial in which the witness identifies the accused.39 Through this practice, the actors began to see that these configurations could be quickly read in a general way. The basic configurations could serve as a basis for connotative staging. A courtroom set up was achieved through the positioning of key basic elements: a raised dais for the judge, one table each for the defense and prosecution, a witness chair next to the dais, and twelve seats off to one side. Conversely, for a simple wedding of three people, they positioned two Figures facing each other while a third stood behind and between them; if the third person held an open book, particularly a Bible, the spectators instantly knew what they are seeing. Meanwhile even these basic stories were sometimes difficult to realize exactly because so many design elements useful to the process were missing, such as the clothing, the props, and the set pieces. Also, the actors had no recourse to movement, as they were frozen in place. They learned that  For further suggestions, see Dean and Carra, Fundamentals of Play Direction, 188.

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an audience can misinterpret an incomplete picture and, without key components, they were forced to find their own solutions using only what they had at hand, particularly their ability to transform themselves into the personas required. In the case of the bus ride, identifying the adult actor as a child was especially challenging. The invention of the performers had to compensate for the disparity in age between the actor and the Figure. One discovery they made was the child on the bus could be represented by an attitude of playfulness from the actor, while the other passengers responded with adult disappointment or disapproval. Similarly, the bridge game could be clarified through the use of a square table with four chairs evenly spaced around it, as opposed to a random number of persons seated at a round table. Through such experiments, the actors identified the means whereby they could crystalize moments even with limited resources, while providing the designers additional inspirations for their own contributions. For example, the actors had a fondness for props, and this was encouraged. If a Figure was crying, the addition of a handkerchief added to the impression of weeping as the actor dabbed his eyes. A Bible implied a swearing in or religious fervor. A mirror was used to apply makeup. An older woman with gout could walk with a cane. In terms of critical thinking: when actors imagine such scenarios, the whole team notices further elements useful for storytelling purposes, to distinguish between two dissimilar card games, a difference in rank between two soldiers, or a child’s behavior on a city bus versus a school bus. How do we know the four actors are playing bridge rather than some other game, such as poker? Perhaps they are wearing more formal clothes, drinking coffee, and eating cake, rather than smoking cigars; perhaps poker chips are replaced with the bridge tricks that have been won by the players, as each set of four cards are arranged in piles on the table in front of the people who took them.40 To add gestus to these scenarios, the actors were asked to consider the economic level of the characters. For example, if the host of the bridge game was the employee, and the cheater at cards was his boss, this changed the nature of the employee’s response, and clarified the attitudes that each took towards the event. The boss may have cheated at cards to test his employee’s loyalty and his own power over him. If the employee’s wife pointed out the cheating, she put the employee in a difficult position, and the upshot of the accusation would have to be reconsidered. The boss’s  It goes without saying the players need a pack of cards.

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partner might have been amused or disgusted, and picked one depending on whether the attitude would offer the audience a further comment on the underlying implications of the boss’s act. In the same way, the actors would stage the scene from Mother Courage connotatively and then consider the gestus incidents that made up each event. For example, in the Fabel for Scene 2, when the Cook hands over the money for the chicken to Courage, a smile may play across his lips, indicating that he is impressed with her ability to haggle. An attitude of smugness might also accompany the receiving of the money, as Courage continues to enjoy her ability to bargain to her advantage. The importance they give to such rotten food is also an indicator of their current circumstances. The economic implications of the money exchange are gestically qualified. Connotative staging can speak volumes. In Scene 1, when the Army recruiter convinces Eilif to join up, he literally removes the yoke from around Eilif’s neck, releasing him from his servitude to Courage. The comparison between Eilif and beast of burden is clear. In Scene 4, the Young Soldier enters, restrained by the Old Soldier from approaching the captain’s tent. It is clear that he is angry at the captain, preparing to draw his sword, while the Old Soldier tries to keep him out of trouble by pushing the sword back into the scabbard. The Young Soldier’s actions epitomize the impulsiveness of youth and inexperience, while the cooler behavior of the Old Soldier shows his awareness of his position in the ranks as well as the rashness of his companion’s actions. The Young Soldier can resist the Old Soldier only so far, indicating that he can be controlled by a person of superior rank, as will be revealed later in the scene. In the Mother Courage production of 2015, when the Chaplain asked Fierling to marry him, he went down on one knee, a classic position for a proposal. To reveal her status-Haltung in relation to his action, she blew pipe smoke in his face. Similarly, when Eilif appeared in Scene 8, he was closely accompanied by soldiers armed with pikes: though he was higher in rank, rather than commanding the group, he was clearly being guarded—although out of deference, his hands were tied in front of him rather than behind his back.41 41  In the Berliner Ensemble, Eilif must have been seen as a more dangerous Figure: the soldiers guarded him with arquebuses. Though portable, these weapons are normally brought to a position and mounted, as they are in Scene 11, but here they are carried. Brecht: Complete Plays: Five, 310. In both Kushner’s and Brecht’s original text, they are pikes.

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Spacing Experimentation in rehearsal with space between Figures can help actors and directors to connote common groupings, but also how space is used by Figures in status transactions, for example to create signs of awkwardness or even anger by purposefully violating others’ spaces. As the 2015 rehearsal process continued, the actors used distance to suggest acceptance or rejection, isolation or inclusion, repulsion or attraction. It was easier to convey the relationships between Courage’s family members when they considered spatial relationships. For example, the family of Courage is often found in a range of each other which is personal. The children Kattrin and Swiss Cheese have an intimate moment within Scene 3 as the calm before the storm of Swiss Cheese’s capture. Courage creates an intimate distance between herself and Kattrin by serving her soup in Scene 10. This contradicts Courage’s words as she claims to be leaving the Cook, not because of her daughter, but because of her business. In Scene 4, Courage sits next to the Young Soldier as a form of solidarity: she understands his bitterness, but she also needs to reason with him. She is trying to cool his revolutionary ardor.42 Yvette cozied up to the old Colonel to seduce him into buying the wagon, intimately touching him with her fingers.

The Practice of Arrangement Once the actors had practiced composition and connotation, they began to identify the events of each scene in Courage and to create their own tableaux without initial input from the production team or supervision by the director. Given free rein, the actors agreed upon each Arrangement, then showed these tableaux vivant one at a time to the rest of the group. Those attending, including assistant directors, stage managers, assistant stage managers, or other actors, were asked to “read” the accompanying signs and give feedback, describing what they believed the pictures conveyed. The assistants took photos so that even the participants could look at their staging and consider whether or not the points they sought to reveal were there. Allowing the actors to create their own moments gave them an important sense of ownership and connected them strongly to other parts of the 42  Brecht considered this the most cruel action Courage took towards another Figure. “In no other scene is Courage so depraved as in this one.” Brecht, Collected Plays 5, 301.

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production process in addition to performance. The actors and onlookers gave titles to these pictures, not only as a way of solidifying the meaning behind their choices, but as a mnemonic device for recreating the positioning later—especially during run-throughs. For example, a tableau from Scene 5 showed the Chaplain and Kattrin trying to help the wounded farmers while two soldiers and Courage looked on dispassionately; this moment’s mnemonic title was “Not Our Problem.”

Imagining Design Elements Mother Courage calls for a number of props indicative of wartime conditions. In the 1949 production, Helen Weigel added specific items to stress Courage’s enterprise: she used a purse strung around her neck, concluding her business transactions by closing the purse with a sharp snap. She also carried a spoon on her person ready to prepare or taste her wares, and a knife for protection. Similarly, in Brecht’s script, the Cook is connected to his pipe, which also provides a clue to his real identity: Yvette refers to her old lover as “Piping Pieter,” so called because he never removed his pipe, even during acts of intimacy. When the Cook leaves it behind during the attack on the camp, Courage maintains their connection and foreshadows his return in Scene 8 by smoking it in Scene 6. In Scene 3, Yvette’s bottle represents her sad state; she drowns her sorrows as her customers ignore her based on the rumor that she is diseased. As the lights rise at the beginning of Scene 3, the audience is treated to a sight gag: an engine of destruction, the cannon, is covered with domesticity: Courage’s laundry. Its function has been highjacked, and its power is diminished because of its new use. This symbolizes Courage’s exploitation of the war machine and her obliviousness to its possible consequences, the war itself as a cosmic joke. Just as Courage contemptuously rejects the original use of the cannon, which is to destroy many lives, she also rebuffs the negative results of warfare and concentrates on what it can provide for her. When the battle begins, the soldiers struggle to take it off stage to use in the fighting. Actors indicate the passage of time by doing everyday tasks—preparing meals or mending clothes. In Scene 3 Courage lowers one flag and raises another to indicate which army has the upper hand and that her intent is to remain impartial. Kattrin uses the shoes stolen from Yvette to imagine what it might be like to be desirable.

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We added two important props to our production in Scene 8, both telling the spectator something about Yvette: she walked with a cane to indicate that her previous profession had taken a toll on her, and she was accompanied by a servant who carried a stool upon which she could sit when resting. These contradicted each other as they suggested both her earlier and later economic conditions. In the former she served others, in the latter, they served her. In Mother Courage, the iconic scenic element is the wagon the family uses for their business. It undergoes several permutations: it is a vehicle, a store, or a canteen. The wagon’s appearance throughout the play also reflects the fortunes of its owners: sometimes it is full and other times nearly barren. Likewise, the number of people required to pull it varies. In the first scene, both Eilif and Swiss Cheese, two healthy young men, haul it when it is full of supplies, reminding the spectator of a missing element, the horse that used to pull it. By the end of the story, Courage, now much older, draws the wagon herself, since it is practically empty. The actors need to imagine where the wagon will be when creating their tableaux: to convey the space that the wagon takes up, and how they enter and exit its confines.

Customs and Rituals in Arrangement Displays of rituals or formalities are likewise a tool actors use to connote rank and social standing. A military unit can stand at attention or at ease, or soldiers may salute an officer. Depending on the period in which the play is set, men may remove their hats when indoors or in front of a lady. In Scene 3 of Mother Courage, when the Catholics overrun the camp, Courage and the Chaplain practice making the sign of the cross.43 In our production, when the General entered the outdoor kitchen, the Cook saluted, acknowledging the General as his superior officer in a place where the Cook was usually in charge.

Disruption Just as we look for the clearest signs, we must be mindful of those that disrupt the signals of meaning and prevent them from reaching the audience. One way to practice this is to ask the actors about the items they 43  The Chaplain makes a subtle reference, “Good Catholics now, root and branches.” The Chaplain in 2015 accompanied these words by crossing himself. Kushner, Mother Courage, 43.

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bring with them to rehearsal from the outside world. How do attitudes, interpretations, clothing, or props confuse the signals they intend to send to spectators. Although this practice may seem captious, the actors understand that it serves the purpose of moving them towards a critical mindset. We don’t expect the actors to provide the appropriate wardrobe; however, if an actor is wearing shorts when more formal clothing is required for the story, we can point out that this is an example of disrupting the signal. If another actor is wearing a ball cap, even if headwear is called for, the specifics of the item may give a contradictory impression: perhaps another hat or even a bare head would be more appropriate. Substitute props, though they may be necessary in early rehearsals, can change the tenor of a whole scene, introducing an unintended comic effect rather than a dramatic one. These details are so important that ideally costume pieces and props should be available to the actors as early as possible: the BE actors, for example, had the luxury of rehearsing with the real objects.

Arrangement Adjustments According to his actors, Brecht was brilliant at making small but telling adjustments based on a careful observation of the actors themselves. Lotte Lenya, who played the role of Jenny Diver in the original production of The Threepenny Opera, and was married to Kurt Weill, the play’s composer and Brecht’s collaborator, remembered the director offering advice when she auditioned for the role: I started and evidently made a few gestures which he considered too balletic, and he told me, “Lenya darling, don’t be so Egyptian,” and with a slight touch he just turned my hand round, and it became a famous gesture of mine….44

Examples of analogous adjustments the director might employ include the following scenario: two Figures are about to have a fight when a third Figure tries to intervene; the attention the intervener gives to either actor may be arbitrary. However, the actors can make clear whose side the intervener takes, if the director asks the intervener to hold back one Figure 44  “Brecht and I: Lotte Lenya Talks to Irving Wardle,” The Observer, September 9, 1962, quoted in Pamela Katz, The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women and Germany on the Brink (New York: Anchor Books, 2015), 100.

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with her hand at an intimate distance while looking at the other Figure with fear; the intervener’s eye contact, gestures, and distance can show sympathy for one and/or dismissal of the other. Of course, these processes require constant cross-reference: once the production team and actors have created the tableaux, they should compare each picture to the others from different rehearsals, seeking to identify contradictions between one scene or another and noting where exits and entrances have to be consistent between pictures. The initial establishment of the individual tableaux can then be followed by a run-through of all tableaux in sequence: much can be discovered as the scenes are stitched back together in this way. Though the play is an episodic one, Brecht draws the spectator’s attention to later scenes with earlier scenes in mind, to note the contradictions between the Figure’s behavior in one situation versus another. Unlike an Aristotelean play, in which the plot builds to a climax, the separate little scenes of a Brecht play are jump cuts, sudden transitions as one might experience in a film. Specific staging helps to draw attention to these contrasting scenes. In Scene 6 of Mother Courage, when spectators see that Kattrin has been permanently scarred, they can recall that earlier Kattrin imagined a better future for herself: in Scene 3, preening in Yvette’s shoes and hat, she feels herself attractive to others; the audience may “leaf back” from Scene 6 to Scene 3. When Kattrin’s looks are ruined—destroying her chances of landing a partner and bearing children—her despair is a Drehpunkt that leads to her attempt to abandon Courage in Scene 9, when she thinks her mother will leave her to join the Cook. Meticulous attention to specific signs is necessary to prevent mis-­ readings. At one point during our rehearsals, the actor playing Yvette coquettishly kissed the Old Colonel on the cheek. Though it showed the difference in their ages, the gesture sent an unintended signal that Yvette had not been intimate with him. We adjusted the sign accordingly: Yvette decided to kiss the Old Colonel full on the mouth, as she would a lover. In Scene 12, when Courage kneeled with Kattrin’s body, she sang her lullaby as if her daughter were merely asleep, and then drew the blanket over her. Because she left Kattrin’s face uncovered, the actor signaled Courage’s denial of the girl’s death. Only when Courage paid the farmer and his son to remove her body for burial, did the farmer cover Kattrin completely.45 45  In the Berliner Ensemble production, Kattrin was lying on a pallet, allowing the farmers to easily carry her off but also to remind the audience of the fate of Swiss Cheese.

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Of course, if the actors who create the initial tableaux are having trouble locating the specificity needed, after they display their initial pictures, the director can assist them in a private discussion by asking them what they intended and making further suggestions.46 For example, I suggested to the group in Scene 3, that the Chaplain’s struggle between being a man of the cloth and his attraction for Yvette might be clarified by having her take up a more intimate distance between them and letting him express his longing for her facially. Tawny Westbrook as Yvette added the idea of putting her finger to his lips. In Mother Courage, some ideas are difficult to convey without adding dialogue, such as conversations referring to absent characters; even so, we were able to convey a surprising range of ideas after discussion and experimentation. The actors weren’t trying to play charades, however; they rejected any choices that reached the level of indicating or spelling out the message too overtly.

Attitude towards Tableaux To receive the full benefit of Stellproben, those who stand in for the future spectators, such as the director, assistants, dramaturg, and stage managers, should only tell the actors what they see, not what they would like to see; if they do the latter, they are directing. This willful amnesia is a difficult mindset to produce as, by the time they come to rehearsal, the members of the team have been studying the play for some time, often months. But they must make the effort if they are to serve as spectators for the actors. After all, the audience comes to a play fresh. Brecht had the remarkable ability to take on this function.47 He also appreciated having visitors to the theatre; they were fresh eyes. This was one of the reasons he kept his rehearsals open to all.48 During our rehearsals for Mother Courage, the team seeking to “read” the events of the tableaux already knew certain information—for example, who was playing a soldier—so they took that for granted. Though costumes and props would help in the long run, we focused our attention on 46  Shouting out a suggestion defeats the ability of the other participants to guess the new signs. 47  For further discussion of this aspect of Brecht’s directing, see Chap. 7. 48  He even asked his driver for feedback. See David Barnett, “Undogmatic Marxism: Brecht Rehearses at the Berliner Ensemble,” Edinburgh German Yearbook 75: Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity, eds. Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (New York: Camden House, 2011), 26, quoting Erinnerungen an Brecht, ed. Hubert Whitt (Leipzig: Reclam, 1964), 228–29.

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what the actors themselves could do without them. For example, through military bearing, physical familiarity with the use of weapons, or displays of war-weary exhaustion. The fact is spectators should be able to identify soldiers even out of uniform. Arrangement laid the foundation for all work that came after. The photos of tableaux were referred to by the production team and the performers and continually measured against the Fabel. The actors gradually became expert at finalizing workable groupings, with ever-decreasing adjustments. From then on, the actors had a learned pattern of positioning and could concentrate on the behavior of the Figures within those patterns. Best of all, working together, we could lead the audience through the play sign by sign, with each stage picture clarifying rather than confusing the story. Carl Weber said the goal of the Berliner Ensemble was to be so clear that “a person watching through a glass wall, unable to hear what was being said, would be able to understand the main elements and conflicts of the story.”49 We had no glass wall, but we did have to overcome a barrier of sorts: the shorter attention span of the contemporary audience and the need to quickly and precisely reveal meaning when presenting a play with which the Lubbock community was unfamiliar. An added benefit was that the play’s initial staging was accomplished very quickly, within a week or so. As we have engaged with Brecht, an important lesson the production teams and I have taken away from his work is that strong Arrangement, with all its attendant steps, is both an art and a necessity in making theatre that has impact. It is an effective artistic practice that clarifies story and supports the revelation of the Fabel onstage. At the Berliner Ensemble, the company found they could ultimately solve virtually any problem in staging by adjusting the Arrangement—it was, and is, that important. Arrangement goes beyond the director’s means of staging—picturization and composition—through its emphasis on the gestus, a layer that adds political meaning to the theatrical elements offered as signifiers for the spectator, moving beyond narrative to attitude towards that narrative. Giving the actors agency by allowing them to make initial staging choices and then exploring gestus with them, is a collaborative method that bears exploring in other productions, a pedagogical move that increases

49  Carl Weber, “Brecht as Director,” Brecht, Erika Munk, ed. (New York: Bantam Books, Inc. 1972), 105.

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participation in the full process of production and provides further opportunities for a collective approach to analysis. It should be noted that, as actors create tableaux, they are beginning to make acting decisions. Further and deeper work is required, however, to realize the behavior of the Figures as they respond to new situations. This is the subject of the next two chapters.

CHAPTER 7

Rehearsing the Actors II: Moment to ­Moment

Brecht was an ideal teacher, that is to say, an uncomfortable teacher. He nagged away so long at self-evident facts, ready solutions, perfections and other agreeable things that you began to get fed up with them. So you rejected them with a fresh eye…. Manfred Wekwerth (Manfred Wekwerth “Discovering an Aesthetic Category” in Brecht As They Knew Him, ed. Hubert Witt, trans. John Peet (New York: International Publishers, 1974), 150)

After the initial Arrangements during the Stellproben or placement rehearsals, it was time for the Berliner Ensemble to look much more closely at the incidents individually, to mine them for the clearest means of revealing the proposed interpretation and to question their own initial work, to avoid rushing over possible solutions but to consider as many alternatives as might lead to the best possible results. This step was called Detailproben, “Rehearsal of details.”1 Moment-to-moment work was essential for the adjustment of staging and the means whereby the actors would consider and comment on the Figures they displayed, while noting what the other actors were doing as Figures. Brecht led this process through his ability to look at each day of rehearsal afresh and, in a sense, to forget the play he had been working on, even a day earlier. This studied amnesia was one of his great strengths as a director. Rehearsal of details 1

 BOP 230.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_7

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was a phase we gave great attention to and one that made up the majority of our work in rehearsal. Brecht’s directorial work is covered in many different volumes. Theaterarbeit contains essays about his working methods, including a plan for the production process.2 The model book notes, translated and included in both Brecht Collected Plays and Brecht in Performance, give us the reasoning behind choices made by Brecht and his collaborators. David Barnett also describes Brecht’s work in a number of books and articles, including Brecht in Practice and A History of the Berliner Ensemble.3 Meg Mumford, besides detailing the preparation of a Brechtian production in her full-length book, Bertolt Brecht, points out another excellent source, in her article on Brecht and Stanislavsky, comparing the Katzgraben Notes to the model books, pointing out, “the notes offer far greater information about the day-to-day rehearsal process rather than the end results of theatre work.”4 Brecht’s former assistants also wrote extensively about watching him rehearse a number of plays and discussed his employment of various suggestions to the actors, including his willingness to entertain their ideas, his politeness and respect for them, and his ability to deftly find solutions to move the events of the play further into the sociological realm through his devil’s advocate approach.5 His light touch with the actors of the Berliner Ensemble was a long cry from his early days as a director, when, in 1921, he screamed at the performers during the mounting of his friend Arnolt Bronnen’s play Parricide 2  See “Bertolt Brecht’s Stage Direction,” “Phases of a Stage Direction,” “How the Director Brecht Uses His Own Model,” and “Katzgraben Notes 1953” in BOP 226–274. 3  See Bibliography. 4  Meg Mumford, “Brecht Studies Stanislavski: Just a Tactical Move?”, New Theatre Quarterly 8 Vol. 11, Issue 43, 1995, 241 Emphasis Mumford’s. Katzgraben Notes by Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble, were made specifically to document their work on Erwin Strittmatter’s play, Katzgraben. and to consider Stanislavski’s System in their own work. These are translated and appear in BOP 251–275. In her book, Bertolt Brecht, she also considers the staging of The Caucasian Chalk Circle with Brecht’s means of staging in mind. See Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht, “Chapter 3, The Caucasian Chalk Circle: A Model Production,” 91–129. John Fuegi reconstructs Brecht’s direction of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in his book Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, According to Plan (Cambridge: The University Press, 1994), using Hans Bunge’s notes and recordings of the rehearsals. See Chap. 6, “Diary of a production,” 132–167. 5  See for example Manfred Wekwerth, Daring to Play and Carl Weber, “Brecht as Director,” specifically 101–110. I have chosen translated texts, although there are many more German-­ language books by former colleagues such as Benno Besson and Angelika Hurwicz.

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and drove them from the theatre.6 At that point, “Brecht lacked any directorial experience which might have enabled him to explain his intentions at the outset.”7 Later he could be stern with those who didn’t take the work seriously or failed to give their best efforts, but in general, at the BE, he was respectful and extremely patient with his actors, and created “an atmosphere of humor, ease with experimentation and relaxation.”8 Such was his theatrical acumen by that time, the actors begged him to act out suggestions, although he would never do so with the idea of requiring that they emulate him directly. I was encouraged by Brecht’s insistence on collaboration between the actors and director as they worked together to discover the play; that he found the tendency to accept the first solution to a problem counterproductive; that his epic theatre was ultimately simply theatre, i.e., it was an entertainment made with and for pleasure, even as it was used to suggest the possibility of change in society9; and that he wasn’t always able to realize his own ideas about acting, which left room for other methods or, in our case, a combination of his ideas and those of Stanislavsky. Both my own work and the students’ has been grounded in Stanislavskian principles, and so my serving as a bridge between the two masters proved to be a fruitful endeavor in a university setting. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stanislavsky’s system was promoted as the essential approach to staging and to actor training in the Soviet-governed German Democratic Republic rather than Brecht’s methods, to the point where Brecht eventually had to address the similarities and differences between them. The fact was that both Brecht and Stanislavsky had much in common. Both sought to create great art on the stage that led to truthful revelations about the world. Both men wanted to create ensembles of actors requiring that their lead actors sometimes play small roles. Both were masters of staging. Both believed in observation as a tool for understanding and portraying the world in detail. A major point that separated them was Stanislavsky’s emphasis on the psychology of the character and Brecht’s on the ideological and socio-economic pressures that led to behavior. Directors can make their reputations through their unique conceptual interpretations. From this position, they can serve as auteurs, treating the  Parker, 193.  Parker, 193. 8  Weber, “Brecht as Director,” 107. 9  BOT 229–232. 6 7

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performers as one part of their overall vision of the piece, yet another element to be manipulated. An alternative process, and one that is useful in an educational setting, is to make the actors collaborators in the process. This instills in them the idea that one can take advantage of all the minds in a room, a practice that is at the heart of ensemble acting and team building whether in the theatre or in life. As David Barnett notes in A History of the Berliner Ensemble, this was Brecht’s approach: “The director is not concerned with controlling the actors, but rather empowering them to make discoveries that can be used productively in performance.”10 At the same time, Brecht encouraged the actors to take egocentric positions, that is, represent their own interests, rather than “sacrifice their own egoism for ‘the good of the play.’”11 The actors offered individual interpretations and created more nuanced performances. Brecht noted this attitude in itself was a contradiction, one between “the collective desire to stage a play and the individual actor’s desire to represent his or her position.”12

Creating the Figure Though our team had already prepared a Fabel to work with, in rehearsal we began by letting the actors offer their own ideas about the events of each scene, allowing them free reign to stage the tableaux, creating their own Arrangements.13 The next stage was to guide them towards more sociological approaches to the Figures and moments. These scenes contained gestic incidents that had to be brought out through the acting. Without this added element, we were failing to meet Brecht’s ultimate aim. This was the “chief interest” of Brecht’s epic theatre: “It works out scenes where people behave in a way that makes visible the social laws under which they are acting.”14 We wanted our actors to find the critical distance necessary to offer up their Figures to the audience for critique. The way they would accomplish this, and the key to Brecht’s approach, was through gestus. For him, it was not enough to present a Figure as a human being going through an  Barnett, A History, 10.  BOT 50. 12  BOT 50. 13  See Chap. 6. 14  BOT 126. 10 11

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experience; the actor also had to reveal, as theatre professor Meg Mumford put it, “the economic and socio-ideological construction of human identity and interaction.”15 This was difficult because the actor had to be both inside and outside the Figure. For a play that counts on the interest of the audience in the plot and its revelations, there is less room for the consideration of contradictory behavior, a layer of the role that serves as added commentary. An understanding of the character’s motives and feelings, which can be discovered in rehearsal as part of Brecht’s process, is also played out with the actor’s own perspective on the Figure’s actions, often an opposing one. Brecht’s “Not…but” was meant to contrast the wrong-headed decisions made by the Figure, based on their societal constraints, versus the actions that the audience would want them to take to benefit themselves and their society.

Director as Devil’s Advocate Another useful principle for each of us, but particularly for the director, was to take the attitude of “not knowing.”16 I became a substitute teacher for Brecht, willing to question early solutions and to suggest that others do the same so that the most effective possible gestic incidents could be revealed and played. I took the naïve position practiced by Brecht even towards his own material. I tried to reach what he called, “the Zero Point,” to look at the scene before me afresh, to avoid complacency, to keep myself from arriving at conclusions based on my previous knowledge of the play or the work already accomplished.17 Walter Benjamin wrote of the playful way Brecht reminded himself to do this: “On the window sill stands a small wooden donkey which can nod its head. Brecht has hung a little sign around its neck on which he has written: ‘Even I must understand it.’”18 Brecht’s ability to reach the zero point was an art form: “Brecht by contrast spoke of ‘the art of forgetting.’ When, for example, he was checking over the results of a rehearsal on the following day, he really had forgotten the work he had done the day before and saw everything, ‘as if for the first time,’ fearing that he might otherwise have something in his head 15  Meg Mumford, Showing the Gestus: A Study of Acting in Brecht’s Theatre (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 1997), xviii. 16  BOP 227. 17  See “On Determining the Zero Point,” and The Zero Point,” in BOT 161–162. 18  Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, 108.

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that wasn’t actually present on the stage.”19 This is a matter of stressing process over product, taking the onus off the participants to deliver early results. Much more important is the deep dive into the material for constant reassessment. This avoids the acceptance of quick and easy solutions. According to Carl Weber, this was in keeping with Brecht’s overall philosophy: “Since his whole view of the world was that it was changeable and the people in it were changing, every solution discovered was tentative and regarded as the starting point for a new, better, different solution.”20 Realizing the Fabel was a complex process, one in which many different suggestions had to be tried so the ultimate solution would reveal the interpretation as clearly as possible to the spectator. An example is Helene Weigel’s “silent scream,” at the death of Swiss Cheese. One of the most famous moments in theatrical history wasn’t discovered until “later performances.”21

Epicization The Berliner Ensemble used a famous Brecht exercise in rehearsal involving the narrating of a Figure’s actions and dialogue rather than acting it. By speaking the text on the page in the third person and in past tense, the actor was exhibiting what had already happened, rather than playing in the present. For Mother Courage, Brecht used this device once, asking the peasant farmer and his wife in Scene 11 to use this approach when practicing: the dialogue between them became: “‘The watchman will give warning,’ said the woman.” “‘They must have killed the watchman,’ said the man.” “‘If only there were more of us,’ said the woman,” etc.22 The actors could also express the thoughts and attitudes of their Figures, again from a distance, either improvised or taking their cues from scripts created for  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 77.  Weber, “Brecht as Director,” 104. 21  BOP 213. 22  This dialogue is translated by John Willett but does not match what he has written in his version of the play. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds., Directors on Directing: A Source Book of the Modern Theatre (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1976), 336. As an exercise in the classroom, and to encourage critical thinking, I asked the actors to add possible “Not…buts” and speak attitudes their characters might have had such as, “Instead of cowering, the peasant straightened and boldly said, ‘They must have killed the watchman,” slowly layering the narrative with blocking descriptions, then thoughts, then “Not…but.” 19 20

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them by assistants of the Berliner Ensemble.23 This prompted them to produce live commentary to be kept in mind as they critiqued the Figure in performance. The various forms of this process he called epicization. This exercise supported Brecht’s principle that “showing must be shown.”24 In a poem of that title, Brecht explains that, when an actor takes on an attitude, they are also asking the spectator to note that this is one the Figure has adopted, and that the actor may have another attitude entirely: “The actor must show his subject, and he must show himself. Of course, he shows his subject by showing himself, and he shows himself by showing his subject.”25 As the actor portrays the Figure, they are displaying it; the actor does not disappear completely within the role. “Although the two coincide, they must not coincide in such a way that the difference between the two tasks disappears.”26 This is a difficult process to accomplish for actors who use identification to disappear into their characters, as Stanislavsky suggests. Brecht scholar Marc Silberman mentions that this “stereoscopic performance,”27 emphasizing the social gestus, depicts how “the difference between the actor’s gestures (the role) and the figure’s behavior (the character) is made visible.”28 This is a form of “Not…but” which allows the audience to see the actor’s comment on the Figure in performance. Epicization is one way to practice both sides of the equation.

One-thing-after-another Brecht proposed another operation for creating a Figure, by asking the actors to consider each event in isolation, discovering the various ways their Figures reacted to each situation through different Haltungen.29 This meant moving from moment to moment not as steps in an overall interpretation but as unique, separate reactions unrelated to each other in 23  See Käthe Rülicke-Weiler, Dramaturgie Brechts, 250. We ourselves did not practice this exercise during rehearsals for Mother Courage 2015. 24  “Showing Must Be Shown,” The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, 921. 25  Brecht, quoted in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schoken Books, 1968), specifically “What is Epic Theatre?” 153. 26  Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 153. 27  Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 325. 28  Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 325. 29  See Chap. 5.

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a process he called “one-thing-after-another.”30 “A character was for Brecht a ‘blank canvas’ in rehearsal, which the actor along with the other players had to write on precisely by working through the play’s events ‘one-thing-after-another’ and thus getting to know the character in action.”31 This revealed the Figure in a form of montage rather than as a character that developed in a steady progression, through the contrasting, more traditional approach, “one thing out of another.” Manfred Wekwerth described how acting one thing after another was accomplished in a scene from the 1951 production of Mother Courage. In Scene 3, when Courage must bargain with the enemy soldiers for the release of Swiss Cheese, Weigel might have built up a portrait of a desperate mother who becomes more and more agitated, with the death of her son delivering the final blow. This would have been an example of playing “one thing out of another,” creating “overarching curves” for the character.32 Rather than panic about possible consequences, Helene Weigel was asked to concentrate on the negotiation itself. “Only when the shots have been fired should her great distress set in.”33 In this way, “the contradiction between the mother and the businesswoman becomes directly evident.”34

Working Out the Details By concentrating on each scene as an entity in and of itself, the team could image that all that was required of them was to realize that portion of the script and no other. One way I isolated the scenes from each other was to rehearse them out of order. This had two advantages: like a filming schedule, it allowed me to make the most of our time by calling each actor on specific days for their scenes.35 At the same time, the connections between scenes were disrupted through a non-linear process, that is, the narrative was further interrupted and more closely reflected a montage of moments. The actors started afresh each day because they weren’t referring back to earlier events in the play—which they may not have even worked on yet.  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 77.  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 77. 32  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 75. 33  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 79. 34  Wekwerth, 79. 35  We would rehearse Eilif scenes one day and Yvette scenes the next, etc., so the actors weren’t called every night. 30 31

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Brecht’s use of montage was particularly pronounced in Mother Courage, where Brecht created montage within scenes, creating an aspect of complex seeing by dividing the stage into separate moments playing out simultaneously. Maarten van Dijk points out the enjoyment of “discovering the many layers of activity and subtextuality,”36 within scenes of action which allow the audience more than one focal point. In Scene 1, Mother Courage sells a belt buckle to the Sergeant on one part of the stage, while the Recruiter leads Eilif away on the other. In Scene 2, the Cook and Mother Courage sit in the kitchen preparing the General’s meal while the General celebrates Eilif’s feat of courage in his tent. In Scene 3, the Cook, the Chaplain, and Courage discuss the war behind the wagon while Kattrin tries on Yvette’s hat and shoes in front of it. In Scene 5, Courage stubbornly resists the calls for material for bandages while the wounded farmers are being treated. And so on. These juxtaposed events are equally significant and call for the audience’s divided attention. In Theaterarbeit, Brecht’s practice of taking a piece apart is applied specifically to Mother Courage: “But every scene is divided up into a series of incidents. Brecht directs as if it were possible to take any of these minor incidents out of the play and act it for itself alone.”37 For example in Scene 8, when the Old Woman and Young Man appear before Courage to sell their mattress, it is important for the audience to know, though the Figures have parted with many of their possessions, this item is particularly difficult to sell, being the last they have.38 The decision to sell it has been made offstage, but the remaining reluctance to hand it over is still present. The essay in Theaterarbeit describes how these Figures behave before and after peace has broken out.39 Couragemodell 1949 is full of such details. As David Richard Jones notes, “Of the 103 specific notes in the model book of Mother Courage, more than 10 percent are entitled ‘Detail,’ and many more might as well be.”40 Brecht promoted realism rather than naturalism in the theatre. The former was a selective reality, a screening of details for the most pertinent, what the Berliner Ensemble called, “the representation of typical people 36  Maarten van Dijk, “Blocking Brecht,” in Pia Kleber and Colin Visser, ed., Re-Interpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film (Cambridge: The University Press, 1992), 127. 37  “Bertolt Brecht’s Stage Direction,” in BOP 227. 38  BOP 227. 39  BOP 227. 40  Jones, Great Directors, 87.

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under typical circumstances,” while the latter was, as humorously and dismissively defined in Theaterarbeit, “an artistic direction that strives for the most painstaking accuracy in the reproduction of natural appearances but that often smothers any meaningful connections by pedantically accumulating arbitrary details.”41 The realistic approach would focus on specific points that would bring out the gestic incidents, and focus the spectator on them, while the naturalistic could overwhelm the audience with too much sensory information, a wealth of unnecessary detritus that, although approximating the material to be found in natural environments, would also hide what was essential. This was one of the reasons the production team had to be so careful. Nothing could be taken for granted, as anything could be a disruptive sign. They had to eliminate the unnecessary to bring out the essential. One key to rehearsing in this way is to encourage the actors to look at the play dramaturgically, using the Fabel as their guide and steering them away from a tendency to create effects. This can be accomplished by simply taking more time, and Brecht insisted the rehearsals “be slow, if only to make it possible to work out details.”42 One of Brecht’s favorite sayings was, “The devil is in the details.”43 It guided him away from decorative but useless designs, organic but unnecessary movements, thrilling but ineffective displays of temperament. Brecht constantly looked to answer the question, “How could actors make a detailed point regarding human behavior so that it would become apparent or visible on stage?”44 For example, time can be taken to work out exactly how the fortune-­ telling section of Scene 1 is accomplished. Is Courage leaving the drawing of the slips to chance? Is she manipulating the results? If the latter, does she palm the blank slip so only the marked slip is available to the Sergeant? Does she mark all slips with x’s when no one is looking before her children each draw one? She gives the impression of being surprised when each child draws a black mark. At the same time, her performance is supposed 41  Translations by David Barnett in his article, “Undogmatic Marxism: Brecht Rehearses at the Berliner Ensemble.” Edinburgh German Yearbook 5: Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity, eds. Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (New York: Camden House, 2011), 29. 42  BOP 199. 43  Carl Weber, “Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble,” 183. 44  Kristopher Imbrigotta, “Couragemodell: Detail and Arrangement of a Model Book,” in David Barnett, Bertolt Brecht: Critical and Primary Sources Volume 3 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 86.

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to serve as a warning that the way they think will determine their fate. The actor should be allowed to try several possibilities. Once we decided she was predetermining the results, we worked out the sleight of hand necessary for Courage to fool her audience, and ours.45 In Scene 10, the actor playing Kattrin has to decide what her attitude is when leaving her mother. Regret, sadness, and anger are all natural reactions which she can try. She is, after all, disappointed in her mother’s about face. After Courage has tried to convince her to give up the business and follow the Cook, she could see her mother’s decision as a betrayal. However, Brecht gives us a clue when, just before she strikes out on her own, he has Kattrin create a goodbye message for Courage and the Cook, placing a pair of the Cook’s pants face down on Courage’s skirt.46 It is a wicked moment, a suggestion her mother and Cook are only together for sexual reasons. We took this as a sign of bitterness but pragmatism: she couldn’t compete with that. Josylynn Reid as Kattrin kept a straight face, letting the symbolic gesture speak for itself.47

Brecht and Stanislavsky in Relation to Details This search for the telling detail was shared by Brecht and his artistic rival, Konstantin Stanislavsky. Brecht’s essay, “Some of the Things That Can Be Learnt from Stanislavski,” shows how Brecht aligns with the Russian master in a number of ways.48 Brecht’s Point 4 is applicable here: “Importance of the line of action and detail,” in which Stanislavski’s productions contained “a wealth of subtly elaborated detail,” one of the tenets of Brecht’s working method.49 Both artists could spend months in rehearsal in a constant search for clearer and clearer meaning through observation of human behavior which was selectively displayed onstage. 45  We discovered a flaw in our scheme during the first performance. See Chap. 10. In the 1957 film, Weigel draws an x on the other slip so quickly, the Sergeant doesn’t notice. Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder at the Berliner Ensemble made by Deutscher Fernsehefunk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWz07HAzKBI. 46  This is usually done over part of the wagon so the audience can see it. 47  In 1949, Angelika Hurwicz’s Kattrin betrayed her feelings to the spectators by “stifling an uncanny, malignant giggle by raising her hand to her mouth before sneaking away” this after a “look of resentment.” Brecht: Collected Plays: Five, 313. The danger of no reaction is the possibility that the audience won’t understand Kattrin’s intent with the clothing. 48  BOT 277–279. 49  BOT 278.

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Stanislavsky used his own deep knowledge of human behavior to make skilled suggestions to the actors. In Stanislavski in Rehearsal: The Final Years, a book by Vasili Osipovich Toporkov, the actor describes how Stanislavsky took him carefully through the examination of different roles by reminding him what activities would be a natural consequence of his duties as a character in a scene.50 Brecht read this book in German translation and considered it “my best source of information on Stanislavsky’s way of working.”51 This is not to say he agreed with everything he read,52 but it revealed points of contact between them, including an emphasis on the specific and telling matter in the world of the play, whether historical or contemporary. It is noted that Stanislavsky seems to stress the emotional behavior of this characters more than Brecht does. Frederick Jameson points out in Brecht and Method that it is not that emotion doesn’t exist within the Figure but that gestus reveals “the private emotion to be socially and economically functional,” so “the only too familiar everyday world of the personal feelings and reactions is both estranged and explained by equally familiar social and economic, collective, motives which, however, have not hitherto been identified in this context.”53 This speaks again to the canard that Brecht wanted an unemotional performance from his actors; feelings necessarily were a result of conditions in society.54 50  For example, when Toporkov played Vanechka in The Embezzlers, Stanislavsky suggested he prepare for his day as a cashier. Before the scene began, he sharpened his pencils and tidied his desk. Vasili Toporkov, Stanislavski in Rehearsal, trans. Jean Benedetti (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014) 16–18. 51  Bertolt Brecht, Letters: 1913–1956, Ralph Manheim, trans., John Willett, ed. (London: Methuen, 1990), 543. Brecht did not read the book until 1955. In the meantime, in his essay, “Some of the Things That Can Be Learnt from Stanislavsky,” he lauded Stanislavsky’s emphasis on observation: “Nothing that is not taken from an actor’s observation, or confirmed by observation, is fit to be observed by the audience.” BOT, 278. 52  A copy in Brecht’s library of the German edition of Toporkov’s book contains two notes, written by Brecht in pencil, both short comments on Stanislavsky’s emphasis on Naturalism as opposed to realism. “In Naturalism, “Showing” must be completely annihilated!“ and “Naturalism advanced extracted a V-effekt, that it/the acting avoids.” See, W.  Toporkov, K.S. Stanislawski bei der Probe (Berlin: Herschelverlag, 1952), Pages 31 and 34. Corrections by Brecht, translation by the author. I am indebted to the Brecht Archive for giving me access to this book. 53  Frederick Jameson, Brecht and Method (New York: Verso, 1998), 104. 54  See David Barnett, “Brecht as Corrector: Directing Away from Conventional Theatre,” in The Great European Stage Directors Volume 2: Meyerhold, Piscator, Brecht (London: Methuen Drama, 2019), 155.

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Like Stanislavsky, Brecht was fascinated by human behavior. He stressed observation as a tool for performance and as a constant source of study for the actor. About the Danish workers Ruth Berlau directed in his play The Mother in 1934, Brecht wrote a poem stressing that observation was the most important of the arts in acting.55 As Werner Mittenzwei articulated on the occasion of Brecht’s 75th birthday, no detail was too small if it revealed a Figure’s contradictions and the social forces that acted on it: He was not satisfied with “characteristics” as the random psychological decoration of a figure. He demanded the artistic creation of complicated reactions and movements of the individual produced by the movements of social forces, and this in the smallest detail, gesture, nuance. No amount of work, no amount of observation was too much for him in catching the individual in the multiplicity of his relationships.56

Brecht, who would often think through his ideas in poetic form, listed further behaviors that interested him as a playwright, a curiosity about the people around him that informed his work, in his poem, “Song of the Playwright.”57 Like those two germinal figures, I probed every decision we made about the acting of a scene. With the 2015 actors I never ran through entire scenes at first but stopped and started, mining every moment for its details, and working on each separate focal point individually. It might be thought we would not have the necessary time to practice in this way, but in fact, within the six weeks of rehearsal we came to many agreements about the minutiae of each moment.58 At the BE, the atomization of the scenes became greater and greater. Experimenting with various solutions

55  “Speech to the Danish Working-Class Actors on the Art of Observation,” Bertolt Brecht, Poems: 1913–1956, John Willett and Ralph Manheim, eds. (London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., 1976) 233–238. This poem is published in Willett and Manheim’s collection, not in the new Collected Poems, ed. by Kuhn and Constantine. 56  Werner Mittenzwei, “Brecht 1973—Speech on his 75th Birthday,” Brecht As They Knew Him, Hubert Witt, ed., John Peet, trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1974), 238. 57  “Song of the playwright,” Brecht: The Collected Poems, 556–557. 58  The rehearsal period for the 1949 BE production was approximately five weeks. Only later, when the BE could keep popular productions in the repertoire did the BE have the luxury of time: their production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle was rehearsed on and off for eight months. Carl Weber makes this point in Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 57.

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was an enjoyable process that turned the actors’ critical lens on specific problems to be solved: how an actor should fall off a table, for example.59 As Brecht noted, “[The rehearsal director] does not understand rehearsing as the repeated drilling of something that is set in his head from the outset. Instead he understands it as trying something out.”60 I wondered if the actors might resent the constant experimentation, but in fact, they embraced it and discovered the value in considering alternatives to initial ideas. Though I was new to this process, and I worried my study of the play would prevent me from looking at it naively, the actors encouraged me to “play Brecht,” as they called it, to question everything. They understood, as Brecht put it, “The correct solution can only be one among the many possible, if there is a correct one to be had.”61 One example was the way I dealt with the beginnings of scenes. These took up extra time because they established so clearly what was to come. Scene 3 begins in the middle of a conversation, the Quartermaster having offered his illegal contraband to Courage for two guilders followed by an unenthusiastic response from her. Courage is folding clothes with Kattrin, so she is able to portray disinterest. Swiss Cheese is watching the transaction unfold. He works for the Quartermaster, so he either waits patiently for the business proposition to proceed or assesses the implications of the sale of bullets for wine. Yvette has taken up a position on the ground and is drinking.62 She seems to have given up on keeping her clothes clean. She either has drunk most of the bottle or is pacing herself with little sips. She is either diseased or the victim of a rumor. If she does have a sexually transmitted disease, it must affect her physically in some way. The attitude towards her by the men in the scene, the Quartermaster, Swiss Cheese, and the Chaplain, is also important. The Quartermaster is either a former customer or not, knows of her disease or doesn’t. The Chaplain seems to be attracted to any number of women in the play. His behavior in this

59  Carl Weber writes of attending a BE rehearsal for the first time, thinking the actors were taking a break, “with a lot of laughing and a lot more horseplay,” as one actor practiced falling off a table. Weber, “Brecht as Director,” 103. 60  “The Attitude of the Rehearsal Director (in the Inductive Process),” BOT 212, italics are Brecht’s. 61  BOT 212. This last was a reminder to me that I should avoid my tendency to try an idea ad nauseum, hoping that it would finally work, when it would be better to reject it and move on. 62  In our production, at least.

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scene hides his feelings towards Yvette and Kattrin or doesn’t. All of these points and more can be considered before the dialogue begins. Slowing down also meant asking the actors to isolate each sentence and phrase, rather than speaking the words as all one thought. In this way, they discovered further moments that contributed to a deeper understanding of the behavior in the scene. Brecht asked his actors to use this strategy in rehearsal: [T]hey nearly always run a whole sequence of sentences together and give a common expression to them. But with the kind of drama under consideration it is essential that each separate sentence should be treated for its underlying social gesture.63

For example, in Scene 2 the General tells Eilif: “Have another, son, a lip-­ smacking Falernian, only one or maybe two kegs left, but I don’t begrudge my best for my true believers.”64 Within this one sentence, the General acts the host; establishes a closer relation with Eilif, his “son”; points out the quality of the wine, the Falerian; realizes he may be wasting what little he has left; then becomes munificent; then explains it is because Eilif has shown loyalty to the cause. Once the actor realizes the implications of the different bits of information in isolation, he can play them fluently, at full speed. His intentions, as defined by Stanislavsky, are also revealed through what he really wants, in this case to encourage Eilif to further feats of daring.65 When we worked from moment to moment, we would concentrate on the ways the Figures related to each other, their use of status/Haltungen or the comments they made on the Figures they were playing. For example, the actor playing Eilif, Zachary Haile, was an educated, thoughtful man. As a point of departure, he had to embrace those aspects of Eilif different from himself; Eilif was quick to anger and less articulate, a perfect mark for the Recruiter. This self-awareness allowed Haile to embrace Eilif’s negative qualities and comment on them to exemplify the effects of war on his Figure. Meanwhile, though the one daughter, Kattrin, was 63  “Building Up a Part (Inductive Method)” from “Notes on Roundheads and Pointed Heads,” in Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays: Four, eds. Tom Kuhn and John Willett (London: Methuen Drama, 2004), 306–307. 64  Kushner, Mother Courage, 22. 65  A discussion of Stanislavsky’s emphasis on intention, or the wants of the character, can be found in Chap. 8.

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minimized by her mother and used as a menial to do basic tasks such as washing or picking up items from town, the actor, Josylynn Reid, let slip moments of self-possession, revealing her Figure used low status as a mask to hide her intelligence. Kelsey Fisher-Waits, playing Courage, while disagreeing with many of her Figure’s actions, fully committed to them, highlighting those sides of Courage that made her less attractive to the audience, including her stubborn denial of her own role in her misfortunes. Fisher-Waits commented some years later, I’ve never before, and I’ve never since, had a director that allowed us to use specificity not as something to intimidate but rather to really home in on what it is we want an audience to leave talking about; that it wasn’t about our interpretation, it was about, ‘What is the interpretation that is going to be taken away [by the audience].’66

Contradictions Within the Figure Just as the production team had used contradiction as a means to analyze the play’s text, so the actors and I looked for those moments of contradiction within the Figures that told us how the social environment affected each of them. Manfred Wekwerth reminded us how this would reveal the Fabel to the spectator: “[T]he rule of ‘one-thing-after-another’ offers actors an excellent way of ‘opening up’ contradictions that are interleaved in a play’s Fabel (and thus hidden).”67 As we discovered by working on the Fabel, Mother Courage was an excellent choice for pursuing this objective, as Brecht the playwright had built in these contradictions himself. These needed to be considered and embodied by the performers. Manfred Wekwerth compared Brecht’s view of the Figure with the character created by an actor steeped in the Stanislavsky System. For Wekwerth, the danger was that the System encouraged the actor to predetermine the overall motive for a role and limited the ways the character could be played: “Once the character (or as it is called today: the ‘personality structure’) has been ‘fixed,’ it is used to explain and justify everything that the character does and thus to create the ‘overarching curve.’”68  Fisher-Waits interview with the author.  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 79. 68  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 76. 66 67

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Brecht rejected the idea of a predetermined character, preferring to let the actor in rehearsal encounter each new event to see how the Figure responded to it. He did not believe this would confuse the spectator: “The character’s unity is in no way upset by exactly reproducing their contradictory behavior; it is only in their development that they really come to life.”69 The Figure’s behavior, being variable, was more realistic. “The unity of the character is in fact formed by the way in which its individual characteristics contradict one another.”70 Such variation was also a form of Verfremdung, as spectators were startled by the Figure’s contradictory reactions.

Figures Large and Small Though Brecht created parts in Mother Courage that simply realize a function (such as farmers and soldiers), they can still show individuality through realistic behavior, and it benefited the production team to examine every role in terms of how it might affect the overall meaning of the scene. Brecht felt all Figures were vital to the story, and he was known to cast important actors in smaller roles. While Helene Weigel played Anna Fierling in Mother Courage, she also played the farmer’s wife in Katzgraben and the Governor’s wife in The Caucasian Chalk Circle; she called proper attention to all of them through her presence as well as her knowledge and display of human behavior. Certainly, in the case of students performing in the play, we wanted to stress the importance that each brought to their portrayals as a means to instruct the audience and compel them to consider the Figures’ actions as well as the implication of those actions for society. We were not dealing with a star system in which students vied for the audience’s attention; in an educational system, we were creating an ensemble of actors who supported each other for the good of the production. Brecht’s use of the Regimental Secretary in Scene 6 gave the actor at the BE a specific attitude and mission: he would observe those present to make sure they paid the fallen Tilly proper respect, with the implication that he would report them if they did not. When Courage begins to speak of the Field Marshall, he is afraid that she is making fun of him. However, “He sits down again in disappointment because Courage has not said anything demonstrably  Brecht, Collected Plays: Four, 307.  “Short Organon for the Theatre,” in BOT 245.

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incriminating.”71 The actor playing our Regimental Secretary, showed that even an officer, rather than continuing to blindly pay obeisance to his commander, showed no loyalty to his superiors once they were dead, an even more cynical view of the army towards those who led them. Playing contradiction meant the onus was no longer on us to reconcile the decisions of a Figure in one scene with their decisions in another. Swiss Cheese could shrink away from the Recruiter and Sergeant in Scene 1 and still perform the courageous act of denying his family in Scene 3. In the same scene, Yvette could go from being a depressed, diseased camp follower to a shrewd businesswoman who drives a hard bargain for Courage’s wagon.72 In Scene 2, Eilif could be reminded by the General that he fights for God, while in Scene 8, some six years later, Eilif could reject any faith he might have had and heap scorn on the Chaplain who offers to accompany him to his execution. And no character was more contradictory from scene to scene than Anna Fierling. Courage could be both stingy with her merchandise and give a cloak to the Chaplain to hide his Protestant garb. She could needle and harass her daughter and yet choose her over a man who offered her a better way of life. She could curse the war in one scene and praise it in the next. Each of these was an appropriate response for the Figure at the time to those particular circumstances.

The “Not…But” of the Figures As he wrote Mother Courage, Brecht presented his Figures with dilemmas that required them to make decisions; he then showed them making different choices than the audience had expected. Just as the idea of “Not…but” could be used to discover contradiction in the Fabel, in particular it became an important method for revealing contradiction through performance. Brecht uses “Not…but” both in terms of the actors and the text. In one sense, the actors externalize alternative choices by, for example, beginning to follow them but then reversing themselves. In another, Brecht implies alternative choices for the Figure are possible because the ones we see onstage do not follow from previous behavior, some of which takes place before the play begins. 71  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 306. Here the Regimental secretary continues to obey his training despite the fact the commander is no longer alive to see it. 72  Scene 3 is unusual in that time passes within it, creating three distinct sections.

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In Scene 1, The canteen wagon is not rendered inoperable because of the death of her horse but powered by the sons she uses as drayhorses. The business of Mother Courage is not protected by her connections to the Second Finnish Regiment but two of her employees, her sons, may be recruited into the army. In Scene 3, when the camp is attacked, the Chaplain does not become a martyr and allow himself to be captured but hides his faith under a cloak. In Scene 9, the Cook does not offer Kattrin a job in his inn but discourages her mother from bringing her to Utrecht. Each of these decisions are meant to surprise the spectator, who would reflect, Brecht hoped, on the difficult decisions the Figures had to make, thus showing the way the environment constrains the individual. Sometimes the spectator thinks the Figure will act in one way when in fact they will fail to act. In Scene 12, actor Helene Weigel as Mother Courage started to give the farmers all of the coins she had in her purse to bury her daughter, but then she withheld a coin for herself. Even the wisp of a decision, followed by the actual course of action, is a way of showing two alternatives—the latter better revealing what the Figure considered in that moment: a woman who wanted to give her daughter a decent burial, but then thought of her own economic future. In Scene 5, one soldier questions why the citizens of Magdeburg didn’t convert to Catholicism in order to avoid the siege of their town. But another soldier reminds him the farmers were actually Catholics, pointing out that when a bombardment takes place, the cannon balls don’t discriminate. Everyone is destroyed, regardless of their beliefs, suggesting again the war isn’t about separating the heathens from the believers but reminding the modern audience of the innocent casualties that always result from the relentless quest for power. The Catholics who are being defended are not saved but suffer as well. Our soldier, when informed of the faith of the casualties, reacted matter-of-factly rather than showing surprise. He already knew the war of religion was a sham.

Epic Theatre Acting: Playing the Double Act Developing the skill of playing two perspectives is not easy and has to be carefully built up. Performing both sides of the “Not…But” one at a time can be a great aid in rehearsal, as actors begin by confronting the choices their Figures face as described in the text and imagining the choice they do not ultimately make. In this way, the actors are not identifying with the Figures but disagreeing with them or questioning their motives. Brecht

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suggests one way this happens: in the initial reading of the script, the actors are disappointed or frustrated or angry with the Figures who have made unfortunate choices. He writes, “[T]he actor must thoroughly commit to memory the surprises he experienced in his own attitude of discovery and relearning during the study of the Figure.”73 If the actors keep in mind the best possible outcome for the Figures, if they imagine a future in which the Figure succeeds, in which society changes because people like the Figure reject entrenched ideas and find ways to improve, they will find it easier to imagine the “Not…but.” This requires a careful study of the Figure’s environment to reveal contradictions or the societal constraints under which the Figure operates. The actors should concentrate on uncovering what ever-thus is at work that promotes the Figure’s inability to see or act beyond society’s limits. Once these discoveries are made, the actor must make visible the alternative choice while continuing to play the Figure’s choice (as prescribed by the playwright). Several techniques are helpful. The actor might: • Hesitate before making the wrong choice, which signals they, in fact, have considered another. Courage’s hesitation in Scene 3, created by Brecht, shows what an impossible situation she is in, when Swiss Cheese is held for the ransom of 200 guilders. She has three chances to act. At first, she has a clever answer: she will loan the wagon to Yvette for 200 guilders and pay her back once she recovers Swiss Cheese and the cashbox. But then she finds out her son has confessed under torture to have thrown the cashbox in the river so no one will have it. Can she afford to ask for less, as the Chaplain suggested? She asks Yvette to offer 120 guilders, as 80 guilders will serve as seed money for a new business, but though Yvette decides to stick with the offer of 150, the soldiers decisively turn it down. They are in a hurry, as they don’t want to be caught by their unit doing underhanded business. Courage must give the whole 200. She is now out of options; she will lose either her living or her child. • Start to make a different (better) choice but ultimately accept the Figure’s choice. When Eilif arrives to seek solace from his mother, or to say goodbye to her one last time before he is executed, she isn’t there, so he decides not to leave her a message with a clear explana-

 “On the Gradual Approach to the Study and Construction of the Figure,” BOT 199.

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tion of what has happened.74 The actor playing Eilif in 2015 started to say something more personal but, realizing who surrounded him, avoided lowering himself through sentimentality and spared his mother the knowledge of his future. His response was blunt—and, at any rate, was not delivered. • Play both choices by speaking the text to suggest one decision while allowing the Figure’s stage business/gestus to furnish another; Helene Weigel, playing Mother Courage in Scene 6, lamented the scarring of her daughter while measuring the quality of the goods Kattrin had saved through her sacrifice. Fisher-Waits carefully and expertly wound the bandage around Kattrin’s eye, putting on the attitude of a doctor and pretending the wound wouldn’t scar while knowing it would, a form of infantilizing similar to her application of soot on her daughter’s face in Scene 3. • Alternate between the two choices so spectators see one choice and the Figures on stage see the other: the “but” is what the Figures onstage see, the acting of the character’s view, while the “Not,” is what the audience sees, the actor’s view of the Figure. In Scene 8, the Cook in 2015 revealed to spectators his downtrodden attitude, while trying to convince Courage he was a worthy partner for her enterprise, amusing and lively. In each case, he was displaying alternative attitudes to Courage and the audience, so the spectators might see his good humor was a false front, a contradiction of what he was actually feeling. The way Randall Rapstine as the Cook in 2015 physically drooped after Courage left the stage revealed the effort it took to maintain the façade. Being both Figure and critical actor simultaneously may be difficult for many performers. After all, the double nature of being both inside a role embodying it while also being outside, judging and commenting on it, may seem counterintuitive to someone who has been trained in Stanislavsky’s System. Theatre director Joseph Chaikin, explaining the effect after seeing performances by Ekkehard Schall, Brecht’s son-in-law and a leading actor of the BE, invoked an individual from the Cold War: “I never believe [Schall] is the character by name. Nor do I believe that he

74  Eilif: “Tell her it was different. Tell her it was the same. Or don’t tell her anything.” Kushner, Mother Courage, 82.

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is ‘playing himself.’ He performs like a double agent who has infiltrated the two worlds.”75 This double agent must still display realistic and identifiable behavior. Brecht aided actors through his writing even when adapting the plays of others. He would sometimes have one Figure imitate another while critiquing them, as a way to show how this works on stage. In Brecht’s adaptation of Moliere’s Don Juan, Sganarelle’s exposition in Scene 1 serves this purpose as he imitates the attributes of his master, Don Juan, with the critical eye only a man’s servant would have. Peter W.  Ferran wrote of Sganarelle: “His initial behavior, in which he expropriates the aristocracy’s studied phraseology, posed stances, and ostentatious use of the indispensable snuff, may be perceived both as exaggerated self-portraiture and as imitative ridiculing of established nobility.”76 According to Ferran, Sganarelle “must be perceived as behaviorally ‘quoting’ his master, Don Juan.”77 It is a device used throughout the play to make an important social and historical point: “the artificial and practiced behavior of the aristocracy is played.”78 In Scene 3, when Josylynn Reid as Kattrin put on Yvette’s abandoned shoes, at first she took on a suggestive walk, a strut she had obviously seen stereotypically displayed before. The comment on Yvette’s profession wasn’t Kattrin’s but Reid’s. However, as Kattrin continued to admire herself, Reid began to seem less jaded, not cheap but decorous. In a sense, the actor was suggesting the behavior, done properly, could have made Yvette seem more like a lady. Kattrin has romanticized Yvette’s profession, ignoring its unfortunate side. This is a sad comment on her desire to be wanted rather than the consequences of that desire. She still doesn’t realize she doesn’t need the trappings of a whore to be attractive to men. Mistakes Are Instructive Finally, mistakes in rehearsals can be illuminating. The actor might misplay the concept. There might be a lack of clarity in showing the “Not…but,” 75  Peter Thomson, “Brecht and Actor Training: On Whose Behalf Do We Act?,” in Actor Training, ed. Alison Hodge (New York: Routledge, 2010), 106. 76  Peter W.  Ferran, “Molière’s Dom Juan Adapted for Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble,” in Molière Today 2, Contemporary Theatre Review, ed. Michael Spingler (London: Routledge, 1997), 27. 77  Ferran, 27. 78  Ferran, 27. Emphasis Ferran’s.

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or the alternative choice might not uncover contradiction but remain synonymous with the original choice, or the alternative choice might be pointedly psychological rather than sociological. These can be corrected. The actors playing the farmers in Scene 12 at first let their feelings of guilt for Kattrin’s death override any attitude they had towards her mother. They took some responsibility as characters for allowing Kattrin to call attention to herself rather than stopping her from drumming, especially as they equated her being mute with simplemindedness. However, when Courage returns in Scene 12 to find her daughter dead, it is important the actors understand the farmers do not sympathize with Courage at all but blame her for what has happened, looking upon her with disapproval as she sings to the body and covers it with a blanket.79 Laura Bradley refers to this scene as an example of the playwright using secondary Figures to display a critical attitude for the audience to emulate. In “Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship,” Bradley points out how Brecht created roles for minor characters who act as onstage spectators, using their Figures to present the “Not…but” by modeling how spectators should disagree with the choices made by the protagonists. In a scene of mourning for Kattrin, a Figure with whom the audience sympathizes, the farmers are noticeably “hostile,” and “the reactions of the on-stage audience are designed to disrupt the theatre audience’s identification with [Mother] Courage.”80

The Street Scene One of the most difficult concepts to convey to the student actors, one even Brecht’s own actors had difficulty with, was the ability to comment on, more than incarnate, the character. In order to approximate the kind of critical distance Brecht aimed for, he suggested a scene on stage should be likened to an incident on the street where the performance is an eyewitness account. Brecht referred to this process in an essay called “The Street Scene.”81 In “The Street Scene,” Brecht imagines an auto accident in which a car has hit a pedestrian. The eyewitness relates the story of the accident, 79  Kushner suggests a sheet to wrap the body in, but we wanted Courage to avoid any sign of her daughter’s condition. 80  Bradley, “Training the Audience, 1042. 81  See “The Street Scene” in BOT 176–183.

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demonstrating what the participants did and said, but he is not trying to be anyone, is not taking on their voices or physical attributes. Brecht joked that, in such a case, those watching would be amazed by the teller’s ability to imitate other people, defeating the purpose of the reenactment. Instead, Brecht believed the demonstrator should portray the participants through their actions so the audience could come to their own conclusions.82 Brecht mentioned that comparing a theatre performance to a street demonstration should, on the surface, seem strange. However, it is this very Verfremdungseffekt that focuses all our attention on the incident. Whether reporting as a witness or serving as a bystander, all participants are able to take sides in an argument. The driver is guilty or innocent; the witness has decided what to report to sway the others in a positive or negative direction. The bystanders are allowed to come to their own conclusions or even question the witness’s report. In the same way, it is up to spectators to consider the implications of a Figure’s actions within a play. Such a performance/demonstration allows for interruption, both by spectators and by the actors themselves. On the street, Brecht observed, the demonstrator expects support and cooperation from spectators. The witness doesn’t mind being stopped by the crowd to be corrected on the details of the incident. These interruptions don’t keep the witness from picking up where he left off. Nor is the witness prevented from pausing in his narrative to add his own commentary as a form of literarization. Verfremdung is also possible if the demonstrator is corrected in some details, so the witness must pay special attention to specifics in the re-­ telling. While the audience may not, out of sense of theatre etiquette, interrupt the performance, they may still mentally leave the environment in which they have been absorbed and begin to question the evidence before them of the rightness of various Figures’ actions.

The Street Scene in Practice Carl Weber felt he had found a true example of Brechtian acting when he watched Anna Deavere Smith’s 1992 performance in Fires in the Mirror: “I would claim that Smith’s work comes closer to the concept of performance Brecht had in mind when he wrote ‘The Street Scene’ than that of any other actor I have seen, with the exception perhaps of Helene

 BOT 179.

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Weigel.”83 As both Weber and Smith were teaching at Stanford at the time, he interviewed her for the Brecht Yearbook to delve into her process and its effects. She admitted, “I play people who are clearly not me, who I could never be and would never portray in a realistic drama.”84 Weber described the effect to Smith: “While I see the person fully, at the same time I still see you as the actress presenting the person and having an opinion about it.”85 How did she accomplish this? Weber told Smith: “You seem to have distilled the essence of their behavior pattern, of their personal gestus, and brought that on stage.”86 Her response was that she considered this “not identification but illumination.”87 By examining Deavere Smith’s performance in the film of her play Fires in the Mirror, our contemporary actors could see how they could play without complete immersion—that parts of themselves, commenting on their Figures, would still be apparent.

A False Exercise Still, the actors in the Mother Courage of 2015 did not abandon their previous training altogether to reach the cool, dispassionate attitude Brecht might have preferred. Fisher, in particular, had the ability to immerse herself in the feelings of the role rather easily, which made it harder for her to suppress her natural instincts to play the Figure. But neither did Brecht’s actors at the BE manage this feat: “Nonetheless, the central aim of the epic theatre was not achieved. Much was shown, but the element of active showing was ultimately absent.”88 When showing was, by accident, displayed, it was part of a phase in the production process rather than its ultimate aim. It appeared clearly in a few rehearsals devoted to recasting: “Here the actors ‘marked,’ that is, they simply showed the new members of the cast certain positions and tones, and the whole took on a wonderfully relaxed, effortless, and unobtrusive quality that stimulates the

83  Carl Weber, “Brecht’s ‘Street Scene’—On Broadway of All Places? A Conversation with Anna Deavere Smith,” in Brecht Then and Now, ed. John Willett (Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 1995), 53. 84  Weber, “Brecht’s Street Scene,” 55. 85  Weber, “Brecht’s Street Scene,” 57. 86  Weber, “Brecht’s Street Scene,” 59. 87  Weber, “Brecht’s Street Scene,” 59. 88  BOP 221.

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spectator to think and feel for himself.”89 At the same time, Brecht knew his theatre was still effective without realizing his ideas completely. His famous production of Mother Courage was an important step in the plan to share his methods with others; it was successful without being entirely epic.90 The introduction of a Brechtian approach to the acting of the roles did not exclude a recourse to Stanislavsky-based methods. It was important for the actors to know how the characters were feeling even if, ultimately, they used this knowledge to understand the thinking that went into the decisions the Figure’s made, especially those decisions with which they disagreed. For example, Kelsey Fisher understood Courage was suppressing her grief at the death of Kattrin through denial: if Fisher gave in to tears at that point, it would be difficult to convey the notion Courage took no responsibility for the death of her daughter.91 This would undermine the point the Fabel hoped to convey. Also, Figures were not without feelings, and these had to be produced for the sake of the narrative. Courage had to be devastated by Swiss Cheese’s death, even if she could only survive by suppressing these feelings when in the presence of the soldiers. And Courage had to really be angry about the war at the end of Scene 6 in order for her joy at profiting from the war at the beginning of Scene 7 to serve as a contradiction and contrast. In the next chapter, the combination of the two different approaches to acting will be explained and examples of how this was achieved will be discussed in some detail. The methods of Brecht and Stanislavsky, as they were combined in 2015, were not anathema to each other.

 BOP 221–222.  BOP 222. 91  Still, it was difficult for the actor to turn these feelings off. 89 90

CHAPTER 8

Rehearsing the Actors III: Playing the Events

Let us clarify, refine and complete our own [methods] by studying the great innovator of the theatre: Stanislavsky!1 (Bertolt Brecht, “Short Organon for the Theatre”)

This chapter proposes that, by experimenting with theatre students on less well-known means of character/Figure construction, as delineated by Brecht, while pairing it with their own prior experience with Stanislavsky-­ based actor training, they can discover the utility of both, especially as it concerns creating theatre for social change. Here, acting in Mother Courage is examined using key concepts from both viewpoints, and further strategies are suggested for contemporary actors who do not wish to abandon their previous training but to test Brecht’s work in light of it. Brecht himself realized the combination of the two forms, and the interesting tension it created, benefited contemporary actors when realizing a role.2 Brecht’s primary concern was the effect his theatre could have on the spectator, a theatre which encouraged skepticism about the ever-thuses presented on the stage as opposed to engaging the audience’s empathy with the characters. History had shown Brecht the German people could be manipulated by an appeal to their emotions for evil ends, for example through the spectacle of demonstrations created by the Third Reich, and 1 2

 BOT 283.  BOT 257.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_8

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catharsis could dampen the feelings that might lead the audience to consider the injustice of both the Figures onstage and in their own lives. In his writings, he offered a number of instances where the audience became sympathetic to a view of life which, in other circumstances they would reject, for example, cheering for the British soldiers in the film Gunga Din while ignoring the subjugation of the Indian population by the British Raj.3 Performance is a powerful influence on those who experience it: “There is no play and no theatrical performance that does not in some way or other affect the dispositions and conceptions of the audience.”4 In such cases as Gunga Din, because the film falsely depicts the true nature of British and Indian relations, it “contradicts true experience and spreads misconceptions ….”5 To suggest Brecht requires his actors to use his ways of working to the exclusion of the Stanislavsky System is a false exercise, as Brecht himself takes pains to explain in his essays on Konstantin Stanislavsky, which he wrote in response to the Stanislavsky conference held in East Berlin in 1953.6 As one example, when Figures are displayed to the spectators in order to be examined, this does not mean, at the same time, that feeling is missing from those Figures. They are human beings, after all, and emotional behavior is part of the human condition. Socio-economic, ideological forces can lead to psychological responses. For instance, from an economic view, a Figure who is poor can despair at pulling themselves out of a financial hole. Or a Figure may be traumatized by an ideological system that marginalizes them. While Brecht emphasized the “the actor’s (social) criticism of the figure,” at the same time, he acknowledged the facets of the character that also had to be played, from the character’s view: “The opinions, passions, experiences, interests of the character are not of course those of the actor, and the latter have to come out in the acting.”7 A method that emphasizes the character’s thoughts and feelings is not rejected but is one part of the process. It is only by adding the actor’s view of the Figure that the construction of the role is a thorough one.  See BOT 209–210.  BOT 210. 5  BOT 210. 6   See “Some Things That Can Be Learnt from Stanislavsky,” “On Stanislavsky,” “Stanislavsky Studies [3], and “A Few Thoughts on the Stanislavsky Conference,” BOT 277–283. 7  Brecht, Journals, 452. 3 4

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Nor does Brecht try to prevent the spectator from responding emotionally; Brecht encouraged the spectator’s passion for change, the anger at the behavior of certain conditions, and disappointment at the Figures’ responses to them. Rather than considering the Figure’s fate as ineluctable, the spectator, “is supposed to say: ‘This character’s suffering moves me because there is a way out for him.’”8 As he explains in his notes to the play Round Heads and Pointed Heads: “A considerable sacrifice of the spectator’s empathy does not mean sacrificing all right to influence him.”9 Instead, “The representation of human behavior from a social point of view is meant indeed to have a decisive influence on the spectator’s own social behavior,”10 and, in fact, “is bound to release emotional effects.”11

Brecht’s Issue with Stanislavsky Brecht had his reasons for believing identification could be a useful tool for rehearsal if not for performance. Brecht took no issue with the idea that the actor might examine the feelings of the character as a means of identifying with them; however, to identify so completely with the character without comment, i.e., to become advocates for the character’s position in performance so the audience too might identify with it, is to discourage the audience from questioning it. Brecht’s epiphany was, “Art is never without consequences.”12 Therefore, it is just as possible to be caught up in an immoral or unjust situation as a fair and inspiring one. Brecht saw identification as a form of hypnosis in which the actor, by going into a trance, put the audience into a trance as well.13 This trance was one way in which the actor drew spectators towards acquiescence and precluded the need for judgment or criticism. No matter how misguided or inappropriate a protagonist’s decisions were, they could be justified through the actor’s empathy and then excused by the spectator, who would accept the circumstances of the world of the play and see the conditions on the stage with an uncritical eye. Catharsis discourages this critical attitude from happening; in Aristotle’s view, the audience is purged of their emotions, while Brecht wants them  Dickson, Towards Utopia, 248. Brecht’s emphasis.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Four, 309. 10  Brecht, Collected Plays: Four, 309. Author’s emphasis. 11  BOT 210 12  BOT 210 13  For example, BOT 45. 8 9

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to be moved to action because of the unfairness of conditions that resemble their own. A way of pulling the audience from their complacency is for the actors finally to display the Figures in all their contradictory behavior rather than disregarding or brushing aside their negative traits in favor of identification. At the same time, “There is no reason why the actor should not endow his figure with just those emotions that it should have; he himself is not cold, he too develops emotions, but they are not necessarily the same as those of the character.”14 In Berlin in 1928, Brecht was already warning his spectators about the ways in which artifice could be used for nefarious ends when, in one of his most famous works, The Threepenny Opera, he showed how Mr. Peachum, the owner of a criminal syndicate, aroused empathy by giving his beggars props and costumes and directing them in certain attitudes so he could exploit the feelings of the general public for his criminal enterprise. It was a type of performance that exaggerated the plight of the unfortunate through theatrical means.15 To empathize is a form of immersing one’s self in the drama without considering whether the author’s viewpoint is an appropriate one for today—or worse, supports ideas with which, after further reflection, the audience actually disagrees.16 So insidious is the nature of tradition, of accepted practices being woven into the fabric of a play, only a critique of them would reveal their problematic nature.

The Traditional versus the New Through innovative artistic means, Brecht would lead his audience towards a materialist view of the world epitomized by Communism. However, the changes he proposed to use “were only changes within the framework of theatre, and so ‘naturally’ a great many old rules remained completely unchanged.”17 As a man of the theatre, he had learned much from other 14  “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting That Produces a Verfremdung Effect,” BOT 191. Author’s emphasis. 15  I’m indebted to Frederic Jameson for pointing this out in his book, Brecht and Method See particularly pages 93–6. 16  Brecht realized as he watched the adventure epic Gunga Din, that he was reacting in way that was contradictory to his true feelings: “I was amused and touched because this utterly distorted account was an artistic success and considerable resources in talent and ingenuity had been applied in making it.” BOT 209–210. 17  BOP 251.

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important artists, including Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, that was still viable. However, he suffered the sin of omission. He continued to use the basic principles of creating theatre, although he failed to refer to “these unchanged rules,”18 and therefore people who wished to emulate him mistakenly rejected them. Many of these were common sense, practical precepts learned over years of experience and applied both by Stanislavsky and by Brecht to create effective theatre. A modern example I have used in class is the rule of “the important thing comes last.” By tradition, if a line of dialogue and a move (a gesture or a cross to a new position) appear together in the script, the one to be emphasized comes at the end. For example, if the line of the dialogue is “I’m going to kill you,” and the move is to reveal the gun and point it, the actor can speak and move together, but revealing the gun last calls attention to it, while saying the line last explains the reason it appears. Any of these can be effective, and the actor has more than one option to choose from. This is something Brecht seems to have paid attention to, as he discouraged actors from moving and speaking at the same time. Meanwhile, many of Brecht’s actors at the Berliner Ensemble were already trained in the Stanislavsky System. This did not prevent them from using Brecht’s way of working. Some of the leading members of the company found they were able to apply both approaches to the Figure.19 According to Carl Weber, Angelika Hurwicz, one Berliner Ensemble actor who played many leading roles, “liked to employ identification for an extended time in rehearsal and only later take the crucial step of creating detachment and critical distance versus the character….”20 Other actors employed the System’s techniques “as long as they found them useful; others worked in a more or less strictly exterior way.”21 Manfred Wekwerth also pointed out how Stanislavsky would have agreed with Brecht about the portrayal of negative characters. Chekhov’s wife, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, revolted against the idea that her character 18  BOP 251. Some of these rules are included in Brecht’s essay for Theaterarbeit, “Five Notes on Acting,” under the subtopic, “General tendencies which actors should guard against.” Brecht on Performance, 233–234. These include “Detaching yourselves from groups to stand alone.” And “Not looking at the person you are talking to.” BOP 233. 19  In an interview in Theaterarbeit, a star of the BE, Therese Giehse, admitted to both identifying and then criticizing the Figure in order to create it. Berliner Ensemble/Helene Weigel, ed., Theaterarbeit, 355. 20  Weber, “The Actor and Brecht, or The Truth Is Concrete,” 66. 21  Weber, “The Actor and Brecht, or The Truth Is Concrete,” 66.

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had her enemies killed in Armored Train 14–69. Above all, she didn’t want to be confused with such an awful person. Stanislavsky replied, “It is the aristocratic lady, not you, that your audience is supposed to find spiteful and dangerous.”22 He then explained how to realize the part, “And as an actress you can achieve this by not concealing your opinion of the lady, but letting it come across even as you play her.”23 All of this was a relief to me as I began my work on Mother Courage. At that point, I had been teaching Stanislavsky-based acting courses since 1988 and a course on Brecht beginning in 2003. The actors in my Brecht courses enjoyed learning a new approach to creating characters, and to analyzing and performing scenes. I realized they didn’t have to abandon their previous System training in order to make political theatre Brecht might have endorsed; the two methods actually enriched each other. While Brecht did not combine the methods in the way I have, in doing so I found I could create a bridge between the work students already knew and his, resulting in strong and socially conscious performances. Brecht might have dismissed his work completely if Stanislavsky had continued to follow the precepts he had written about in the early texts.24 Late in his career, however, Stanislavsky made a radical alteration to his system. He shifted his focus from the recreation of emotional memories, the way in which an actor might use material from their own lives to recall emotions they had experienced in the past, and instead concentrated on the interactions of the characters, who sought to affect each other to realize their individual aims. That is, he emphasized the attempts by each character to influence the actions of another. He called this the Method of Physical Actions.25 He found that, rather than eliminating feelings altogether, the use of a physical action brought up feelings in the actor through the physical pursuit of their goals.

22  Quoted in Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 28. This passage does not appear in the English-­ language translation of Stanislavsky Directs by Nikolai Gorchakov but in the German edition N.  Gortschakow, Regie: Unterricht bei Stanislawski (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959), 512–513. 23  Wekwerth, Daring to Play, 28. 24  In 1940, in the appendix to “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting that Produces a Verfremdung Effect,” Brecht pokes fun of the System as “a course of instruction for conjurers.” BOT 190. 25  Hereafter also MPA.

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Objectives The starting point of this method for the actor is the objective of the character, the character’s overall aim in a play and then in each scene. Richard H. Felnagle, in his book Beginning Acting, narrows the number of objectives down to a convenient number: “There are only six possible desired effects.”26 By effects, he is referring to the results the character hopes will take place by pursuing their aims. He lists these as: 1. To get information from another person, 2. To communicate information to another person, 3. To make another person do something, 4. To stop another person from doing something, 5. To make another person feel good, and 6. To make another person feel bad.27

These are general categories the performer can buttress with specifics: for example: to make someone feel bad might mean shaming them in order to take revenge on their past behavior. In Scene 8, Yvette, as Madame Colonel Starhemberg, puts the Cook in his place because of the way he treated her as a younger woman. She makes him stand formally in her presence, a triumph for a former prostitute. Meanwhile, the Cook’s objective in the scene is to insinuate himself into Courage’s circle. To get Courage to accept him is made more difficult by Yvette’s objective. Meanwhile, the Chaplain tries to cement his place in Courage’s business by “making Courage feel good,” but she doesn’t fall for it.

Action Verbs Once the objective is determined, strategies must be tried so the characters can accomplish their aims. These strategies are the actions that the characters take to affect the other characters. In A Practical Handbook for the Actor, author and actor Melissa Bruder and other students from classes led by actor William H. Macy and playwright David Mamet, specifically define MPA actions and how actors can usefully apply them to achieve their missions. They define an action as “the physical pursuance of a specific goal.”28 The audience sees the evidence of a character’s intent through 26  Richard H. Felnagle, Beginning Acting: The Illusion of Natural Behavior (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987), 86. 27  Felnagle, Beginning Acting, 86. 28  Melissa Bruder et al., A Practical Handbook for the Actor (New York: Vintage, 1986), 13.

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their behavior. These actions are stated as transitive verbs such as “to soothe.” According to the authors of A Practical Handbook, some of the behaviors actors choose as actions are not effective. For example, an action verb that only applies to the self doesn’t affect the other character. “To ignore someone” can be accomplished without the other character ever realizing it. By the same token, an action that is simply an errand doesn’t give us an idea of why it happens or in what manner. A character may give someone a gift without us knowing why. Are they offering a bribe? And how do they proffer it? Do they present it as a great surprise? Do they withhold it at first to intrigue the other person? An action also does not involve an initial feeling on the part of the character. “To be angry,” makes two problems for the actor: “anger” is not a strategy but a mood. At the same time, a feeling doesn’t have to do with the other person, but with the self.29 For his actions in Scene 8, the Cook can flatter Courage, appeal to her sense of decency, charm her, dismiss Yvette as still beneath him, support Kattrin, and belittle the Chaplain, all to accomplish his objective. If his objective were to sulk, or to be offended, he might be ignored. These would also be less effective strategies. Action verbs are tried in rehearsal, but the actor must be willing to change them, based on the strategies the other character is using to accomplish their own objectives, which are usually at cross-purposes to their partner’s. Whenever such a change takes place, whether the actor is stopped by an obstacle,30 commits to a new objective, upgrades or strengthens an action—i.e. uses a more dramatic or strong synonym—or is introduced to a new event,31 this is called the beat change.32 Identifying the beat changes in the scene can give the actor a map to follow in terms of their actions. Brecht’s actors also divide their scenes into parts, but his analytical structure is a division of the scene into gests physicalized by different Haltungen. In both cases, the actor is moving from one section to another either beat by beat or Haltung by Haltung. 29  See a list of “requirements for a good action” in Melissa Bruder  et al., A Practical Handbook, 13–18. 30  Obstacles are discussed below. 31  See the discussion on obstacles below. 32  A play is divided into “beats” or “bits” in order to analyze and study it. Within those “bits” are the tasks. Fulfilling the tasks are the motives for being onstage. See Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work: A Student’s Diary, trans. Jean Benedetti (London: Routledge, 2008), chapter 7: “Bits and Tasks,” 135–151.

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It is also true that, despite creating a beat-by-beat score in advance to have a reason for being on the stage as a character, the risk of too much reliance on one’s homework may lead the actor to pursue their objectives so relentlessly they are impervious to their partner’s actions.33 If actor A’s actions are so pre-planned they ignore the actions of the character in front of them, then the actor is not acting spontaneously. After all, actor B has their own actions to pursue that might not gibe with actor A’s. Robert Benedetti refers to this plan as a unilateral action that doesn’t bear in mind the many possible responses from the others on stage that will require the character to make constant adjustments. Benedetti wrote: “[Actors] forget that the character is making strategic choices based on a reading of the other person.”34 When they act unilaterally, they are ­operating in a vacuum, throwing out actions they have prepared in advance without considering whether the other actor is responding as they had hoped. This premeditation, melded to unilateral actions, stifles the opportunity for spontaneity and a real interplay between characters. The actors can imagine a strategy but should be prepared to abandon it for one that will better serve them. They do this with subjective listening: always weighing what they see and hear in relation to whether it aids their character’s objective or not.

Obstacles: What’s in the Way? The reason a sense of mission must be followed by a strategy, a specific action based on the other person, is that characters usually find obstacles in their way, often the other characters. The other character may not support the mission and may, in fact, try to thwart or subvert it. As character A pursues an objective, such as, “to get the secret out of the enemy,” they may encounter inherent obstacles: character B, the enemy, might be loyal to his own side and willing to sacrifice his life to keep the secret. B might not find the interrogator particularly threatening, or B might know the consequences of revealing the information would be worse than not revealing it. These obstacles are useful to character A because they increase the character’s effort to accomplish their goal. Many of our actors have  Bruder et al., A Practical Handbook, 16–7.  Robert Benedetti, “Zen in the Art of Acting Training,” in Master Teachers of Theatre, ed. Burnet M. Hobgood (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 98. Emphasis Benedetti’s. 33 34

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been trained to work in this way: to look for character objectives, realize what obstacles might exist, and find further strategies to overcome them. Unlike characters, actors should embrace difficult obstacles as a means for increasing their commitment to the character’s goals. Strong obstacles make the characters work harder to achieve their objective. As the famous acting teacher Sanford Meisner noted: “That which hinders your task is your task.”35 Obstacles in the MPA may be internal or discovered—they already exist within the character, or they arise out of new situations. An internal obstacle may be previous knowledge, a particular feeling already present in the character, or an attachment.36 A character may want to dominate another but be afraid to do so. Or a character may already know the other character hates them and so feels seducing them might be difficult.37 A discovered obstacle emerges when the actor receives new information from other characters implying the mission will be difficult to accomplish. It might seem easy for a character to embarrass a friend’s ex with the previous knowledge she has left him. But it might become harder to do so if she reveals to him that her reason for breaking up with her boyfriend was that he had degraded her. External and internal obstacles to the Cook succeeding in his mission are his rival the Chaplain; the fact that the Cook is in an inferior position— being destitute, he doesn’t have much to offer; he is not a member of the family; and eventually, that Yvette exposes him as Piping Pieter, a man of questionable morals.38 These obstacles give the actor much to play. In Mother Courage Scene 3, Swiss Cheese has a difficult objective: he must save his family from being implicated in his work for the 2nd Finnish Regiment. His external obstacle makes his objective difficult: his life is being threatened by the Catholic soldiers. They want the cash box he has hidden from them. One possible strategy, or action, is to dupe the soldiers. He does this by pretending to be a former customer of Courage instead of her son. Once he decides to deceive the enemy by taking on the persona of a disgruntled customer, Swiss Cheese must pretend he is indifferent to his mother or sister. His true feelings are an internal obstacle; his love for his  Bruder et al., A Practical Handbook, 40.  See a discussion of Attachments below. 37  Consider the situation between the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Anne in Shakespeare’s Richard III. 38  This latter moment is an example of a discovered obstacle. 35 36

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family may give him away. Before this scene, he has not been a particularly strong-willed character.39 His personality, his low status, and his feelings are also internal, psychological obstacles which he must overcome.

Embodying the Tableaux Once our Arrangements had been created, we concentrated on embodying the behaviors suggested by our initial staging. After all, the pictures themselves were frozen. The fourth dimension, time, had to be added. We had to discover what kind of behavior took place within these moments and between them. This would also clarify our previous work. For example, it was sometimes impossible to make an action clear unless it was in motion. A gesture of rejection—the hand raised with the palm out towards the other Figure—for example, might resemble a gesture of protest unless the motion of pushing away was added. If a Figure was summoning someone, a gesture towards themselves would now indicate they wanted that person to move closer. If a person was standing in a doorway, motion could reveal whether they were entering or exiting. In Mother Courage, the effort of pulling the wagon could be shown through tension in the actor’s body, but also in the time it took to put the wagon in motion. The moment of the Cook’s pipe dropping out of his mouth when he saw Courage had abandoned him was more comic when one could watch the speed of its fall. Even juxtaposing a photo of the pipe in his mouth and on the floor would not give this effect. The actor’s timing was the key. One can’t do Arrangement work without some acting interpretation. The attitudes of the Figures towards each other, their status/Haltungen, help to clarify the narrative within the tableaux. Once a further set of clues, the dialogue, is being spoken and thoughts and intention are expressed in words, the audience receives additional information such as previous circumstances, tone, ulterior motives, agendas, subtexts, and feelings. Status/Haltungen choices will also be strengthened with the addition of motion. During our rehearsals of Mother Courage, we dealt with both the psychology of the character and the way in which the Figure responded to the

39  We made this even more obvious in Scene 1 by having Swiss Cheese shy away from the Recruiter who offered him the chance to join the army with his brother.

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environment.40 The sociological constraints of the Figure were combined with the internal struggle of the character to deal with them. For example, the feelings of Courage towards the loss of her son in Scene 3 had to take place within the actor but be hidden by her because of the hostile environment in which she found herself: to reveal her feelings to the soldiers would have been dangerous. The environment had hardened her; she couldn’t afford to express herself truthfully if she was to survive. The audience could see this: she did not show her feelings but suppressed them. This, too, was a way of combining the two methods: the “Not…but” became the Figure’s act of displaying the mask instead of indulging in the feelings underneath it. When I worked with the performers I cast in Mother Courage and Her Children, I was aware I would be constraining them, to a certain extent, within the bounds of the Fabel, but I also relied on them to realize the particular behavior of the human beings they were presenting, including how those people felt. In 2015, this meant patiently questioning again and again whether each moment of each scene satisfied the Fabel’s requirements while revealing truthful behavior. This had a number of benefits, not the least of which was the actors could concentrate on manageable portions rather than the entire three-hour epic. Allowing the actors to do their work, to discover the nature of the behavior and to consider ways of portraying it, reminded them they were not simply elements to be manipulated within the Arrangement frame. Working this way turned out to be less intimidating to the actors than I had feared. The lead actor, Kelsey Fisher-Waits, who played Anna Fierling, had this to say about our process: The whole play is intimidating but we’re just right here on this page, on this paragraph. And for me, that was actually kind of mind-melting, in the best way possible because I was able to just take it beat by beat, which we all have been taught to do a million times; but very rarely in a rehearsal process do you get to actually do that and slow it down, and look at those micro moments. And the fact that you allowed us to have that time gave me so much more confidence in the role because I felt I was allowed to take time to get to know her and to know what our mission was.41 40  To distinguish what types of acting are being highlighted, I refer to a character when speaking of the Stanislavsky approach; likewise, when concentrating on Brecht’s work, I write of the Figure. 41  Fisher-Waits speaking with the author.

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If Fisher had an issue, it was that she had been trained to identify with the characters she played. Brecht rejected the idea of identification with the role during a performance and, instead, asked his actors to historicize the Figure and the play’s events—play the role as historical and the events as having already happened in the past. The actor would not think of the Figure in the first person but in the third: “He did this or that.” In this way, the actor would be demonstrating the Figure to spectators for critique. To combine the two approaches, I began with an emphasis on the first-­ person/present-tense circumstances, as it was one step in a process towards characterization that Brecht, it seems, did not altogether reject, at least in rehearsal. In 1953, he wrote a series of six essays in response to the publication, in German, of Stanislavsky’s seminal book An Actor’s Work. In the third essay “Stanislavsky Studies 3,” Brecht outlined four steps to Figure creation. The first asked the actor to look at the character naively as if the actor didn’t understand it, so as to note “deviations from the typical.”42 In the second phase, however, the actor’s path to the role involved empathetic understanding for the character, which could (coincidentally) be achieved through the use of Stanislavsky’s methods. In the third phase, he wanted the actor to step back from the character again to view it from “society’s standpoint.”43 The fourth step was a reminder that the process might be fluid, moving back and forth between the steps. In other words, exploring the character empathetically was one step in Brecht’s process, but it wasn’t the final one. Carl Weber validated that the Stanislavsky and Brecht steps could be combined: “I have never accepted that actors trained in this mode [the System] should lack of prerequisites for performing Brecht. In fact, many of their ‘tools’ are perfectly valid for it.”44 As I watched the scenes, I kept in mind a number of tenets Brecht suggested. Could I not potentially say even more about the behavior of the people in the play, something more precise about the incidents, something more instructive, something funnier, something that would prompt an even stronger desire to adopt a certain kind of behavior or elicit an even greater horror of another, asocial kind of behavior?45

 BOT 280.  BOT 280 44  Weber, “The Actor and Brecht,” 73–4. 45  BOT 258. 42 43

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To these considerations, I added my own, based on my training in Stanislavsky. In particular, the actions of the character were informed by the previous circumstances, whether implicit or explicit in the text. In life, a person contains within themselves the sum of their past experiences. In Scene 1, for example, Mother Courage has a relationship with the Finnish regiment that has protected her and her family. She believes, mistakenly, this will continue to be the case until she meets the Recruiter and the Sergeant, who are desperate for new recruits. The actor, playing Courage, can use the previous circumstances to build on the confidence of the Figure to handle the soldiers. Then the actor can experience a surprise when her expectation is thwarted. She must rethink her position. The audience then sees the thought process that occurs as she scrambles to reestablish herself using fortune telling as a strategy to disorient them. Stanislavsky also enumerates those elements that make up the basic given circumstances: “the dramatic situation created by the playwright which the actor has to accept as real”46 among which he includes “the period, the time and place of the action, the way of life” of the characters.47 Within this definition I am including the connection between the role and the actor, what’s new about today, what are the Figure’s attachments, and how does the Figure embody the previous history of the character.48 In a sense, empathy serves another function; it can also be used as a form of Verfremdung, if the audience begins to sympathize with a Figure and then realizes, as the performance progresses, their sympathy is misplaced. The empathy they feel is induced and then suddenly, and alarmingly, removed.49 It is important to remember a Figure’s responses, even emotional ones, are based on new interactions with a variety of other Figures. According to Brecht, such interactions lead to Haltung changes spectators would notice: “The character’s piecemeal development, as he initiates more and more relationships with other characters, consolidating or expanding himself in continually new situations, produces a rich and sometimes 46  Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work: A Student’s Diary, trans. Jean Benedetti (London: Routledge, 2008), 683 and 52–53. 47  Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, 52–53. For more discussion about the Given Circumstances, see below. 48  Stanislavski also includes the technical elements as givens the actor must deal with. Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, 53. The elements I have added are defined below. 49  Ekkehard Schall managed this in his 530 performances of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for the Berliner Ensemble. Schall, The Craft of Theatre, 97

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complicated and emotional curve in a spectator, a fusion of feelings and even a conflict between them.”50 The different emotional responses to new situations can themselves highlight contradiction in the Figure. Knowing the actors of the BE came from a variety of backgrounds and training methods—including Stanislavsky’s—and some had also been affected by what Brecht felt were overwrought depictions instigated by the Nazi theatres during the Third Reich, Brecht stimulated this idea of critical distance in several ways, circumventing earlier training and leading his performers towards a more objective and external view of the characters.

Historicization in Action Actors used historicization to imagine the events of the play, even as they occurred in real time on the stage, as part of the past. Brecht felt it was possible to both create a living being and present it as a predetermined theatrical creation, to make a distinction between the now of the performance and the then of the play as written and rehearsed. In this way, the actor did their part in lending uniqueness to what a spectator might initially think was an ever-thus by considering their Figures as historical. Some audience members may find Yvette an attractive young women, desirable as sex object, but in the course of the play they are reminded she may be diseased, or, when they see her passionately kiss an old colonel in his dotage and at least twice her age, that her profession is not a glamorous one; it does not allow her to discriminate among her customers. Brecht was particularly fascinated by the day-to-day activities of people as a means of revealing life in other eras. He insisted the actors study and master the activities in a play, as these routines became a pleasurable form of learning for performer and spectator. Mother Courage cooks, cleans, serves drinks, inventories supplies, plucks fowl, and sells merchandise from her wagon, selected details that add to, rather than distract from, realistic depictions of action onstage. They have the added benefit of showing the Figure constantly at work. This was important to Brecht’s Fabel: “[Courage] is hardly ever seen not working. It is her energy and competence that make her lack of success so shattering.”51

 Silberman, “Brecht’s Gestus,” 325.  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 296.

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The Construction of Identity One issue with identification is that the role is constructed from a reaction to societal norms, and these constructions vary from era to era. For this reason, the use of identification may, at times, be at odds with the concept of historicization, which contains within it the danger of presentism: an actor can identify with a role, but if the Figure was created in another time period, the actor may be using their own perspective rather than recognizing that different behaviors and other viewpoints—from the author’s world—are present in the play. Historicization is about displaying to spectators those differences so they can compare them to their own time. Before work can start on a scene, the production team looks at several factors of the MPA, as I’ve adapted it, that affect the characters and combines them with elements from Brecht’s work. Our challenge is to show the utility of all of these elements of study: Given Circumstances, Previous Circumstances, the Main Event, the Driver, What’s Different About Today, The MPA,52 Sociological Constraints, Attachments,53 How High Are the Stakes?, Beat/Haltung Changes, Using “Not…but” to Determine the Verfremdungseffekte, and Evaluations.

Homework: Given Circumstances Stanislavsky suggested to actors: “If you speak a word, or do anything mechanically onstage, not knowing who you are, where you come from, why, what you need, where you are going, or what you will do there, you will be acting without imagination.”54 These pieces of information are the Given Circumstances. As master teacher Ron Van Lieu notes, this is the actor’s homework; seeking an understanding of the character as they move through their environment and situation, the actor will “build within themselves a belief system which is not their own so that they can more definitely inhabit it.”55 This also leads to personalization, the ability to connect your own experiences to that of the character: “[Actors] use it as a way to reach [themselves], meaning believing that as [they] step into the shoes of this other person’s life [they] are willing to take on the facts,  Discussed above.  Discussed below. 54  Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, 84. 55  Van Lieu, Notes, June 11, 2013. This is a form of identification but, as noted above, a part of the rehearsal process even for Brecht. 52 53

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wants, desires of this other person.”56 Again, these are steps in the process; though initially related to identification, they will eventually be adapted to fit Brecht’s agenda. The Given Circumstances include: • Date: Time of day, season, year, period in history • Location and Environment: Immediate surroundings, outside or inside, city or country, public or private, etc. • Weather and Temperature: Tropical, rainy, cold, hot, etc. • Background: The character’s roles: occupation, race, age, gender, and other pertinent details, as well as the relationships among the characters whether social, familial, work-related, or distant57 Scene 9 takes place in 1634, sixteen years into the war. Winter has come early and the wind is brutal. The army cook and the sutler—Lamb and Fierling—are a couple, while the Cook considers Kattrin, the daughter of Courage, a third wheel. They are outside of a parsonage, dealing with the freezing cold and trying to stave off starvation. Since business is bad, they now resort to begging. The parsonage is dark, but they suspect it is still inhabited. They do not know whether the people inside will be welcoming and share food with them. At this point, whether they believe in God is meaningless. The Cook, through his song, will reveal they have no virtues and convictions left, but at least he is painting an honest picture of who they are, hoping this will give them passage inside.

Previous Circumstances Events in the past that affect the characters in the present are Previous Circumstances. For example, the fact a character’s parents were killed in a car accident many years before may still be an influence in their life, while the events of the previous scene—e.g., that the character just had a fight with a loved one and must confront them again now—will also affect them. The length of the Thirty Years War takes its toll on the participants, who become more and more desperate as the play progresses. The modeling Courage does for her children during this period gives them ideas for the decisions they make.  Van Lieu, Notes, June 11, 2013.  Given Circumstances may also include what I later refer to as constraints: the economic, political, social, and religious environment of the play. 56 57

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Main Event The reason for the scene in the play is the Main Event of the scene. The Main Event in Scene 1 is the recruiting of Eilif. Despite Courage’s wiliness, her past experiences with soldiers, her reputation, the connection she has established with the Second Finnish Regiment, and her trick with the fortune telling, her business begins to cost her.

The Driver One way to identify the Main Event is to identify the Driver—the person who moves the scene forward to its conclusion. It is important to understand this may not be the person who is most affected by the events. The Recruiter is the driver of Scene 1, since his mission determines how the events will unfold, and he ultimately succeeds in getting what he wants. In a sense, the Drivers of the bargaining in Scene 3 are the soldiers. Though unseen, what they decide will ultimately lead to a conclusion: either the death of Swiss Cheese or the loss of Courage’s wagon, because they will either accept her final offer or not.

What’s Different about Today? After the Arrangements have been initially set, the team works on the MPA in more detail, identifying the importance of the events to each character. One of the questions I enjoy asking the actors in both the classroom and rehearsal hall comes from theatre master teacher and director Lloyd Richards: “Why now?” Why is it necessary this particular course of action must happen for this character at this time? Drama occurs because, in an otherwise normal day, something special happens. But why today? On any other day, Courage might have been able to outwit the Recruiter and the Sergeant in Scene 1. But today they are desperate for men. They are not so easily put off. This recruiter is also skilled at his job, able to read the situation as it develops. This seems to be an unusual encounter. She isn’t a match for him.

Attachments Another kind of obstacle is an attachment, what Ron Van Lieu describes to his students as “things you don’t want to give up, that you’ll fight to hold onto, that you need, that define you to other people, that you don’t

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want other people to know about.”58 These could be “political points of view, elements of religion, likes and dislikes.”59 Like the initial homework, you are mining the play for information and looking for patterns in the character, where habits are appearing or needs are being discovered ­repeatedly. Attachments can affect a character’s objective and actions, but are particularly important as an obstacle, especially if that attachment is threatened. When a character loses an attachment, it can be devastating. Courage is attached to the idea she can be both a successful businesswoman and mother. Throughout the play, events suggest otherwise, and her attachment is threatened. What’s so interesting about Brecht’s work is that Courage stubbornly clings to her business even though her attachment is constantly shown to be patently false. But it is so strong, so essential a part of her, she can never let go of it. Kattrin’s attachment to children gets her killed. Swiss Cheese believes in loyalty above all else and also loses his life. Eilif sees himself as a brave soldier who believes in the cause. Over time he is clearly embittered and loses his faith in the justice of the war. Eventually the performing of his duties, almost on autopilot and without discrimination, dooms him.

Sociological Constraints In the MPA, what thwart the characters are obstacles, including attachments, which are usually psychological. In the Brechtian approach, the actor considers the sociological constraints under which a Figure operates. These constraints are the accepted political, religious, social, or economic constructions in the world that limit a Figure’s choices. As David Barnett points out, “One of the primary elements involved in dramatizing figures on Brecht’s stage is to understand how their social context prevents them from doing what they want to do.”60 If the actor can identify the constraints, they are closer to understanding the Figure’s gestus, as sociological boundaries guide a Figure’s behavior. A constraint for Courage is that she is selling to both sides, Catholic and Protestant. She must therefore avoid taking sides while convincing her customers she supports each respective faith. If she offends either, they are members of the military and  Van Lieu, Notes, June 11, 2013.  Van Lieu, Notes, June 11, 2013. 60  Barnett, Brecht in Practice, 94. 58 59

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could rob her or destroy her wares. She must walk a very careful, narrow line between the two groups. The actor playing Courage overstressed her ability to change sides in Scene 3 by displaying pride when saying of the Catholics, “I’ve got that churchy talk down pat.”61 She then sloppily crossed herself in a perfunctory manner revealing her lack of belief in the gesture.

How High Are the Stakes? Whenever the character embarks on a new mission, the actors imagine the possible results of each attempt: the stakes or cost to each character. Brecht sets his play in wartime because the stakes are automatically very high: a matter of survival. The success or failure of a mission has a cost. If a situation is highly dramatic or of great import to the characters in the scene, the cost is high, which raises the stakes. The soldiers in Scene 10 have been ordered to take the town of Halle in an ambush at night. It is important the townspeople not be disturbed, that the soldiers operate secretly. The stakes rise when Kattrin threatens this mission by banging loudly on a drum to wake up the town.

Beat/Haltung Changes Marking the moments in a play is a different process depending on whether we’re using MPA or Brecht. In the MPA whenever an actor can no longer pursue their chosen action—either through success or failure, or because new circumstances arise (such as the entrance of a new character), they choose a new verb, and a new moment, or beat change, is said to begin. Conversely, new moments in the Brechtian universe involve Haltung (attitude) changes or Drehpunkte (turning points). For Swiss Cheese, becoming a paymaster is a Drehpunkt because he has now taken sides. This is also a previous circumstance to Scene 3, as it happens offstage and is reported by Courage to Eilif at the end of Scene 2. In Scene 3, Yvette experiences a Haltung change when the Catholics attack. Her whole attitude undergoes a transformation as her status rises at the prospect of new customers, especially those who have not heard the rumors about her health. Both types of changes can be seen onstage.

 Kushner, Mother Courage, 39.

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Using “Not…But” to Determine Verfremdungseffekte In this phase, using Brecht’s method of “Not…but”—a Figure does not do this, but instead actually does that—the actors, and then the spectators, can realize how decisions are constrained by society. It can be useful for the actors in rehearsal to play the “not”—the choice the Figure doesn’t make—to see what the character/Figure avoids doing or what they would like to do but can’t. Hesitations, false starts, and strain within a performance are some signs a Figure is making an alternative decision. Playing the “not” creates a tension within the actor to avoid their instincts. When the actor chooses not to do the obvious thing—the one the spectators are expecting—the actor and the Figure create a Verfremdungseffekt. In Scene 3 of Mother Courage, Anna Fierling does not do the expected thing: break down at the sight of her dead son and reveal their connection. Instead, she silently denies knowing him with a shake of her head. At this point, Brecht suggests another Verfremdung, one we are not expecting from the soldiers: “The actor playing the sergeant can command the spectator’s astonishment by looking around at his men in astonishment at such harshness.”62

Evaluations The process of evaluation, when a Figure is presented with specific information which requires consideration, can take a number of forms. In the MPA, the beat change requires a long or short character evaluation, an inward rumination which may be split-second or drawn out, but visible as a pause. With a Haltung change, the Figure abruptly displays a new physical and vocal attitude as their situation changes. The Figure can realize immediately what must be done. The Figure can take time to weigh the implications of the information. The Figure can put off a decision of any kind until more information is available. The Figure can overlook the information at first and later realize what it means. The Figure can be so emotionally affected as to be incapable of evaluating until some time has passed. In each case, in order to understand the Figure’s thoughts, the actor can think them. This process is called creating an inner monologue:  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 299–300.

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having a discussion with one’s self about what to do based on subjective listening: is the information the Figure is receiving good for their situation or not? The spectator can see the Figure thinking: having epiphanies, becoming confused about what they are hearing, giving special attention to information that affects them deeply, responding with a status/Haltung change. This is realistic behavior that can be missing from a performance that is mechanical, when an actor goes through the motions, repeating by rote what they have done in the past, including waiting for their next cue so they can speak their lines. It is the actor playing Kattrin who has the most interesting inner monologues to consider, since she is given no dialogue to reveal her thoughts. When she sees Yvette has left her shoes and hat behind, she decides to put them on. She goes through an evaluation that leads to donning the clothes, and she also has an evaluation based on the effect the clothes have on her: she has an inner monologue as she parades about, imagining a new life for herself. She also manages to keep the shoes.

The Point of Analysis Is Behavior This analysis is used to create behavior: to identify those factors that affect the Figures using the script as a guide. It is meant to be a process of discovery for the actors. Rather than offering them each of these bits of information, I ask them to consider those details that will lead them towards a realization of the circumstances; in this way, they are introduced to categories of thought they can use to diagnose their own work. These categories are revealed in the form of questions they can ask themselves. They answer these questions by acting them out: by trying various ways to display the information for the spectator through performance, thus clarifying the Fabel. For example, if the weather is a factor in the scene, as it is in Scene 9, the Figures respond to it by trying to keep warm against the bitter cold. They are also starving, which affects their mood, their stamina, their breath, their physicality. The Cook is preoccupied because he has received a letter and made a decision about it. The Cook and Courage are a couple, and there is an intimacy between them. In this scene, he calls her Anna, she calls him Lamb. At the beginning of Scene 9, Kattrin is already feeling left out, and when she overhears the Cook tell her mother she is not welcome to join them in his new business, that her future is dependent on her mother’s decision, she goes through a process of evaluation. The actor can create an

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inner monologue of thoughts, turning over in her mind the possible decisions she can make and their consequences. We see her considering what to do, but we also see the results of her evaluation when she determines to pack her things and leave a message before departing. The actor playing the Cook must determine why he sings the “Song of Solomon” to the imagined inhabitants of the parsonage: what is he trying to accomplish with such a negative message considering how badly he needs food? The result of the song is he is offered soup. What is the feeling the Figures have when they realize they have succeeded in their mission despite the obstacles? (The parsonage seems burned out and empty, they are strangers, there is so little food around it might not be shared even if it exists.) What are the status/Haltung changes for Courage when she thinks she and Kattrin will both be saved by the Cook’s offer and then finds out Kattrin will not be included in his plans? What is the Cook’s attitude when he is put on the spot by Courage? Where does Kattrin plan to go if she leaves her mother and the Cook? Most of all, what evidence do the actors have for answering these questions? How does the team use the text to lead them towards their own solutions? For a specific example of questions to ask the actors to help them realize a particular scene, see Appendix 2. This chapter provides examples of the working methods of Brecht and Stanislavsky used in tandem, together with prompts that will lead to further analysis of other scenes from the actor’s view.63 The German and Russian artistic directors, of the BE and the MAT respectively, applied a lifetime of theatre experience to guide their companies and ultimately both had success in their individual times and places and achieved their ends through entertainment. This interrogation of scenes, as outlined in this chapter, took place throughout the third stage of rehearsals, following the status/Haltung workshop, the experiments with connotative staging, and the creation of Arrangements for the gestic incidents of the whole play. Then came the run-throughs, further fine-tuning, technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and finally performances. Within all of these stages, we implemented another Brechtian philosophy, the importance of documenting our work. The construction of a model book, Brecht’s means of archiving his methods for future practitioners, proved to be a vital pedagogical tool for students in higher education, as learning could be further inculcated through detailed reflection on the process.  Appendix 2 offers a fuller example of such an analysis by exploring a section of Scene 3.

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Documenting the Work: The Model Book

This is not primarily meant to be a souvenir volume. Rather, it is a blue-­ print; a permanent record of a theatrical event in all its aspects; a detailed, illustrated account of a production…in other words, this book is a sort of guided tour; and if it proves helpful to theatre workers, students of drama or anyone who wants to know how a particular group of actors tackled the problems of a particular play, it will have served its purpose.1 (Kenneth Tynan)

One of the most important pedagogical tools available to us is a practice Bertolt Brecht relied on for teaching his own assistants: timely reflection on the process of making a production and consideration of the implications of that work. In Brecht’s case, this took the form of many pieces of documentation gathered in one place as a model book. Such was the interest in what he was doing, at least three of the resulting volumes were published for the reading public.2 In 2015, the Mother Courage team emulated this practice, creating our own archival model using contemporary means to do so. Presentation software, smartphone cameras, word processing, all made the task an easier one when compared to the work of 1  Kenneth Tynan, introducing his model book: George Farquhar, The Recruiting Office: The National Theatre Production, ed. Kenneth Tynan (London: Rupert Hart-David, 1965), i. 2  Although some were more popular than others. See David Barnett, “The Rise and Fall of Modelbooks, Notate and the Brechtian Method: Documentation and the Berliner Ensemble’s Changing Roles as a Theatre Company,” in Theatre Research International Vol. 41 [No. 2], 106–121.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7_9

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the BE, where, for example, notes to be added to the book had to be typed, cut out, and pasted to the pages along with the respective photographs.3 The speed with which we could record the work and continue to refer to it throughout rehearsals was an advantage. All of the team could have ready access to the material, in some cases almost immediately. In an educational system, this operation was highly instructive; we could note our successes and failures in terms of the play’s reception and the clarity or obscurity of the Fabel as realized and then responded to by the public. Creating a model book was also a practice we determined could be used for other productions. At first glance, the preface to this chapter may seem to be a description of one of Brecht’s most notable contributions to theatre, the model book, and Kenneth Tynan covers many of the requirements for such a volume. In fact, Tynan is introducing this form of documentation, the first English-­ language example of its kind, to an audience for the National Theatre of Great Britain. The Recruiting Officer: The National Theatre Production was actually one of two volumes for what was planned as an on-going project. The other volume, Othello: the National Theatre Production,4 was my first exposure to any form of the model book, and I enjoyed the inside look at the workings of a major theatre company, but at that time I did not realize it was an attempt to emulate a practice by Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble.

A British Model Kenneth Tynan was so impressed with the Berliner Ensemble during their visit to England, that when he convinced Laurence Olivier to let him join the founding team of the new National Theatre, he adopted Brecht’s ideas of dramaturgy to the new ensemble company. As the self-styled dramaturg of the National Theatre of Great Britain, he applied himself to the project 3  In an interview with Joachim Lang and Jürgen Hillerheim, one of Brecht’s assistants, Claus Küchenmeister admitted, “For us, of course, working on the Modelbooks was a bit of a crappy job. We sat there in a little cubbyhole, pasting things down. And whoever pasted most industriously would be in Brecht’s good books.” See Joachim Lang and Jürgen Hillerheim, trans. Romy Furland, “Interviews with Claus and Wera Küchenmeister and with Egon Monk,” in Bertolt Brecht: Critical and Primary Sources Volume III: Practice, ed. David Barnett (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 245. 4  William Shakespeare, Othello: The National Theatre Production, ed. Kenneth Tynan (New York: Stein and Day, 1967).

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of making model books along the lines of the BE. However, he was limited both in time and in resources.5 His notes were short essays in the form of rehearsal diaries that attempted to describe how some conclusions were reached about staging and performance, but these only took up a few pages. He also invited photographers to capture images of each production, highlighting moments from the performance that were then accompanied by dialogue from the scripts, very much in the BE style, but he had not commissioned them to collect the specific moments required of their East German counterparts. His concentration was primarily on the actor, and he gave limited attention to other areas, such as script analysis and design. Though more volumes were planned for all National productions, Tynan produced only two of these books for commercial distribution during his tenure there: a volume on William Gaskill’s production of Farquhar’s Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer, and another on John Dexter’s production of Othello starring Laurence Olivier. They came nowhere near the level of the German versions, despite Tynan’s own claims, but he was working with one over-worked assistant to introduce a British form of a practice he admired,6 and, though we have audio and film recordings of the performance of Olivier as Othello, there is no complete reproduction of Gaskill’s production available to the public. It is Tynan’s record that tells us how Gaskill and the company worked and the reasons behind some of their choices.7

The Brecht Model Unlike Kenneth Tynan, Brecht had an entire company at his disposal as its artistic director. This allowed him to reimagine the form documentary materials might take. A model in the Brechtian sense is the thorough record of an actual production; it is a means of critically reflecting on artistic practice; a way of explaining how a theatre company works, how it solves problems, how it identifies and displays key moments and—where 5  Mary Luckhurst, Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (Cambridge: The University Press, 2006), 162. 6  Luckhurst, Dramaturgy, 162. Rozina Adler made so little money in this role that Tynan paid her out of his own pocket. Tynan visited the Berliner Ensemble at their home base and attended plays by the group when they toured to London. He also arranged visits of four Berliner Ensemble productions in 1965 and an English translation of Mother Courage to be performed by the National Theatre Company. See Luckhurst, 167–168. 7  Olivier’s performance as Othello in black face would not be countenanced today.

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this occurred—how it compares one production of a play by Brecht to another using the same script, as in the case of the BE 1949 production of Courage to Brecht’s Munich production in 1950. The model books, those series of illustrative volumes assembled by the Berliner Ensemble, are some of the most complete records of the production process ever recorded. Couragemodell 1949, for example, was made up of three paperback volumes: one of notes, one of photographs of the Berlin 1949 and Munich 1950 productions, and one containing the Courage script published in Versuche 20.8 Theaterarbeit aids the maker of such a book with a number of essays: it contains descriptions of how the models were used and what kinds of materials were collected, including discussions of photographic methods and what they were used to examine. Brecht saw the model books not as prescriptive instructions for future productions of his plays, an accusation his critics made over the years, but practical examples of how his theoretical ideas were realized and, in particular, a way of identifying challenges that arose for his company when working on a play. One of the model’s primary functions as a record of rehearsals was to suggest to the reader where the issues for staging might lie in the first place and to consider their own solutions rather than to copy those of the Berliner Ensemble,9 the practical, artistic, and inventive ways to tell the story of the gestic incidents. If we are to truly engage with Brecht and his work, these books are invaluable and worthy of emulation; they suggest ways to consider what has been learned from a production experience, how the participants arrived at their conclusions, as well how the production and the process might be further developed or improved. Most importantly, we are given a window into how Brecht wrestled with the puzzles a work of art contained; the entire process is detailed in “The Berliner Ensemble Models” in Brecht on Performance.10 8   For an excellent description of the Mother Courage model book see Kristopher Imbrigotta’s “Couragemodell: Detail and Arrangement of the Model Book,” Chap. 7 of David Barnett, Bertolt Brecht: Critical and Primary Sources Volume 3, 83–88. For a history of the Berliner Ensemble model books, see David Barnett, “The Rise and Fall of Modelbooks, Notate and the Brechtian Method: Documentation and the Berliner Ensemble’s Changing Roles as a Theatre Company,” Theatre International Vol. 41, no. 2, 106–121. The Versuche editions of Brecht’s works appeared at various points during his lifetime. This is Versuche 20/21, Vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1949), Imbrigotta, 83. 9  BOP 247. 10  BOP 234–236.

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Making Our Own Model Books It is a common practice in the theatre for the stage manager to record blocking and business, as well as any thoughts on design or technical cues that might occur to the production team during a rehearsal. Less emphasized is the reasoning behind staging choices and the various attempts by the actors to realize the moments through behavior. Beat changes are not usually recorded, much less what we might consider status/Haltung changes.11 Major notes are given by the director to the actors near the end of the process, during the final run-throughs and dress rehearsals. This is not to say that adjustments are avoided or there is no method applied to an average theatre production—quite the contrary—but directorial and performance decisions are often made in the heat of the moment, and it is the actors who are expected to note the changes and repeat them in ­subsequent rehearsals; such moments are rarely recorded, nor are the justifications for decisions articulated in writing.12 The performers discuss their characters with the director, but the analysis of each role is up to the individual actor, who then develops his/her ideas in rehearsal under the director’s guidance and approval. The designs for a production are often finalized weeks or even months in advance, so the actor is, in a sense, already framed within a costume and a setting, surrounded by a pre-­ arranged atmosphere. From the viewpoint of a contemporary team in an educational setting, what is worth pursuing, regardless of the resources available—such as the budget or the amount of time available for each project—is attention to specifics, the motives and solutions for the problems presented based on a common view of the play’s purpose. To fully commit to Brecht’s example meant following Brecht’s mode for recording our process. For me, Kenneth Tynan’s volumes, though exciting introductions to the National Theatre’s work, were highly condensed versions of the BE process. I wanted to expand on the admirable efforts of Tynan and move closer to a realization of Brecht’s model. Brecht’s own model books were not standardized but developed over time in various permutations.13 Even the Courage model book did not include all plot points or ways in which  See Chap. 5 for a discussion about status and Haltung.  There are exceptions to this, as when a company hires a dramaturg to note thoughts of this kind. 13  BOP 145. 11 12

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the scenes changes were accomplished.14 One answer was for the BE to send out productions for touring purposes and to model the work for other theatre practitioners in a more direct way using Brecht’s assistants as directors.15 The BE’s documentation exemplified the ways students in a theatre program could reflect on their work, pinpointing those key moments of interpretation that realized their intentions and identifying the challenges they encountered and their solutions to those challenges. Too often, university productions are isolated from each other in a season, while each season starts from scratch, without considering how the previous work can inform future productions. The dramaturgical work required would also train the students to consider more deeply the ways in which former models could aid them in considering and solving theatrical problems. I was fortunate to have access to the Mother Courage model book (Couragemodell 1949) and to Theaterarbeit as well as English translations of portions of those volumes. Theaterarbeit describes the purposes of the model book: . The model book shows the basic gest of a play. 1 2. The model book demonstrates the scenic arrangements [i.e. blocking] related by the play’s plot. 3. The model book shows the treatment of details. 4. The model book warns against mistakes in execution. 5. The model book facilitates the division of the plot, e.g., the precise parsing of the plot elements.16 6. The model book gives the tempo and running times for the production.17 This list suggests items for inclusion such as our Arrangements for staging, the use of status/Haltungen to reveal gestus, the reasoning behind our decisions, the problems that arose and how we handled them, the early

 BOP 146.  BOP 147. When Brecht referred to the model of Courage he used to restage the play in Munich, this was the initial documentation from 1949 rather than the published model book, which includes notes and photos from the 1950 production. 16  Here the plot refers to the Fabel. Jones, Great Directors, 81. 17  These items are covered in much more detail in Theaterarbeit and are here listed in outline by David Richard Jones, who uses an Anglicized version of the German book in Jones, Great Directors, 81. The note in brackets is by Jones. 14 15

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attempts that we corrected, and a full description of the Fabel, both in its initial stages and how it was tested and improved in rehearsal.18 Following the Berliner Ensemble’s example, I wanted the whole team to be working from the same principles. This meant familiarizing them with the theories being explored through the mounting of the production and creatively working towards a common, mutually agreed upon aim. They collaborated on ways to realize this aim with a map—in this case, the Fabel—and I pointed them towards the types of notes to take as advocated in the models, including how the Fabel was realized in the clearest possible, and most entertaining way. Time would need to be allotted for a review of the work, not only during production meetings or after run-­ throughs, but daily, through discussion, journal entries, or production notes. When photographs were taken, and these would be needed throughout, the team would add footnotes or explanations, with a particular eye to the constant comparison between staging and the Fabel. Actors would also be encouraged to journal about their work and—where comfortable—to share their thoughts with the team. Employing these considerations would subject all the artistic work to analytical study, not in an academic way, but in ways that benefited the production. It would be helpful to identify who the best photographers were—any member of the team might turn out to have the skills to frame and compose the shot for maximum coverage of the information. A number of artists could photograph a given scene from moment to moment, and their photos compared. Certain run-throughs could be recorded by video means.19 Using still pictures meant taking innumerable photos to guarantee thorough coverage; we did not want to miss the opportunity to include important examples of the work through oversight.20 Rather than looking back on the experience as a source of amusing stories, the team would be asked to consider the lessons they learned as 18  We did not record the running times for each scene, though this would have been helpful in marking the pace and tempo of the piece. See Theaterarbeit for the timings for the Berliner Ensemble’s Mother Courage and Chap. 10 for the overall running time of Mother Courage 2015. Berliner Ensemble/Helene Weigel, Theaterarbeit, 302. For example, Scene 3a was 19 minutes, 3b was 10 minutes 30 seconds, and 3c was 14 minutes, 40 seconds. 19  We did not use this particular practice in 2015 but feel it is an important element to be explored, since it is so much easier to accomplish now than in the 1940s when the Ensemble began the work of documentation. 20  Invariably, because of the amount of detail, some moments were not captured.

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steps towards greater understanding of the artistic process, especially when encouraged to consider how this process might achieve an overall goal, as with the BE, of social change. Finally, the team would document their conclusions as discussed during a postmortem—or review of the production after it closed, which would include a review of the photographs for instances of elements the company found essential to an understanding of their thought processes. In the words of members of the Berliner Ensemble, “…the pictures always recall details which were forgotten during the long series of performances.”21

Brecht Notate One of Brecht’s exercises for actors could readily apply to the assistants’ duties: “(g) How to take notes. Noting of gestures, tones of voice.”22 In that case, he was asking the actor to collect those bits of behavior which revealed the Haltungen of everyday life. The same principles could be used for any part of the staging process. Brecht carefully trained the assistants to take the kind of notes he required. In particular, he oversaw their writing with an eye to improving their critical acumen, while seeking their varying opinions on the work.23 These records were a specialized form of note-taking Brecht called “Notate,” a word he coined to highlight their importance as a pedagogical tool used to train his assistants in his dramaturgical methods and to distinguish it from the more common German word for notes, “Notizen.”24 Manfred Wekwerth, a former assistant and later Intendant of the Berliner Ensemble, described the forms these Notate could take, including rehearsal notes, the epicization of dialogue, further changes to the Fabel, the discovery of turning points, the identification of specific challenges to be solved at later rehearsals, questions about the performances, and even

 BOP 237.  John Willett, Brecht on Theatre 1st Edition, 129. This list doesn’t appear in BOT, 3rd Edition. 23  Carl Weber noted that he was hired as an assistant after he was asked to give his opinion on a particular BE production in a written report. See Weber, “Brecht as Director,” 102. 24  As Mary Luckhurst has noted, his views on the role of the dramaturg influenced that position throughout Europe. See Luckhurst, Dramaturgy, Chap. 5: “Bertolt Brecht: the theory and practice of the dramaturg,” 109–151. 21 22

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moments the team found aesthetically pleasing.25 Brecht had two or more assistants working at a time who could compare notes. Like the wide coverage of photography, no one person was relied upon to catch all that was talked about or took place during rehearsals and performances.26 An advantage for our students was that they would learn from each other and develop a process for documentation together—and they would be trained to share the process with others using methods of my own design I provided for them.

Mother Courage 2015 Notate We rose to the challenge of writing Notate instead of Notizen. Though the collected documentation gave many examples of the Berliner Ensemble’s work, this needed to be adapted and shared with the students so they could more easily make notes that would concentrate on the salient points. By stressing the importance of changes from rehearsal to rehearsal, and assigning students to serve as assistants, watching each other’s work and writing Notate based on the prompts I created, I was asking them to stress the process of each piece rather than the product, to consider alternatives to initial choices, to continue to engage deeply with the material from a dramaturgical standpoint. The questions that, with constant experimentation, evolved over a period of years in the classroom were available to us in rehearsal and were as follows: 1. What changed about the staging /arrangement for today? How was the staging clarified today? What was excised? What was added? 2. When the actors ran through their work, did they maintain their tableaux positions until new positions were needed? Was there any “extraneous” or unnecessary movement, organic as opposed to semiotic or connotative?27 25  Manfred Wekwerth, Notate: Über die Arbeit des Berliner Ensembles 1956–1966 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1967), 7–8. 26  Examples of production Notaten (Regienotaten) include those for The Tutor at the Berliner Ensemble, which can be found in both Theaterarbeit—where they appear next to the appropriate passages of text—and in English translation in Bertolt Brecht, Berliner Ensemble Adaptations, ed. David Barnett (London: Methuen Drama, 2014). This is Scene 15, “End of an Italian Journey,” on 430–434. 27  Organic actions are those movements that come from habit and are examples of naturalistic behavior such as scratching an itch or rubbing one’s tired eyes.

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. 3 4. 5. 6. 7.

Were any adjustments made to the text?28 What were they? How did the performances change? What moments in each scene were emphasized? What particular words did the team use to guide the performers? What status/Haltungen did the actors play? Did these change? If so how and why? 8. What parts of the Fabel were emphasized for this rehearsal? 9. What props were added or subtracted? 10. What pieces of business were new? 11. What contradictions were discovered? 12. What rituals/ceremonies were practiced? 13. How might design elements help to emphasize/clarify the scenes? 14. Were photographs or videos taken of today’s staging? (Was thorough documentation made for each rehearsal?) If so, what was recorded? Do any further moments need to be recorded that were discovered at this rehearsal but accidentally omitted? 15. How was the material in the play connected to events, persons, or ideas in today’s world? 16. How was historicization used? (Was presentism avoided?) 17. What ideas were proposed for literarization? 18. Did the actors use their own dialects?29 19. Did they approach their roles from a third-person perspective or did they use identification to pinpoint character emotions?30 20. How did the scenes fit back together? I.e., when each scene was played in context, what could the spectator learn by comparing it to other scenes in the play? 21. Were adjustments made to the Fabel based on the working rehearsal?

 This would not apply to copyrighted materials.  Brecht asked his actors to use their own regional dialects to move towards more realistic rather than mannered ways of acting the dialogue—as opposed to performing with a stage dialect such as Hoch Deutsch or High German, an adapted form heard on the stage rather than in real life. Our actors might experiment, for example, with a West Texas accent versus the “standard” Mid-Atlantic pronunciation once heard on national news programs. In this way they would remove a barrier to their own connection to the role. See BOT 268. 30  Did they refer to their characters as “they” or “I”? At what point in the process was identification helpful?, etc. This varied from actor to actor. 28 29

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Notate in our model book included: For Scene 1, “Many of the early speeches by the Recruiter and the Sergeant were delivered to the audience,” and: “The music for the canteen wagon ‘jingle’ began before the wagon ‘approached.’ The wagon was just offstage and clearly visible throughout the beginning of the scene, awaiting its’ cue.” We also noted status/Haltung revealing gestus as in, “The children performed a routine to accompany the song and display their wares. It was clear from their Haltungen they were sick of performing.” And moments that were added late in the process included: “We discovered in the course of playing this scene, that if the Recruiter tried to recruit Swiss Cheese as well, the young man had a change of heart, and then was ashamed to act at all. He doesn’t help or hurt the situation”. One of my favorite contradictions was listed in the Notate for Scene 3: “The gestus of Courage applying soot to Kattrin was a form of Verfremdung, as the picture of the two of them was of a mother putting makeup on her daughter, rather than adding grime to make her look ugly. Like a doting parent, Courage was proud of her handiwork, which was the opposite of cosmetics.” Courage and Yvette were going through the same motions and in the same way, but with different results. Later, in Scene 6, Courage’s careful attention to Kattrin’s bandage would remind the spectators of this moment. Yet another contradiction of note came in Scene 8, when the moving sight of the Old Woman collapsing when the peace was announced contrasted with the anger Courage felt for overstocking her supplies. The Old Woman’s reaction reminded us of the aftermath of the first world war, when families lived through the conflict only to die exhausted from the effort to survive it. From this standpoint, Courage’s bitterness seemed misplaced. The Notate included many moments we found humorous: In Scene 3, when the Chaplain made the sign of the cross, he did it incorrectly. In Scene 4, when the clerk first entered and interrupted the Young Soldier, the young man abruptly dropped his weapon and his braggadocio attitude as well. In Scene 6, “The Soldier’s Song,” the music by composer Christopher Smith, was, as the latter put it “wonderfully dumb.” The actors couldn’t help but sound drunk as they sang it. And, “We decided the Regimental Secretary and the Chaplain would know the bawdy song the soldiers repeated during the scene, and they too sang some of the verses.” In Scene 11, as the soldiers kept trying to talk her down from the roof, Kattrin hesitated after each argument, then banged the drum even harder. Her timing made the audience laugh.

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The moments created each day could be photographed, examined, and then reviewed before run-throughs of larger sections, or the entire play. Though this was extra work, it helped tremendously during Mother Courage rehearsals to share our initial PowerPoint™ collection of tableaux and titles before the first run-through of that material, especially as the students rehearsed the scenes out of order and they had other duties— classes and production assignments—during the day, which also made demands on their attention.31

Berliner Ensemble Photography Brecht first used documentation as a model when he showed Ruth Berlau photographs of earlier productions of The Mother and Señora Carrar’s Rifles for her own amateur productions in Denmark. Photos of Helena Weigel’s roles in those two plays, Pelagea Vlassova and Señora Carrar respectively, were then shared with the actress Dagmar Andreasen. Brecht was impressed with the result: “The experiment was a tribute to Andreason and to Weigel, who had created something that could be both imitated and changed.”32 Beginning with the New York production of The Private Life of the Master Race in 1945, Brecht asked Ruth Berlau to extensively photograph his productions and create the model book process. Ruth Berlau, with her assistants, took hundreds of photos from the audience to be included in the model book. In Theaterarbeit, Berlau described using two Leica cameras on tripods placed in the balcony to give the impression of a view of the stage which would suggest three dimensions. She was looking for an overall sense of the production but also for those moments which needed to be highlighted, such as the changes in Haltungen, or new groupings that clarified the Fabel in tableaux. She also had to determine when it was worth taking “movement pictures,” as well as what would best capture the gestures that revealed the Figure and its contradictions.33 Eventually, these photos were key recordings of the rehearsal process. 31  This might not have been as big an issue with a professional ensemble who were convened for one purpose—the realization of that play in that time period. 32  BOP 144. 33  Brecht and his team also included blurred photos indicating movement by the actors. For example, when Yvette ran to the soldiers and back to Courage’s camp, the photo shows how she ran. See Couragemodell 1949 and representative photographs in BOP 189–219. “Yvette’s race,” is on page 210.

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It is clear from descriptions in Theaterarbeit these photos were not what we would think of as production photographs for promotional purposes, which were useless for the work of the Berliner Ensemble: “[T]he theatre allows some photographers to take mainly posed photos in the breaks during general rehearsals, which they need to advertise the production.”34 Two problems arose: “The principal actors are crowded together into some kind of effective position” that had nothing to do with the actual production,35 and “For these ‘posed’ pictures the actors use exaggerated mime to make up for the lack of animated acting.”36 How many times had we been forced to change the staging for the sake of the picture, so actors could fit into the frame. These photos were often taken some weeks before the production opened, when ideally it should have been photographed in performance or, barring that, in late dress rehearsals. Only these would give a true picture of the proceedings.37 In the book Theaterarbeit, the authors note how well the photography reflects their work on staging, to verify that the arrangements worked both practically and aesthetically.38 For them, the importance of these sessions could not be overemphasized, as the photos could catch certain missed details or mistakes that might go by unnoticed, for example, “the sloppy little scene in the background, the meaningless chair constructed without love.”39 The director, no matter how attentive, cannot catch everything; for example, because the director has their attention on the lead actors, they “can overlook a secondary character who is contributing nothing to the scene.”40 The photos often substituted for notes that Brecht might otherwise have to give: “It is often enough simply to show an actor a picture for him to correct the mistake.41 The pictorial nature of the document, full of photographs, had several antecedents, whether storyboards or graphic narratives. Carl Weber made an interesting analogy: “The model book: it’s like a comic book really.”42  BOP 236.  BOP 236. 36  BOP 236. 37  BOP 327. Fortunately, we archived the production using photos from dress rehearsals and previews. 38  BOP 237. 39  BOP 237. 40  BOP 237. 41  BOP 237. 42  Carl Weber interview, Theatre of War. 34 35

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Documenting rehearsals and performances could be a daunting task. The work required the labor of many hands, particularly Brecht’s assistants. As Brecht noted in his work journal: “Working on Ruth’s Model book is a grind.”43 However, it was worth it, “if only to show how many things have to be taken into account for a production.”44 Berlau took so many photographs to guarantee no moments had been lost. For The Tutor, this meant ultimately a film could be made using her photos as a kind of flipbook.45 Meanwhile Brecht’s assistants were constantly working, making both extensive notes in rehearsals during the day and typing evening reports (Abendberichte) during the run of the show.46 Not only were they responsible for these voluminous notes, they took on the enormous chore of choosing, cataloguing, and labelling all of thousands of photographs Berlau’s team produced. They also had to type and paste explanations into the model book beneath the photographs.47 As Claus Küchenmeister noted of Brecht, “He just wanted everything to be meticulously recorded. These Modelbooks, if they were done properly, included details of the scene, the sentence from the scene which the actor was speaking, and the corresponding annotation.”48

Mother Courage 2015 Photography With the Fabel of the production as a guide, we made the extra effort to record on film (video or photograph) those essential moments of Haltung/Gestus/Arrangement. We had an added advantage not available to the Berliner Ensemble, the technological means at our disposal to instantly capture and view the work.49 Using smart cameras, our team  Brecht, Journals, 435.  Brecht, Journals, 435. 45  I viewed this film at the Bertolt Brecht archive and found it closely resembled a silent black and white movie. 46  Barnett, A History, 23. 47  When I examined the notes and model books at the Brecht archive, I was reminded that the team had to type out these reports rather quickly on manual typewriters, and that more than one assistant would report on each day’s work, so that the paperwork was dated, identified by author, and contained a number of typos. Meanwhile the photos themselves were originals, literally pasted into the pages of an album. 48  Lange and Hillesheim, “Interviews,” in Barnett, Bertolt Brecht: Critical and Primary Sources Volume III, 246–247. 49  For example, anyone of us could have filmed a moment, scene, or performance with our smart phones; we didn’t have to wait for the photos to be developed in the chemical process 43 44

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photographed the early Arrangements of each moment and their variations as we adjusted them. We also photographed each actor in costume in front of a white background, like the photos of actors in their various roles for the BE in Theaterarbeit.50 Extensive photos from the full production were taken during dress rehearsals. We could then compare these to the Arrangement photos made during our Stellproben.51 With the aid of presentation software, we were able to add our Notate just below the slides of the photos of each moment of each scene so the viewer could easily move back and forward between the text and the pictures. When we realized a Haltung change was not recorded with two contrasting photos, we had more than one chance to lie in wait for that moment again and capture it. For example, at first our treatment of the farmers in Scene 11 of Mother Courage was on a surface level: farmers as a type rather than as individuals. It was only when we worked through possible Haltung changes and considered how contradiction could be revealed that we noted the difference between the farm family’s interaction with the soldiers, and how they behaved with Kattrin, almost as if she were not there. A photograph of their Haltung when ambushed and a photograph of their behavior when the soldiers departed could be juxtaposed to show how, when they were no longer being threatened, their own sense of power rose, and they adjusted their status/Haltung accordingly.52 In the twenty-first century, we have many more tools for documentation at our disposal. Students constantly record their history—taking selfies or otherwise capturing photos or videos of important moments in their lives with their smartphones. We can take advantage of this habit and connect it in the students’ minds to the experiences we have when creating art.53 Though the photographing of our production of Courage in 2015 was thorough, and included dress rehearsals and a performance, we missed some moments that would have more clearly explained the Fabel through staging, for example, a photo of Yvette making up her face to juxtapose with Courage’s application of soot to Kattrin’s face. In Scene 5, one of the photographs was of a soldier ordering another soldier to help the farmers required at that time. 50  Theaterarbeit 348–386. 51  See Chap. 6. 52  See Chap. 5 for more detail about this incident. 53  It is important to note that the taking of photographs allowed Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble to freeze the pictures to more closely examine them.

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who had been attacked. He was gesturing offstage and staring at his partner. His hand was originally palm upward, his arm halfway extended. But this didn’t give us enough information. However, when he turned his palm downward and pointed his finger, fully extending his arm, though affecting a very small change, he told a clearer story. In the first version, he is asking his fellow soldier to obey; in the second, he is commanding him. If we had pinpointed those sections for the photographer, or had even restaged them for particular photos later, we would have had a more complete set of important information from which to learn. Further photos we missed included the dropping of the sword by the Young Soldier in Scene 4 after he was spooked by the clerk; the look the Regimental Secretary gave Kattrin as she exited in Scene 6, suggesting he had more than a passing interest in her; and the dragging of Swiss Cheese from the scene by the soldiers, who contorted his body to resemble an image of Christ on the cross. The model book also reminded us that, though in rehearsing Scene 5 we had taken a photo of it, “We did not finally see the farmer die, so this gestus was not used in the performance, or at least we didn’t call attention to such an incident,” and, when Courage exited with Yvette in Scene 8, after the Cook has been shamed, she stuck the pipe she had been smoking back into the Cook’s open mouth.

The Afterlife of a Play Brecht gave great thought to later incarnations of a play, and how, once it had finished its first run, it might be revised, improved, and re-mounted. Based on his experience with Mother Courage and the changes he made because of the audience response to the 1941 Zurich production, he paid particular attention to how the performances failed to communicate certain parts of the Fabel to the spectators. He was following his own maxim, as quoted by Helene Weigel: “A Brecht play is not finished even when it is on the stage.”54 Even after the production’s premiere, Brecht would hold further rehearsals and re-block as needed. Unless a company is somehow able to document every decision, false start, discovery, and challenge, as it happens in rehearsal and as the spectators respond in performance, later reflection is notably difficult: as the director Jonathan Miller has pointed out, we cannot capture the original 54  “Dialogue: Berliner Ensemble,” The Drama Review (TDR) Vol. 12, No. 1 (MIT Press, Autumn, 1967), 114.

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experience of a production exactly; it’s “after-life” during “subsequent performances” of the same play will be different for any number of reasons, not the least of which is, even with a digital recording, we are viewing one particular performance that may vary from night to night.55 As the years pass, even the team from the original production can forget the reasoning behind directorial and design decisions, whose signs were clear to the contemporary audience, but have lost their meaning since. Carl Weber, having seen the film of the Berliner Ensemble Mother Courage made in 1961 by Manfred Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch, was able to compare it to the original production that had so impressed him. He commented, “The blocking was more or less the same as onstage.”56 He felt it was also interesting “because you can study the way the actors did it.”57 However, he makes clear, “The model book is more correct about what the productions looked like.”58 This is all the more reason to follow the example of the Berliner Ensemble, by making records during the process, and revisiting a production as soon as possible. Brecht not only wanted to look back on the work as it progressed, but to learn from it and to teach others how he worked. As Angelika Hurwitz noted during the rehearsals for The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Brecht was looking far into the future in terms of sharing his work. To that end, Brecht was willing to note where he felt mistakes had been made. For example, for Scene 2 of Mother Courage, there is a note about the portrayal of the General, which was not considered a success: instead of a drunken buffoon, he should display the manners of his aristocratic background almost as an afterthought.59 Brecht mounted later productions of Courage using his 1949 model as a guide for further study. This was the case with the Munich production of Mother Courage in 1950, which then served as a model for the Berliner Ensemble Courage in 1951. These were not exact copies of the 1949 production but, by the same token, Brecht did not have to reinvent the wheel: he wasn’t required to use the same solutions for the same problems but to reconsider those problems. This was because he had insisted on such  Jonathan Miller, Subsequent Performances (New York: Viking Adult, 1986), 19–72.  Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 64. 57  Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 64. 58  Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 64. One can view the film at The Brecht-Weigel Archive in Berlin. Being filmed in a studio, as Weber says, “it’s much more naturalistic.” Jakovljević et al., “The Voice from the 10th Row,” 64. 59  Brecht, Collected Plays: Five, 291. 55 56

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complete documentation. He and Ruth Berlau created a series of these model books, including volumes for Life of Galileo, Antigone, and Mother Courage, and this became a standard practice of the Berliner Ensemble under Brecht’s leadership. Manfred Wekwerth’s Notate for Mother Courage, when it was restaged by the Berliner Ensemble in 1951, are excellent examples of ways to record changes in staging based on studying the model, not to copy it, but to improve on what was discovered before.60 They may be for purposes of clarity, to make further political points, or change the aesthetics of what the spectator is viewing. For example, a political reason to adjust the Figure of the General in Scene 2 was to have him put on a social mask of fatherly concern, something he had practiced, to cover the fact he wanted Eilif to perform ever more dangerous exploits.61 Other examples included descriptions of actors and dramaturgical and lighting choices: when Ernst Busch took over the role of the Cook in 1951, he became a more charming Figure. When haggling with Courage over the price of the chicken in Scene 2, the actor sang an old Dutch folk song he knew from living for a time in the Netherlands. When he reached the second verse, he knelt in front of her and sang his price of thirty guilders.62 When the Cook, the Chaplain and Courage sang “eine fest Berg” before the attack on the camp in Scene 3, it was performed straightforwardly rather than as an example of satire.63 Their attitude gave a different tone to the scene. In Scene 9, due to the “winter” lighting, it had been difficult to make out the details on the darkened stage. Adjusting the lighting meant painting the sunrise on the parsonage wall.64 The members of the BE noted the change in attitude of the General towards the Chaplain in Scene 2: the Chaplain only served his purpose when he encouraged combatants to fight for God or, when the war was over, to contribute monetarily because of being defeated. Otherwise, they were to be tolerated.65 In the same scene, Eilif’s dance makes a comment on the military and his place in it, first holding his sword improperly like a  Wekwerth, Schriften, 84–87.  Wekwerth, Schriften, 84. 62  Wekwerth, Schriften, 84. 63  Wekwerth, Schriften, 85. In English, the hymn, composed by Martin Luther, is titled “A Mighty Fortress is Our Lord.” 64  Wekwerth, Schriften, 85. 65  Wekwerth, Schriften, 85. 60 61

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child, then dancing drunkenly, then falling, a constant balance between wildness and control. The purpose: to show that he, a poor former civilian, has been indoctrinated and is now a supporter of the war.66

Mother Courage Model Book 2015 We have an advantage in the twenty-first century: our model books can be electronic. A digital version can contain photos and/or videos, and they can be annotated. We can record live action in color, but we can also footnote it. The students can create notebooks with presentation software which is more easily shared with an interested audience. The researcher may examine the file individually or the assistants may show a dramaturgical presentation on screen to a production team. In the latter case, the team can use this software to combine live footage and production notes to highlight what the viewers are seeing and to explain the reasoning behind staging and interpretation. These notes can be shared for group editing. The software can include audio sound files and links to websites for further research, including YouTube videos. It can be a much more complete “document” of the process and doesn’t require that each assistant laboriously type separate notes to be collated. These presentations resemble DVDs of films with “audio commentary,” which were, at one time “models” for future filmmakers and enthusiasts. Now that the makers of podcasts discuss the reasoning behind artistic choices for films, television and plays, the value of this medium for theatrical documentation and distribution is clear. Mother Courage Model Book 2015 included the following materials: 1. Stellproben photos on individual slides and Arrangements selected for each moment in rehearsal and titled by the team. 2. Production photo counterparts to the Stellproben photos, taken during dress rehearsals and linked to their corresponding Stellproben Arrangements as well as photos of the scene transitions, sound effects, orchestra playing, and curtain call. 3. The Fabel for Mother Courage 2015 with an explanation for its purpose. 4. Notate: the extensive notes taken by the assistants and included with both the Arrangement and production photos.  Wekwerth, Schriften, 86.

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5. The Music: a separate section containing notes for each piece composed by Christopher Smith, photos of the band in performance, and links to the score. 6. Performer photos: full-on photos of each actor in their costumes and makeup, taken in front of a white background. Consulting the final document, I found myself considering a number of additions, to take advantage of the technology available to us, including interviews with the cast and crew and photos of the props, especially the wagon from different angles; further explications for the choices made in individual moments; further dramaturgical materials by our excellent dramaturg, Clay Martin; and more documentation of the designs with further accounts by the designers of their process. The idea of providing the audience members with individual commentary is one I would like to pursue in the future, as well as a platform for audience feedback sent from the auditorium during the performance through their own devices. As Brecht had reminded us, the model book allowed us to identify problems, even those we did not solve. We noted that, though the actors do not have to be trained singers, they should have been rehearsed enough to feel comfortable performing the Mother Courage songs. The large cast required for the play can be decreased in number through doubling, but the costume designer will still be constructing clothes for each character. Abstract backgrounds focus the audience’s attention on the Figures, so it is that much more important they be wearing and carrying realistic items for story-telling purposes. Though the photos and notes don’t always reveal this, Courage can be a very funny play at times, and the production team found many comic, as well as ironic, moments—often through the study of contradiction. For example, the clash of pragmatism with faith brought out the absurdity of religious fervor when applied to the war, such as when Courage and the Chaplain so easily slid into Catholicism while being ignorant of its rituals. And though he is often painted as a self-serving hypocrite, Anthony Burton’s Chaplain was so overly serious as to be at times a real figure of fun and, and the same time, endearing. He constantly found himself out of his depth in the hostile environment of war-torn Europe and counted on more world-weary figures to guide him. The Chaplain’s most telling moment was when he begs the Cook not to push him out and wistfully remarks he finds more nobility in washing bottles than saving souls

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because, “The bottles come clean.”67 Burton played this moment as a final comment on his lapsed beliefs. Brecht has created some of the most striking characters in dramatic literature. As the moral center of the piece, Kattrin is a favorite of the spectators, and no amount of Verfremdung will keep them from being moved by her journey through the play. We also noticed, due to their willingness to accept theatrical convention, and their concern for the mute young woman, the spectator could accept the reality of conditions that were clearly contrived. No matter where the sound of the gun came from,68 they seemed to imagine the bullet that struck Kattrin. Kattrin’s character is intelligent, and it is also important the actor have the opportunity to speak real lines for a time in rehearsal, so in performance, when only sounds and gestures are allowed her, they will convey greater meaning. The role of Anna Fierling, with a talented actress, always draws the ­audience towards them through their charisma, humor, intelligence, and fortitude. A monster of a role, it has to be carefully paced to avoid burning out the actor. As Courage, Kelsey Fisher-Waits found herself the leader in a marathon, and rose to the occasion, always managing to pull the whole company across the finish line, even if just this side of exhausted. What I most remembered, looking back, was the enjoyment I found in the process, and a reminder and caveat by the authors of the Couragemodell 1949 to those who would follow their instructions: “It is hoped that the present notes…will not give an impression of contrived seriousness.”69 Though the theatre makers are elaborating on their process in excruciating detail, this does not mean they didn’t enjoy working on the production: “It is simply difficult in writing about these things to convey the carefree lightness that is essential in theatre.”70 The model books were intended to be pedagogic in nature, but their ultimate aim was to describe how the company created an entertaining piece of theatre in as enjoyable a way as possible. Pedagogically, being able to stress the pleasure of working on a production, but also the fun to be found through recording it, was an important note for us to consider and try to create within the team. We elaborated on the practice of the Berliner Ensemble and used our own prompts to  Kushner, Mother Courage, 77.  It was the striking of a piece of wood at the Foley table downstage left. 69  BOP 222. 70  BOP 222. 67 68

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determine what should be included in our documentation. Producing a model book for Mother Courage was itself the modeling of a practice we wanted the students to consider in the future: a thorough and well-­ documented consideration of the processes they had learned and how they might be used in their own work, whether in scenes or full productions. They could also take some pride in having applied their own means of recording as a way of updating this process for the twenty-first century. Finally, our model book was useful for this volume, as the detailed notes allowed me to re-examine the work we had done some years ago, and to discuss the results of our experiment: the subject of the last chapter.

CHAPTER 10

Responses and Future Work

[O]ur performances in berlin don’t have any echo at all … our efforts might be completely senseless except if our mode of playing can be resurrected later, that is if [the production’s] value as teaching material is eventually realized.1 (Bertolt Brecht)

In 2015, the School of Theatre and Dance served as a laboratory whereby a group of faculty and students came together to execute Versuche: attempts or experiments in theatrical craft with Brecht as our guide.2 It was important, despite the amount of material available to us for pursuing a form of “Brechtian” production, we create our own work, a twenty-first-­ century version of those ideas which would lead us to new ways of encouraging social change through the art of theatre. We used Brecht’s conception of historicization, an examination of how society develops, to compare our contemporary social system with another. With Mother Courage, just as the BE presented both the events of the Thirty Years War and Brecht’s excavation of political ideas that mirrored those of the mid-twentieth century, we looked for those ideas that connected to the twenty-first. We framed our own work as itself a product of history, making the imaginative leap to a future in which our own views  Brecht, Journals, 454. Entry for March 4, 1953.  Versuche was the title Brecht gave to the collections of his work, 7 volumes between 1930 and 1933 and 8 more volumes after he returned to Germany from exile. 1 2

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were being examined and subjected to Verfremdung, the making of the familiar and customary into the unfamiliar and strange. The analysis that arose from this view, the Fabel, inspired the mounting of a production with a particular end in mind: to reveal that the ever-­ thuses, those conditions that seemed to have been operating forever but were in fact actually social constructs, could be questioned for the benefit of an audience using various forms of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt. We experimented with ways that Verfremdung could be aroused in the audience, by aiming our designs, acting, and staging towards the inherent contradictions within the material and, by extension, in the world, to call closer attention to circumstances that were not being challenged, either through complacency or through reluctant concession. The forms these results took were based on the advantages twenty-first-century theatre technology afforded us, the major advances since Brecht’s own time providing new opportunities, particularly in relation to the creation of the model books and to the literarization that could be accomplished in performance. This did not mean rejecting theatre practices which we had long known, and in which we had been trained; like Brecht, we didn’t seek to throw out useful, and long-held, methods for entertainment and instructional purposes. Traditional techniques for holding an audience’s attention or telling a story were still useful. The work of Konstantin Stanislavsky still guided our construction of roles even if further nuances were applied based on Brecht’s intentions, actualized in the form of the “Not … but,” or the portrayal of gestic incidents through the discovery of a Figure’s Haltung or Haltung changes. In an institute of higher education, without the economic pressures of professional theatre, we had the opportunity to not only test what Brecht suggested, but to consider new ways to realize his methods. Our own work, with Keith Johnstone’s status transactions, strengthened our understanding of how the Haltungen might operate, as did our discovery that Brecht saw identification with the character, an aim of Stanislavsky training, as one step in a larger process of Figure creation, if not the final one. If our study had simply concerned the reconstruction of unfamiliar techniques for the sake of novelty, we would have failed to understand the importance of theatre to Brecht and dismissed theoretical ideas which ended up being much more functional when brought onto the stage. We would not have agreed on a view of the play that would then allow our team to apply their own unique talents to its realization. Our process of

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collaboration might have been simply lip service and not, as we discovered, an opportunity for all to contribute individually—through the Separation of the Elements— to make their own comments on the piece within the agreed-upon plan. We might have chosen Mother Courage and Her Children simply for its narrative power and its importance in the theatrical canon, rather than as a piece constructed by Brecht to contain those elements we wanted to explore that would lead to social critique. The students would not have been able to test and then adopt important tools for creating their own theatre of social change. And if we had approached the work from a purely theoretical viewpoint, we would not have had as much fun as we did putting it all together. Finally, audiences wouldn’t have had the opportunity to consider questions about their own lives and societal structures while a story unfolded and an epic was laid out for their enjoyment. In 1953, Brecht despaired that his work would make a lasting impression or be of any instructional value.3 At that time, the Berliner Ensemble was in its fourth year as a company, a realization of Brecht’s dream of finally putting his ways of working into practice. However, they had not yet taken their productions to the Festival of Dramatic Art in France, nor were they in their permanent home but still shared the stage with Wolfgang Langhoff’s company at the Deutsches Theater. 1953 was also the year the German Democratic Republic held their Stanislavsky Conference, clearly making a distinction between the artistic master they preferred to the one they had at home; Brecht was being attacked as a formalist. According to his journal, it was also taking years to train his actors to realize his preferred form of performance.4 His fears were presumptuous. The Berliner Ensemble’s appearance in Paris was a triumph; Mother Courage received the top prize for both best play and best production. On March 19, 1954, the Ensemble finally moved into the site of Brecht’s first great theatrical success, The Threepenny Opera, in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. In 1955, he returned to Paris, overseeing his production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Theatre

3  This was in part due to the audience being made up of the bourgeoisie rather than the workers, upon whose actions Brecht pinned his hopes. See the quote that begins this chapter and its accompanying footnote. 4  “No less than 5 years at the be were necessary to give angelika hurwicz [sic] the right foundation ….” See Brecht, Journals, 457.

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Sarah Bernhardt, which, if anything, was even more warmly received.5 Meanwhile, his assistants were carrying on his work, and would do so after his death in 1956. He did not live to lead The Berliner Ensemble’s tour to London, but this too was considered a high-water mark for European theatre, and British theatre artists adopted the BE’s innovations in design, in writing, and in approaches to the classics. If Brecht’s name is not on everyone’s lips today, his influence is felt still, and his means for production and his theories of practice have become ingrained in the vocabulary of world theatre.

The Performance and Lessons Learned We had worked on a play by Brecht, experimenting with Brecht’s way of working and coming to a greater understanding of what he was trying to accomplish. What we didn’t know was whether his approach was still viable in the twenty-first century as far as our audience was concerned. Once we had received this feedback, we continued to reflect on what we had learned and how it might be applied to other projects. In particular, we were worried about the length of the play, especially with the number of scene changes it contained. This was also Brecht’s concern as well.6 He stressed, “The lengths of scene changes are hugely important even for stages without revolves. You cannot expect an audience to wait half an hour for scene changes in a play like Mother Courage.”7 He resolved to minimize these pauses through special attention: “Scene changes must be rehearsed as scenes are.”8 Like the Berliner Ensemble, we spent extra nights on crew assignments, giving specific duties to the stage hands (including actors), considering what they would each carry on, what each would take off when they left, how much light they would need to see as they worked, and other considerations such as traffic patterns of walls and people, timing of the placement of actors, and the cueing of the

5  “At last, the theatre one dreamt of!” wrote the reviewer of L’Express. Quoted in Parker, 588, and Kenneth Tynan was there for The Observer and enthused, “Once in a generation the world discovers a new way of telling a story; this generation’s pathfinder is Brecht.” Kenneth Tynan, “Some Stars from the East, The Observer, 26 June 1955, Quoted in Parker, 588 6  Käthe Rülicke-Weiler states the BE production of 1951 was 179 minutes. Rülicke-Weiler, Dramaturgie Brechts, 86 7  BOP 244. 8  BOP 245.

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title readings. In this way, we were able to eliminate several minutes from the show. The ensemble of Mother Courage in 2015 worked as a unit, and the performances, particularly that of Kelsey Fisher-Waits as Courage, were powerful. The audience members we spoke to after each performance told us they were not so involved in the story that they couldn’t examine the play’s events critically, in the sense that Brecht had in mind: as we had hoped, they were disturbed by the decisions of the figures and questioned why those choices were made. For example, they found Fisher-Wait’s figure to be constantly contradictory: charismatic but, at many points, unsympathetic. Several spectators spoke of the events just as we had determined them in the Fabel. They found the design frame of the production distanced them from the action while still engaging their attention. The audience also laughed in many places, a reaction we considered important, as the comical and satirical moments in Courage were also part of Brecht’s plan and a form of Verfremdung. Kushner’s translation was a great aid in this respect as he made a point of bringing out the humor in the play.9 One change we made out of necessity was the way in which we presented the titles: Travis Clark had planned to pin all of the various scene titles to the front curtain, but we discovered during technical rehearsals that, even by spotlighting them, we could not differentiate the titles from each other. We scrapped these bits of cloth and instead had an archivist announce the titles over a microphone. This also meant the semi-transparent curtain was bare, and shadows could be seen moving about behind it, the work of the theatre continuing beyond the play’s incidents. Though we were pleased with the paintings and their ability to remind the spectator that humankind will always be at war with itself and will have difficulty breaking the cycle of violence, misery, and suffering, the secondary intent, foreshadowing the fortunes of the children, was not completely successful as literarization. From night to night there was the real risk the images of death would have the opposite effect. As the play progressed, and the audience realized the meaning behind the appearance of the paintings, rather than separating themselves from the Figures, thus yielding critical distance, the spectators sometimes felt a sense of dread as they realized the Figures would soon be losing their lives. The images served as substitutes for the offstage executions. This device, instead of being an effective piece of meta-theatre, in some cases, led to greater identification 9

 See the discussion on Kushner’s translation of Mother Courage in Chap. 2.

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and personalization, not the heightening of political consciousness which Brecht sought. In the 2015 production, further separations of the elements somewhat mitigated this problem: for example, the sounds of gunshots manufactured by technicians onstage were patently derived from a different source; we eschewed realistic sources, such as the firing of a prop gun. One of the archivists provided the sound of the crying baby in Scene 5, and the spectators found some humor in clearly seeing him do so by the Foley table. They then ceased to worry about the baby’s fate as Kattrin rescued it from the burning barn. Overall, the staged environment was a sterile one and yielded focus, when necessary, to the offstage actions of the archivists, who portrayed studied disinterest, suggesting the experimental and objectifying nature of situations designed to affect the characters but not the observers. In terms of the acting, we found a sense of critical detachment was difficult to maintain. Fisher-Waits embraced the idea of judging Courage for most of the play. However, she had some difficulty keeping her feelings in check in Scenes 3 and 12, and though she tried not to cry when singing the lullaby to Kattrin, she couldn’t stop herself. Though Courage at this point was in denial, refusing to take the blame for her daughter’s death, the actress’s natural empathy broke through.10 We appreciated being able to examine the model from 1949, but we did not slavishly imitate it. In many instances, we made changes because we found our own solutions to the challenges of the text. For example, the portrayal of Yvette in Scene 8, when she reappears in Courage’s camp diverged from the role as Regine Lutz played it; Lutz was a debauched and heavy figure who ate to excess. Because of her gout, she had to walk with a cane, which she tried to use on the Cook during their altercation. In 2015, Tawny Westbrook played a more elegant Yvette whose mourning dress added to her attractiveness. Even her cane was more of a walking stick. We wanted to contrast the condition in which Courage found herself at that point in the war with Yvette’s superior social and economic status through the costume designs but also by comparing their status/Haltungen. Yvette, or Madame Colonel Starhemberg, was a high-status Figure who held in her anger until just before her exit, when she turned, walked to the 10  Much to Brecht’s chagrin, Helene Weigel is supposed to have had a similar problem during The Mother. Rülicke-Weiler, Käthe. “Brecht and Weigel at the Berliner Ensemble.” Interview by Matthias Braun. New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 7, Issue 25, February 1991.

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Cook and, in a vestige of her old self, screamed in his face: “And now, at very long last, Piping Pieter, YOU CAN KISS MY ASS!”11 Once the play had an audience, we made a number of discoveries. A mistake made in the first performance suggested a correction that actually revealed a facet of Courage’s cleverness: when the Sergeant pulled a slip from his helmet, he drew a blank piece of paper instead of a black cross. We realized Courage, just like the actor, would not have left this to chance. In fact, Brecht made just this point in the first draft of the play: “His stage directions indicate that she draws a black cross on each scrap of paper before inviting other characters to draw lots from a helmet.”12 From then on, so did our Courage. In the middle of the intense section of Scene 3 between Courage, the soldiers, and Swiss Cheese we discovered a humorous moment: when Swiss Cheese complained the meal he ate was too salty, Courage became irritated at this particular improvised line by her son. Her, “For him it was oversalted,” emphasized the “him”—indicating Swiss Cheese’s claim was his own opinion not hers. She almost dropped the pretense he had established by being affronted at his characterization of her food.13 Once we received the performance props, we found they changed the way we conveyed the sense of some scenes. For example, in Scene 11, when Kattrin climbs on top of the roof, she pulls the ladder up after her, and just barely does so before the farmer gets there. Our ladder was large and cumbersome, and difficult to handle. However, Josylynn Reid’s feat of strength showed the Figure’s determination to succeed. All of the songs were performed by microphone. These were handed to the actors by archivists as needed. In terms of the song for Scene 10, it was originally assigned to a voice offstage. The two women, Courage and Kattrin, stop pulling the cart and listen to it, then go on their way. We decided to further show the separation of actor and character by having Josylynn Reid who, up until that point had been the speech-impaired Kattrin, step away from the wagon and sing the song. This was not a

 Kushner, Mother Courage, 80. Emphasis mine and the actor’s.  Laura Bradley, “Training the Audience,” 1039. Bradley also notes that Courage originally drew crosses on six slips, indicating that she also planned to pull one for herself but ultimately didn’t follow through. Bradley, 1039 referring to “Mutter Courage Urtext,” in BFA 490/11. 13  Kushner, Mother Courage, 43. And he also suggested she overcharged with “10 hellers it cost me.” Kushner, Mother Courage, 43. 11 12

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difficult decision, as she had the best singing voice in the cast.14 She then handed her microphone back to the archivist, hitched herself to the wagon, and Kattrin helped her mother pull it offstage. In 1949, Courage had pulled her wagon around the stage pursuing the army to the next marketing opportunity, unrepentant for her actions. In 2015, the play ended on a loud note; as Courage moved upstage with the wagon, the band crashed through a dissonant rock finish and the plastic front curtain came down, ending the last scene. When the curtain rose again on the actors, staring at the audience in tableau, there was a long silence, followed by applause: I asked members of the audience about this, and they told me they were still thinking through the last moments before vociferously acknowledging the performers. Kelsey Fisher-Waits described what happened: It was a punch in the gut to look at. I mean this ragged, worn, mostly deceased group of people, and here they are brought back unapologetically and displayed before you for the broken creatures that they are. I remember it was opening night, and Travis’s [plastic sheeting] rose, and we just stood there and there was—and I’m sure it was only seconds, but it felt like minutes to me, and the audience was like, “Do we clap? Should we clap?” and then they did. I’m not kidding, I get chills when I think about that curtain call because you would think we would have wanted that big glorious sweeping thing for that hard show we did, but no. That would have been a disservice.15

We were particularly encouraged when we compared the tableaux the team had created in the early weeks of rehearsal with the final production photos. We found many times we had made only small adjustments: the basic placement of the Figures and their attitudes were the same.16 The first Arrangements had worked as a foundation for the final staging. By way of professional feedback, we were fortunate to receive both an oral and written critique from a representative of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Being an entrant for the festival, our production was given this peer review by Dr. Bill Doll, Professor of Theatre at Angelo State, a respondent assigned to our production by KCACTF. His 14  Until we decided on this course of action as a sign of further Verfremdung, it was a source of some teasing, that I had cast the best singer as the person who could not speak. 15  Fisher-Waits interview with the author. 16  See plates 15 and 16. For a discussion of specific attitudes, see the discussion in Chap. 6 on Haltung.

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oral response to our team and his accompanying letter indicated we had succeeded in putting our points across to at least one member of the audience. He wrote, in part: Production details were attended to and extensive, staging worked beautifully, acting and scene changes, included production design elements that were inventive, and incorporated extraordinary music. The leadership exhibited, from my perspective, was right on in each of the areas mentioned above. Collaboration was vast and successful. I am impressed with the work I saw on stage and off in this production. Strong instruction was evident as students intelligently addressed my questions in the response period after the performance. Planning was well done in order to mount this production in six weeks.17

Our production of Brecht’s epic work was over three hours, with the intermission after Scene 4 coming at the ninety-minute mark. We wanted to keep the audience’s attention so they would avoid looking at their watches and imagine the production passed more quickly than the actual running time.18 To our relief, at least one audience member found this to be the case. Dr. Doll wrote: “In the three hours and 40 minutes of running time I was never bored, and having acted in and seen many productions of Brecht’s plays I was surprised with the enjoyment I had through the evening.”19 Doll concluded, “Most importantly Courage was a creative and well-­ crafted production, simultaneously entertaining and instructive.” He awarded the show KCACTF Meritorious Achievement Awards for Direction and Music Composition and invited us to perform scenes at the Regional Festival.20 As a coda, our Assistant Director, Madison Weinhoffer, noted our production represented a memorial to those who lives were lost in the Thirty Years War, still considered one of the worst catastrophes in history. As she explained in the printed program for the show, “The Germans use two different words for memorial. Denkmal refers to the memorials of great  Dr. Bill Doll, Peer Review for Mother Courage, May 18, 2015.  An informal survey of audience reactions suggested that overall this goal was accomplished. A number of audience members were surprised to discover, at intermission, that so much time had passed. 19  Doll, Peer Review, May 18, 2015. The running time was 1 hour and 34 minutes for Act 1 (Scenes 1–4) and 1  hour and 32  minutes for Act II (5–12) with a fifteen-minute intermission. 20  For economic reasons, unfortunately we weren’t able to accept that invitation. 17 18

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acts or victories, but Mahnmal makes a further distinction and is used to describe those acts that are to be remembered but never repeated.”21 As she noted, our Mother Courage was a Mahnmal for “a conflict that, in the collective mind of the Germans, was more devastating than World War I or II.”22 In terms of its realization, our team created “an archival reenactment of events that, one hopes, will never happen again.”23 This added to our intent to seriously confront the issues behind the play and to offer them up to our public. Some months later, in June 2016, I presented my work on the production at the 15th Annual International Brecht Symposium at Saint Hugh’s College, Oxford University. There I received a positive response from Brecht scholars, including Dr. David Barnett.

Engaging with Brecht through Other Authors’ Works The work we did on Mother Courage led me to new forms of direction for material of many different types and genres. The fact is the possibilities of using this work and the philosophy behind it are endless, and the university is a perfect forum for an ongoing exploration. In the following years, I began to apply Brecht ways of working to other directorial projects keeping in mind Brecht had also made this part of the mission of the Berliner Ensemble, and contemporary practitioners such as David Barnett and David Zoob were exploring various playtexts by way of Brecht.24 I discovered a vast number of plays might be considered in this same way, by examining how society had shaped the authors of works from many different eras and genres. The ideological, socio-economic environments inherent in theatre texts by both Brecht and many others, only remained to be explored using a particular lens, a lens that could be influenced by the interests of the production team with their contemporary concerns, whether questions of race, colonialism, feminism, and so on.

21  Madison Weinhoffer, “Program Notes for Department of Theatre and Dance’s Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, Maedgen Mainstage 2015. 22  Weinhoffer, “Program Notes.“ 23  Weinhoffer, “Program Notes.” 24  See Barnett’s Brecht in Practice as well as David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (London: Nick Hern Books, 2018).

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Brecht himself had done this with works as widely different as those by Marlowe, Shakespeare and Moliere, and classic German works by J.M.R. Lenz and Gerhart Hauptmann. Arrigo Subiotto, in his study of Brecht’s adaptations, proposed the means by which Brecht refunctioned these works for his own purposes: “Instead of imposing modern political ideas by constraint on the historical situation, [Brecht] sought now to release similar political attitudes latent in the original.”25 Brecht could accomplish his goals just as well through adaptation: as Anthony Squiers notes, “When Brecht diverges from the original text at least two things are possible: 1) that this divergence is designed to reveal gestic instances which specifically contradicts the way social life is portrayed in the original or 2) to reveal something on which the original is silent or missed.”26 Our students were able to use the work in different contexts in plays by Shakespeare and Ibsen. In particular, a cohesiveness was established with the cast and production team, when they had the opportunity to work together on the Fabel and Arrangements for the play.

Further Uses of the Brecht Method: Refunctioning the Classics Brecht not only applied his ideas to his own plays but to the works of classic and contemporary authors. He both adapted other author’s works and applied his working methods to realizing them onstage as a way of promoting his philosophy of change. He treated all material as a source of refunctioning. He used plays by other authors as a springboard to write his own: these Gegenstücke (counterplays) included Baal, a counter play to Hanns Johst’s The Lonely One, and The Days of the Commune, a counterplay to Nordhal Grieg’s The Defeat.27 We too, with the resources available to us, including a large acting pool, longer rehearsal periods, built in rehearsal and performing spaces, inexpensive student labor, and a subscription audience, could refunction the  Subiotto, Bertolt Brecht’s Adaptations, 5  Anthony Squiers, “Brecht, Plato, Socratic Courage and the Fabel: An Analysis of What Brecht Had to Say and Method of Saying It,” in Norman Roessler and Anthony Squiers, eds., Philosophizing Brecht: Critical Readings on Art, Consciousness, Social Theory and Performance (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019), 107. Gestic instances 27  Peter Thomson, “Brecht and Actor Training,” in Twentieth Century Actor Training, ed. Allison Hodge (London: Routledge, 2000), 109. 25 26

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classic works already familiar to our audiences or create new pieces for their viewing pleasure. Even as a young man, when Brecht criticized productions of the classics, he took exception, not with the authors, but with their interpreters— those directors who tried to update plays to give them a contemporary sensibility: in a sense, to use presentism. In his essay “Classical Status as an Intimidating Factor,” Brecht suggested if we are to produce works from the past, we must look at them from the authors’ perspective rather than from our own.28 This includes the idea that, when the plays were written, they offered the audience innovative ideas and surprising elements that later inspired others. Brecht felt the freshness of the play in its first incarnation was easily lost.29 Instead, directors tended to “aim at purely formal and superficial ‘innovations’ that are foreign to the work.”30 He tried to avoid this by studying “the historical situations prevailing when it was written, also the classical author’s attitude and special peculiarities.”31 Brecht pinpointed those directorial interpretations that ruined contemporary productions of the classics: either the staging fell into a traditional form, merely repeating certain common practices in stale ways, or it attempted to modernize an old work with formalist trappings that were purely decoration as innovation. Brecht left many notes on his directorial model, and we also have his theories of adaptation and examples of how he used the classic plays written by various authors for his own purposes. Meanwhile, today’s theatre makers continue to invent unique applications for Brecht’s methods, whether on contemporary or classic plays. By engaging with Brecht, theatre makers can stage new works in a way that will make the spectator more politically engaged, but they can also adapt classic works to reveal parallels and contrasts with contemporary ideologies. One of the key functions of higher education is to expand the students’ ability to think about the various issues that affect them, to present various paradigms of the world for their study. Educational theatre is an entertaining and effective means of doing this.

 BOT 275–277.  “Classical Status as an Intimidating Factor,” BOT 276. 30  BOT 276. 31  BOT 276. 28 29

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Arrangement as a Continuing Tool I should emphasize what I’ve learned from Brecht about the importance of Arrangement can be applied to the works of other playwrights; using this same frozen tableaux technique allows actors to underline specific moments by controlling, as much as possible, the signs they themselves present on the stage. Since directing Mother Courage, I have used this technique in staging scenes from Arcadia by Tom Stoppard and En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the People) by Henrik Ibsen. For Arcadia, I used frozen tableaux to highlight the important events and subtext beneath Stoppard’s brilliant language. For En Folkefiende, translated by Brad Birch, the Fabel and its realization helped to convey the political overtones that served as the basis for the conflict between the two brothers, Peter and Tom Stockmann.

Brechtian Theatre Today In the twenty-first century, theatre artists have already taken up Brecht’s challenge to find new forms and have used Brecht’s ideas to make contemporary points about representation on stage. Brecht has inspired eminent directors such as Peter Brook, Thomas Ostermeier, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Sellars, and Di Trevis, as well as world-renowned playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, and Mark Ravenhill, who directly acknowledge their debt to Brecht while taking his ideas in new directions that work for them now in the twenty-first century. Augusto Boal’s work, inspired by Brecht’s political theatre, is still being practiced, for example by Jana Sanskriti, founded in 1985 by Sanjoy Ganguly for Indian and Eastern theatre, one of “the largest and long-lasting, Theatre of the Oppressed operations in the world.”32 One practitioner who openly speaks of Brecht’s influence is Moisés Kaufman, the Venezuelan theatre director and founder of the Tectonic Theater Project in New York City, who has written about his work with that innovative company and how they created pieces such as The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency. He wrote: “Brecht’s ideas about the theater

32  Ralph Yarrow, Jana Sanskriti: Performance as New Politics (London: Routledge, 2022), 1. Ganguly is said to have proclaimed that “if Brecht hadn’t been born in Germany, he would have been Indian.” Yarrow, 34.

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have always played a key role in our process, particularly his notion that both actor and character should be present onstage.”33 Kaufman has discovered a means for constructing stereoscopic performances and tested this approach in several productions where he’s made the actor a second, specific character within the piece, with lines to speak as themselves. Kaufman said, “In the end, we take Brecht’s desire to have both the actor and the character onstage a step further by giving the actor text and by further fleshing out the relationship between actors and the characters they play.”34

As Long as the World Needs Changing Twenty-first-century theatre makers continue to engage with Brecht because the issues concerning us—global capitalism continues to heavily favor the haves over the have-nots, nationalist ideologies are on the rise, the internet and social media manipulate and challenge the idea of the “truth,” and our never-ending dependence on natural resources increases the effects of climate change—require us to follow Brecht’s path, to apply new means of expression when explaining complex issues, and to use new practices to fight the ever-thuses that pervasively control societal narratives. Lara Stevens, an Australian professor of culture and art, pointed out “since irony and defamiliarization are today frequently used in advertising, theatre makers and playwrights face an even greater challenge to estrange the relationship between market interests, cultural products and global conflict.”35 One issue with the devices Brecht used to open the eyes of spectators to new ways of considering the world was that many of them have been co-opted, consciously or not, by those whose goal is to maintain the status quo Brecht so wanted to affect. As the philosopher Antonio Gramsci suggested, members of the hegemony will go to great lengths to maintain the power relations that benefit them. Through the use of propaganda, these elites can sell society on the idea of the ever-thuses that support their agenda. Such control myths, stories that aren’t true but seem 33  Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams, Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater. (New York: Vintage Books, 2018) 284. 34  Kaufman and Pitts McAdams, Moment Work, 286. 35  Stevens, Anti-War Theatre After Brecht, 44.

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so, are insidious and become invisible through constant repetition.36 Studying Brecht allows us to consider the control myths of our own time and find ways to counteract them. An example of a control myth appeared in the news in 2005 during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and was immediately decried. Two photos appeared in local papers about how the citizens of New Orleans foraged for food. To describe the photo of a Black man, the newspaper used this caption: “A young man walks through chest-deep water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday.”37 The caption that accompanied a second photo of a White couple performing the same activity read, “Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.”38 In other words, while the person of color was “looting a grocery store,” the white couple was “finding bread and soda from a local grocery story.”39 The message here is the person of color—the other—was engaging in criminal behavior, while the “residents”—those who belong there—were showing initiative in feeding their families.40 The hegemony (white, male, rich) perpetuate such control myths; they designate who is the hero and who is the villain, as if these labels are the only possible designations for diverse actors in emergency circumstances. To be aware of these strategies, however, encourages countermeasures.

Propaganda Brecht would be disappointed but not surprised by the way in which propaganda for the powerful has become more sophisticated and even harder to combat. The ways he used to lead spectators towards deeper and more complex consideration of the world became a means to sell more and 36  Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning, Re:Imagining Change: How to Use a Story-­ Based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017), 44. Their discussion highlights such control myths as “The Invisible Hand of the Market,” “Trickle-Down Economics,” and “The War on Terror.” 37  Based on the story in The New  York Times, “Who’s a Looter? In Storm’s Aftermath, Pictures Kick up a Different Kind of Tempest,” Tania Ralli, September 5, 2005 as cited in Reinsborough and Canning, Re:Imagining Change, 165. 38  Reinsborough, Re-Imagining Change, 165. 39  Emphasis mine. 40  Reinsborough, Re-Imagining Change, 165. Emphasis mine.

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more products, to present as inevitable those policies and laws that benefit only the well-off, to drum up support for military action in the name of national pride. Fortunately, as new forms of control develop so do new forms of protest. This brings us full circle to Brecht’s point: art can be used to support disparate views. Any new developments in messaging used by one group can be adapted by another group as a form of protest. Stevens went on: “If audiences are to be made into critical thinkers the idea of Verfremdungseffekt remains useful but the forms it takes will require constant remaking and experimentation.”41 Groups who are committed to affecting change have creatively appropriated the ways in which hegemonic propaganda and marketing are disseminated, using the latest technologies to distribute their messages widely and freely through social media. Though they might not label it as such, those who seek to affect change use a form of Verfremdung: they have adapted common cultural icons and popular ad campaigns and defamiliarized them to new effect. Advertising observer Andrew Boyd offered an example of an anti-smoking proponent who subverted Joe Camel, the brand mascot for Camel cigarettes in the 1980s and 1990s, into Joe Chemo. In depictions that mirror the original style of the Joe Camel ads, a gaunt Joe Chemo lies dying in a hospital bed. He is a powerful harbinger of the dangers of smoking.42 The Joe Chemo example makes use of a twenty-first-century tool, détournement, a form of misappropriation in which a cause borrows what Boyd calls a familiar “media artifact”43 to give it an alternative meaning that “bypasses the audience’s mental filters by mimicking familiar cultural symbols, then disrupting them.”44 In 2011, when journalists photographed police officer Lt. John Pike confronting University of California, Davis students as they peacefully protested, people around the world retaliated by placing the photo in unexpected environments. The image of the officer as he matter-of-factly deployed his pepper spray was added to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album  Stevens, Anti-War Theatre After Brecht, 45.  Andrew Boyd, Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution (New York: OR Books, 2012), 28. 43  Boyd, Beautiful Trouble, 28 44  Boyd, Beautiful Trouble, 28. 41 42

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cover, Georges Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and other representations of art and culture as a critique of unthinking police brutality.45

Staging Dissent Forms of guerilla theatre can expose the hidden truths behind governmental policies. Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Channing offer an example in their book Re:Imagining Change. During the Iraq War, the Iraq Veterans Against the War staged a series of street theatre events, reenacting in U.S. cities what they did on patrol in Iraq. Dressed in their uniforms, but without real weapons, they acted out confrontations with U.S. civilians in such settings as the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and in Times Square, New York, in ways that demonstrated their tactics abroad. It was a performance of behavior by occupiers that forced U.S. citizens to look at how their own military were treating Iraqis overseas. An operation that seemed appropriate when applied to the enemy had a different feel when perpetrated on Americans. The veterans were also making the point that the Iraqis’ violent resistance might be a natural consequence of U.S. occupation. It is unlikely Americans would passively accept this kind of treatment for long; why should the Iraqis react any less fearfully or belligerently.46

Protest and Verfremdung In the twenty-first century, forms of protest using art often turn cultural norms on their heads with versions of Verfremdung that reframe the story. For example, the Save the Whales campaign reversed the roles taken by the whalers and the whales, rejecting the myth of the whaler as rugged entrepreneur doing battle with the beast of the sea, a practice that was devastating the species. Instead, Save the Whales photographed their own efforts to intervene between the whales and the huge ships that hunted them, depicting the whales (and the small boats of protesters) as the victims of big and villainous corporations.47

 Boyd, Beautiful Trouble, 29.  Patrick Reinsborough and Canning. Re:Imagining Change, 110. 47  Reinsborough and Canning. Re:Imagining Change, 123–125. 45 46

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Those who seek contemporary social reform campaigns have also used the Verfremdungseffekt to alter the image of a cultural phenomenon into a new message, what is now referred to as Subvertising (a combination of “subversion and advertising”) or culture jamming.48 For example, the Chicago-based group StreetRec subvertised the popular commercial campaign “Got Milk,” originally used by the dairy industry, to comment on the build-up to the Iraq war. Their countermessage was a photo of then-­ Vice President Dick Cheney overlaid with the words “Got War?” and adding not a milk moustache but a Hitler moustache to his face.49 Meanwhile, the Center for Story-Based Strategy used the opening credits of the popular television program Breaking Bad, which enclosed the first letters of its title within portions of a periodic table, to make the point that methane gas was as dangerous to the population as crystal meth when it was released into the air by the process of fracking for oil. The poster, with the words Natural Gas, was subtitled, “METHane cartels are cooking our planet,” and added the hashtags #BreaktheAddiction and #FrackingBad.50

Brecht’s Usefulness Brecht felt highly complimented when his work was referred to as useful. In this young century, Brecht’s work is more useful than ever for anyone who believes theatre can challenge a contemporary audience to consider larger social issues while at the same time bringing fun, or Spaβ, to the stage. It is important to remember, however, today’s theatre artists need not follow Brecht’s instructions to the letter—in fact, he would discourage them from doing so. The challenges of every age require new solutions: we should create our own methods based on his example. We should study his writings for what they can inspire us to invent now. Otherwise, as Heiner Müller has suggested, we betray Brecht’s vision. As we create new work using the director’s ideas, a caveat comes from Brecht himself: “If the critics were to look at my theatre the way spectators do, rather than attaching such importance to my theories first and foremost, then they would probably just see theatre—a theatre imbued with imagination,

 Reinsborough and Canning. Re:Imagining Change, 26.  Reinsborough and Canning. Re:Imagining Change, 116. 50  Reinsborough and Canning. Re:Imagining Change, 114. 48 49

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humor and meaning, I hope.”51 Only later would they realize the innovations to which he had resorted. In his poem “I have no need of a gravestone,” Brecht remarked, though an unmarked grave was his wish, if others insisted on erecting a marker, he would be honored if it indicated that his suggestions had been taken on.52 Engaging with Brecht offers you suggestions. In the twenty-first century, I challenge you to take them on.

 BOP 251.  Brecht, Collected Poems, 483

51 52

Appendix 1: Mother Courage Fabel Spring 2015

Event • Scene 1: Recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. • Scene 1: According to the recruiter and sergeant, war is an improvement because it civilizes the country and gives it organization. • Scene 1: The Army recruiter spots two prospects.

• Scene 1: Mother Courage declares herself with a song.

• Scene 1: The Sergeant demands her papers.

Gestic Incidents The two men are desperate: they are running out of lives to sacrifice. They need four battalions. The men search for a justification for their actions. They have to seduce civilians to join, with promises of small profit and empty rewards such as “glory.”

The soldiers see salvation. They can’t believe their luck, two young men of the right age roll right into sight. The Recruiter asks the Sergeant to order the wagon to stop. Courage sings an advertisement: her wares will give the soldiers morale and keep them satisfied and fighting. While the Sergeant sees prospects, so does Courage: they both have something to sell. Courage pretends to mistake the Sergeant’s request. She doesn’t have official papers but is confident enough in her immunity that she offers two Protestant soldiers a Catholic prayer book. Her passport: she is joining up with the Second Finnish Regiment and she has some kind of arrangement with the Captain who is their superior officer. She also has a health notice for her horse, who is dead. Now her sons are the horses. (continued)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7

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(continued) • Scene 1: Mother Courage introduces her mixed family, acquired in various theatres of war, to a sergeant. • Scene 1: The canteen woman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife.

Courage uses her introduction to stress her wartime experience. The family itself was created by the war: her travels have introduced her to brief moments of intimacy, and her children are the result. Courage threatens the soldiers. They are on the same side but enemies just the same. The only violence she shows in the Thirty Years War is the threatening she does when her family might be taken from her. She also threatens to report the soldiers to their captain. (This is a better threat than the knife, which the Sergeant can easily extract from Eilif much less his mother.) • Scene 1: She sees that her Courage realizes that the Sergeant may succeed and sons are listening to the must act quickly: the soldiers’ offer is better than hers. recruiters. Her sons are just at the age when they might want to “leave home,” and there are economic incentives to do so. The recruiter and sergeant are very good at what they do. They have more than one strategy. They see that Eilif is brave—a perfect soldier, and they play on this. • Scene 1: She predicts that the Courage entices the sergeant to play her “shell game.” sergeant will meet an early She hopes that, though he is a professional soldier used death to battle, the Sergeant is superstitious enough to believe that drawing the black cross is a real sign. Mother Courage reminds the soldiers of their mortality in order to prove that the war is not worth joining • Scene 1: The Sergeant draws The Sergeant believes his future is dark and it stops him the black cross as a joke and from taking the boys. He is still superstitious. it frightens him. (Though he has stressed the positive aspects of serving, his fear negates them.) • Scene 1: To make her Courage tells her family’s fortune, but hedges her bets: children afraid of the war, she all the papers have crosses on them. Even though has them draw black crosses Courage has manipulated the results, she is nonetheless as well. unnerved by the result. And she is scamming her own family rather than a client. The ruse works; she has kept the family together. But it also backfires: she is tempting fate herself. • Scene 1: The family prepares The Army Recruiter points out to Eilif that the soldiers to leave, the Army recruiter in the Protestant camp do not have to pray or sing comes up with a plan, and hymns on a daily basis, despite the rumors. He offers to the Sergeant continues his unharness him and free him from his servitude as a salesmanship. packhorse. It is not a selling point to fight for a faith. • Scene 1: Thanks to a small The Sergeant distracts Courage, and the Army Recruiter business deal, she leads Eilif away. Eilif is recruited because of his bravery; nevertheless loses her brave MC loses him because a belt buckle sale is too attractive son. and distracts her. Though she doesn’t trust the soldiers, she drops her guard because of the possibility of profit. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 1: Mother Courage blames Swiss Cheese for not warning her. • Scene 1: The sergeant leaves her with a prophecy: War will exact its price.

Courage puts the burden on her son rather than admitting that it is her fault: she was completely enthralled by the chance to make money. The Sergeant himself turns fortune teller; he has won because of the inevitability of war. He reminds Courage that such men as her sons will never escape from the consequences of the war, especially if their mother insists on profiting from it. In a nutshell, he reminds her of why her business is fated: as its business relies on the deaths of its participants, it will always cost lives. • Scene 2: In the Swedish camp War depletes all resources. Courage offers a scrawny Mother Courage tries to chicken to the Cook, since there is no better food overcharge an army cook for around. Whatever the market will bear is a fair price, a paltry chicken. regardless of which side is buying or selling. • Scene 2: The Cook and The haggling is a form of attraction: they are impressed Courage begin their with each other’s ability to negotiate. relationship by haggling • Scene 2: The Cook decides The Cook plays his trump card. He is Courage’s equal in to prepare a rotten piece of terms of buying low and selling high, as the use of the meat for the General instead. rotten meat implies. He doesn’t have to buy her chicken because the cost of war changes the value of less-than-­ desirable foodstuffs. • Scene 2: The Swedish general The General encourages Eilif to continue his acts of invites Eilif into his tent on bravery even as they increase the odds he will be killed. account of his bravery. He wants Eilif to help take the fort they are besieging. This is an example of the social hierarchy during wartime: the common soldier does all the dirty work, and the General keeps his hands clean and reaps the economic benefits. This is worth a drink and praise, as the army counts on empty honors to continue to motivate its troops. The General really loses nothing. Eilif is impressed by the attention. • Scene 2: As the General Though this is a holy war, the General treats the man of drinks with Eilif, he the church with contempt. The General offers Eilif a denigrates the Chaplain. special wine without realizing it can’t be appreciated by the common soldier. Also, he holds his liquor better than Eilif because, being able to afford it, he’s used to it. • Scene 2: Mother Courage Courage is excited at Eilif’s arrival, but even more so hears her son’s voice and because she realizes her food has suddenly risen in listens in on their value—the General must have a good meal to celebrate conversation.1 the bravery of Eilif. Only the chicken will do. (continued)

 As luck would have it, Eilif and the Cook serve in the same unit, the Oxenstjerna Regiment.

1

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(continued) • Scene 2: To celebrate his victory, the general orders the Cook to prepare a meal, and the Cook is forced to buy the chicken. • Scene 2: The General praises the soldier and insults the Chaplain.

The Cook buys the chicken at an even higher price, but he is impressed with Courage for seizing the advantage, as he would have done himself if the shoe had been on the other foot.

The General continues to compare the Chaplain unfavorably to Eilif: The Chaplain can’t take the fort with prayer. Eilif is useful, as he will feed many men by recovering the cows the farmers have been concealing. • Scene 2: Eilif relates the story Eilif tells the tale of his horrific actions as if it is an of the farmers and their amusing adventure, an example of how the enemy has cattle. been dehumanized. He used his mother’s lessons in bargaining to confuse the farmers so he could cut off their heads. The views of those being attacked and those attacking are very different and history belongs to the victors • Scene 2: Courage plucks the If the Cook is going to pay so much for the bird, chicken while giving the Courage must do the plucking as part of the price. She Cook her opinion about curses the generals; if they were any good, they would generals recruit average men, not truly brave men like Eilif. But winning a war isn’t the point: it’s waging it and providing men to continue it indefinitely for further profits. • Scene 2: Eilif sings and Eilif celebrates his martial nature in a dance dances a war dance. improvisation. His song, a lesson from his mother about the consequences of war, is used to celebrate his army exploits rather than to condemn them. He is now a killing machine, so the performance is a joyful demonstration of more killing, which will be his glory and his downfall. At the same time it is an acceptance of his place in the social order. • Scene 2: When his mother Courage reveals herself by finishing her son’s song and finishes the song, Courage driving home a point: Eilif’s courage may lead to a and Eilif briefly reunite. soldier’s death. • Scene 2: Courage’s song The General realizes that the song breaks the spell he angers the General. has cast over one of his soldiers of the glory of war and tries to stop it and demean it. • Scene 2: At first Courage is Ultimately, the General has too much power for glad to see Eilif and hugs Courage to confront him directly. She takes her anger him, but then slaps him. out only on her son. Eilif isn’t a hero but a sucker for doing the dirty work of the nobility. • Scene 2: The General and the The General and the Chaplain consider Courage Chaplain laugh at Mother wayward and hysterical rather than smart: they are Courage. clueless to her outrage, and she is a woman. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 3A: Black-­marketing in The Quartermaster tries to get Mother Courage to buy ammunition his bullets, an act which is treason. The sale will allow the Quartermaster to pay for alcohol, because the Colonel from the winning side has been drinking. Money is literally “pissed” away, while the soldiers have nothing to shoot out of their guns. Also, the Army can be cheated by inflating the price of the sale on the receipt. • Scene 3A: Mother Courage Mother Courage shows her business acumen by striking gives the Quartermaster one a hard bargain—paying less than the Quartermaster and a half guilders instead of asked for. two for the bullets. • Scene 3A: Mother Courage Mother Courage uses the example of Yvette’s life to warn serves a camp whore and Kattrin about fraternizing with soldiers. Real love, of the warns her daughter not to kind that Kattrin desires, is not possible. Only commerce take up with soldiers. rules the day and leads to “relations.” Contradiction: Kattrin works hard while Yvette, selling herself, can lounge about and drink. • Scene 3A: Mother Courage Courage the saleswoman points out that Yvette’s goods points out that Yvette is are spoiled. What she has to sell has dropped in value, so diseased. she drowns her sorrows and drinks brandy in the afternoon. • Scene 3A: Yvette sings “The Yvette sings the song for Kattrin: a cautionary tale about Song of Fraternization.” letting men take advantage. A lover of ten years ago, Piping Pieter has given her the disease. Love equals disease and betrayal. So get the best price for love. • Scene 3A: The Chaplain The Cook gives Courage news of Eilif in order to brings the Cook to Mother reestablish relations with her. Courage with news. • Scene 3A: The Chaplain The Chaplain expresses his appreciation for Kattrin. compliments Kattrin. Though a holy man, he desires her, an attractive woman. • Scene 3A: While Courage Mother Courage “fraternizes” though she has told flirts with the cook and the Kattrin not to. Kattrin dresses in Yvette’s clothes to chaplain, Kattrin tries on the make herself more attractive. Courage is saying “do whore’s hat and shoes. what I say, not what I do.” The clothes are not what make the whore attractive, but her willingness to lie down for money. Kattrin wants to be pretty, but the clothes are garish. The romance that Kattrin desires is actually commerce. • Scene 3A: As Kattrin displays The clothes give Kattrin the self-assurance that her the whore’s clothes, she Mother cannot. As she “flounces” she slowly becomes becomes a pretty young mature and even good looking. With the right woman. upbringing, she would have had a very different life. • Scene 3A: Surprise attack The Catholics attack, and Courage worries that it will hurt her profits. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 3A: The Chaplain asks for a cloak to hide his clothes, which Courage reluctantly gives him. • Scene 3A: Courage, worried for Kattrin, tries to downgrade her appearance.

Courage is reluctant to lend the cloak to the Chaplain because it is merchandise. The Chaplain points out that he must hide his Protestant garb from the Catholic Soldiers and Courage lets him borrow it. Courage believes that Yvette’s clothes will make Kattrin more of a target for the marauding Catholic soldiers and tries to take them off. She also gets soot to dirty Kattrin’s face and to make her less desirable • Scene 3A: Yvette enters, The Catholics are better for her business, and they like excited about the return of costumes, so she must get her hat and shoes back. She the Catholics only finds the hat, because Kattrin, wearing the shoes, hides them under her skirt. • Scene 3A: Swiss Cheese, in Courage realizes that the box implicates the family as charge of the regimental cash siding with the Protestants and won’t allow it to be box, must hide it. stored in the wagon. (She must also lower the regimental flag that she has been displaying “for 25 years.”) • Scene 3B: Courage haggles Courage is in an impossible situation: to lose the cart over the amount of the bribe. means that the whole family is lost. And yet selling the • (Yvette discovers Mother cart saves her son. War leads to such economic Courage’s plan and wants to dilemmas. Officers have money to throw away on buy the cart, not mortgage it wagons for their lovers. using money from her lover, the old Colonel.) • 3B: Mother Courage Using her business acumen, Courage realizes she can mortgages her cart to the buy the cart back with the money that Swiss Cheese has camp whore in order to in the cashbox. Though this is an economic gamble, it is ransom Swiss Cheese. one that she is confident in. Not the first time she has “speculated” with the possibility of success or failure. • Scene 3B: The Sergeant Swiss Cheese, serving his regiment, has cost his mother agrees to a bribe of 200 dearly. Courage’s distress reveals to Yvette her plan: guilders after torturing Swiss Courage has lost her bargaining power because she now Cheese to reveal that he has has no way to pay for the pawn. Yvette now insists on a thrown the box in the river. sale, not a pawn. • Scene 3B: She haggles too Courage realizes it is the delay in offering the full long and hears the volley that amount that kills the bargain and Swiss Cheese. lays Swiss Cheese low. • Scene 3C: Kattrin stands They must prepare to deny him for the last time or face beside her mother to wait for the consequences. The Sergeant counts on Courage’s the dead Swiss Cheese. motherly feelings. She will reveal herself and possibly the cash box, which they don’t think is actually in the river, when she sees her son’s dead body. Kattrin follows her mother’s lead because she could also give them away. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 3C: For fear of giving herself away, Courage denies her dead son. • Scene 4: Mother Courage is sitting outside the captain’s tent; she has come to put in a complaint about damage to her cart. • Scene 4: A clerk advises her in vain to let well enough alone.

• Scene 4: A young soldier appears, also to make a complaint.

• Scene 4: Courage dissuades him.

• Scene 4: Courage sings the bitter “Song of the Great Capitulation.”

•S  cene 4: Courage herself learns from the lesson she has given the young soldier and leaves without having put in her complaint.

Courage does not speak. Any sound would be an admission of guilt. Kattrin cannot speak. They will both be stones. Even the Sergeant is surprised at her harshness. His ploy didn’t work. He identifies her as the woman who hid the Protestant paymaster. Despite her best efforts, everyone connects her with Swiss Cheese now. By complaining about the cart, Courage suggests her innocence. If she was guilty, she wouldn’t argue about the damage and risk further repercussions. The clerk points out that she would have gotten into more trouble if they didn’t need her business, and suggests she just pay her fines to assuage her guilt. To the clerk, money will solve the problem, another kind of bribe. The young soldier believes that he will automatically be rewarded for difficult and brave acts. He is angrily disappointed at no bonus for saving the Colonel’s horse, but he is nameless and faceless like everyone else and is of no consequence. Courage points out the possible results of registering a complaint. Even if the soldier should be paid what he is owed, he’s calling out a superior officer and will be beaten and jailed for insubordination. If he is willing to risk that and wouldn’t back down when he faced the Captain, then more soldiers might speak up. The soldier’s anger is passionate, not thoughtful and will be spent before it is useful. Courage teaches the soldier her own philosophy through the song: to survive one must hold one’s tongue at injustice. She has learned to act like this and yet has almost forgotten this lesson. The song reminds her of it. Though she has a case, she does not stand up for herself. The war has nothing but victims. The system is against her; she is very convincing to two people rather than one. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 5: After a battle, Courage serves soldiers from her cart.

Courage won’t give out free booze to the conquering heroes. The soldiers point out that they can’t pay because they missed the looting: their real reward for sacking the city. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers is wearing an expensive fur. The farmers were attacked even though they were on the same side: Catholic. Again, the war of religion is a ploy. • Scene 5: Courage refuses to Courage can’t afford to be charitable, as the shirts are give the chaplain her officers’ some of the most expensive things she has to sell. To shirts to bandage wounded make them into bandages would be sacrilege. peasants. • Scene 5: Kattrin threatens Kattrin sides against her own mother in favor of her mother. wounded people she doesn’t know. • Scene 5: At the risk of her Kattrin will do anything for children. Her mother thinks life, Kattrin saves an infant. this is foolish behavior. Kattrin is not showing a survival instinct but self-sacrifice. Such actions seem to be mistakes and don’t advance the family’s economic security. • Scene 5: Courage laments Both Courage and Kattrin acquire a prize: only the loss of her shirts and Courage’s can be used to help them survive. Kattrin’s is snatches a stolen coat away useless. from a soldier who has stolen some schnapps, while Kattrin rocks the baby in her arms. • Scene 6: Mother Courage, The pause in the war allows Courage to do an grown prosperous, is inventory, an important part of her business, much stocktaking. more important than the funeral of a field marshal. • Scene 6: Funeral oration for Courage reveals that through an accident the General was the fallen field marshal Tilly actually in the battle and was killed with his subordinates like a real soldier. Taking advantage of the pause in battle, the common soldier is drinking instead of mourning the officer at the funeral. Courage only lets officers in out of the rain. • Scene 6: Conversation about Mother Courage must determine if the war is over the duration of the war because she must decide whether to buy more supplies are sell all she has. If she is stuck with merchandise in peacetime it will be harder to sell. She’s betting on war. • Scene 6: The chaplain proves The chaplain points out that, though officers die, the that the war is going to go war continues because people are still hungry. It is in on for a long time. the best interests of those in power to keep the war going (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 6: Kattrin is sent to buy merchandise

Courage doesn’t worry for Kattrin’s safety as the soldiers are occupied at the bar or the funeral, and she believes that Kattrin is not attractive enough to catch anyone’s eye. She needs the merchandise, and trusts Kattrin to get it for her with the Regimental Secretary nearby. She also distracts her daughter because Kattrin is upset with the idea of the war continuing. • Scene 6: Mother Courage The Chaplain avoids hard work by chopping clumsily declines a proposal of marriage and then distracting Courage with an offer of marriage. and insists on firewood. • Scene 6: Kattrin is Kattrin is a direct victim of the war, but the outward permanently disfigured by signs simply reveal what has always been true. She was some soldiers and rejects involved in commerce and paid for it. Now that she Yvette’s red shoes. can’t be attractive to soldiers, her mother gives her the whore’s shoes back. • Scene 6: Mother Courage Mother Courage blames the war rather than herself, curses the war. thus assuaging any guilt she might feel about Kattrin’s attack. • Scene 7: Mother Courage War has caused her pain, but it also is her means of has corrected her opinion of survival. She is conflicted, but business always has the the war and sings its praises upper hand. as a good provider. • Scene 8: A mother (Old They must sell their mattress in order to keep their Woman) and her son travel house. And the mother must sell her crucifix. It’s worth twenty miles to sell their more as a trinket than a sign of her faith. wares. • Scene 8: Courage and the The sides are immaterial. The Chaplain can pretend to Chaplain hear a rumor that be either Protestant or Catholic by necessity. He is an peace has broken out. embodiment of the idea that religion is not what the war is about. No one has convictions based on their belief in a higher power of a particular brand • Scene 8: The Cook reappears The Cook is broke because the army has been out of money to pay the soldiers for a year. He is here in hopes Courage will let him stay with her. He compliments her and insults the Chaplain. • Scene 8: The fight for the The Cook and the Chaplain vie for Courage’s affections feedbag (and the security of the business). The Cook makes the point that the Chaplain is not good for business as the pastor has advised Courage to stock up just as peace is declared. The Chaplain realizes he is losing his position and begins to insult Courage and her business. • Scene 8: An old friend who Yvette, the former whore, now appears as a petit has made a good thing of the bourgeois. She has used the war to acquire wealth. war returns. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 8: Piping Pieter is unmasked.

• Scene 8: The downfall of Eilif, Mother Courage’s dashing son; he is executed for one of the misdeeds that had brought him rewards during the war. • Scene 8: The peace comes to an end.

• Scene 8: The chaplain begs the Cook to let him stay.

Yvette identifies the Cook as the man who jilted her years ago--he impregnated her and left town. This jeopardizes his relationship with Courage, or so the Chaplain hopes. Yvette has proved to be the better survivor. If the recommencing of the war had been announced, Eilif would still be a hero, not a war criminal. He dies a rich man, as he has, up until now, benefited from his actions. Heroism or war crime is a matter of timing. Which means that soldiers have no function other than to kill for the profit of others. Irony. Eilif’s timing is very bad and costs him his life. Meanwhile, the war saves Courage’s business. The war has been over three days but the citizens have acted as if it was peacetime. Courage’s timing is mixed: she misses seeing Eilif, but she hasn’t sold her wares at a loss but kept them now that the war is back on. The Cook makes a good argument: with war ended, no one needs an Army cook, but they will always need prayer. He deserves to take the Chaplain’s place as he has nowhere else to go. Mother Courage finds the Cook more valuable than the Chaplain.

• Scene 8: Courage leaves the Chaplain and goes on with the cook in the wake of the Swedish army. • Scene 9: The cook has Though they are at low point, starving and inherited a tavern in Utrecht. cold, economic prosperity is at hand, and this is the answer to the family’s difficulties. War need no longer provide. • Scene 9: Kattrin hears the The Cook must divide the family because his business cook refuse to take her along will suffer. Kattrin sees the wisdom in this. there. • Scene 9: The Cook The Cook cynically gambles that honesty will beat good sings “The Song of deeds or a good life, and people inside the parsonage Solomon.” will give them food. • Scene 9: Kattrin decides to Kattrin understands that there is no choice. Her mother spare her mother the need to will have economic stability if she leaves, but will make a decision, packs her continue to rely on the war if Kattrin doesn’t. She bundle and leaves a message. signals with the clothing that she accepts and understands what must be done. • Scene 9: Mother Courage For the first time, MC makes a decision based on her stops Kattrin from running family rather than on economics. She must hide this, away and goes on alone with however, because all future decisions must be economic her. if she and Kattrin are to survive (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 9: Abandoned, the Cook goes to Utrecht.

He is surprised that Mother Courage, who can be counted on to make the right decision, has made the opposite. Business wins out over “romance.” His tavern  must do well, so he won’t have a companion to help him with it, or will find another. Scene 10: Mother and The song reminds them of a home they don’t have or daughter hear someone in a have given up. Their home is their wagon. The peasant house singing the “The possibility of a real home is not likely because the Rose Song.” decisions to make that a reality are not possible. This song is the moral. • Scene 11: A surprise attack is The defenseless city is asleep. War has no rules of planned on the city of Halle chivalry now, despite the storybooks. • Scene 11: Soldiers force a When the young peasant is under threat of death, he young peasant to show them won’t relent. When the ox is threatened, the young the way. peasant has no choice but to cooperate. The cattle are the main means of the family’s subsistence. The ox and cows are much more important to the peasants than the lives of the citizens of Halle. • Scene 11: The peasant and When the peasants could help the city, they pray instead. his wife tell Kattrin to join God will save the city. Because Kattrin is mute, they them in praying for the city. refer to her as a cripple. She can’t help anyone because she can’t make sound. The peasants use the idea of religion to comfort them when they have been selfish in their decision: their own economic security over the lives of many others, including Kattrin’s mother, which is why it is ironic that they ask her to pray. Religion in this case will be an empty vessel. The city will still be attacked regardless of what they do, because of the threat to the livestock. Falling back on prayer seems an empty act. • Scene 11: Kattrin climbs up Though mute, Kattrin can make the most noise. Instead on the barn roof and beats of praying, she sounds the alarm trying to wake the city the drum to awaken the city. in time. Her actions show that the peasants, if heroic or kind, could have made similar choices. But they don’t. She is even less familiar with the citizens of Halle than they are, but is willing to do the right and good thing • Scene 11: Neither the offer 1. She continues to drum though the soldiers threaten to spare her mother in the to kill her mother. 2. She chooses to drum though the city nor the threat to smash soldiers threaten her only source of livelihood. The lives the cart can make her stop of many are more important than the few. The cart does drumming not have the importance to Kattrin in comparison to the devastation to come. The contrast between bargaining over the wagon in Scene 3 and ignoring its value in this scene is stark. (continued)

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(continued) • Scene 11: Death of Kattrin

• Scene 12: The peasants have to convince Courage that Kattrin is dead. • Scene 12: The lullaby for Kattrin • Scene 12: Mother Courage pays for Kattrin’s burial and receives the condolences of the peasants. • Scene 12: Alone, Mother Courage harnesses herself to the empty cart. • Scene 12: Still hoping to get back into business, she follows the ragged army.

Because Kattrin won’t stop drumming, the soldiers shoot her. Kattrin sacrifices herself for the good of others; this is not in her best interest and does not benefit her in any way, but the city is warned/saved. Someone who is kind cannot survive in such an environment. Courage has self-­preservation, Kattrin does not. Who is right, though? Kattrin lives by so-called Christian principles as “fought for” by both sides in the Thirty Years War. Being a good person who believes in self-sacrifice, rather than using the conflict to her advantage, she dies. Courage went into town to shop instead of staying with her. She blames the peasants for telling her daughter about the children in the town: Kattrin would risk her life for children. Singing a lullaby means that Kattrin is merely asleep, not dead. And then Courage is not to blame. Courage must hurry to catch up with the soldiers or she will lose her business. She consoles herself with the thought that Eilif is still alive. The peasant condolences are perfunctory at best; they blame her. All her actions have led to her being in the harness rather than riding in the wagon. She still has her business but lost all of her children. The wagon is empty, therefore easy to pull. Courage has learned nothing from her loss but continues to believe that business is her salvation. She carries on as usual, perpetuating the war in her own way. The soldiers sing, but she is silent.



Appendix 2: Working on a Scene with Stanislavsky and Brecht

This study uses the Method of Physical Actions (MPA)—together with ideas that support the Fabel and suggest what Brecht referred to as a social evaluation of the material—to examine a small portion of Scene 3, in which the soldiers who detained Swiss Cheese bring him back to Courage’s camp. Though it covers only two pages in the script, a careful analysis reveals how much detail can be mined and what great specificity the team may use to explore the scene as Brecht has written it. This is but one possible interpretation of the scene to encourage moment-tomoment work.2

What Are the Given Circumstances? • When does this take place? An October afternoon in 1629, during the Thirty Years War • Where are they? Outdoors in a field near a military camp in Poland where Courage has pitched her canteen • What are the weather and temperature? Cool enough to wear a jacket but not yet don long underwear

2

 See Appendix 1.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7

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• What are the characters’ backgrounds and relationships to each other? (This is but a tiny description of what might be covered in this section.) The Sergeant and the Soldiers under his command are with the Catholic troops; Swiss Cheese and Kattrin are Courage’s grown children who work in the family business; the Chaplain is allowed to help with the canteen work and seeks a relationship with Courage, which she later discourages; the family seems to tolerate the Chaplain. Swiss Cheese, despite his mother’s warnings, has joined the 2nd Finnish regiment as a paymaster.

Who Is the Driver? The Sergeant, though a minor character in the greater scheme of Mother Courage, drives the scene by dragging Swiss Cheese into Courage’s presence and forcing her to identify him. All of the scene’s subsequent events follow from this moment: • Courage denies knowing Swiss Cheese. • Swiss Cheese refuses to give up the regimental cash box. • Swiss Cheese pretends to be a disgruntled customer. • Courage tries to bribe the Sergeant with alcohol. • The Sergeant threatens Swiss Cheese’s life. • The family refuses to “break.” • The soldiers drag Swiss Cheese away.

What Are the Previous Circumstances? Prior to Scene 3, the Catholics overran the area, and Courage’s camp is surrounded. Her family is in danger because she had been following the Second Finnish Regiment, which is Protestant, and now must pretend to be Catholic. Despite his mother’s entreaties to not involve himself in the conflict, Swiss Cheese has become the paymaster for the Second Finnish. Two Soldiers from the Catholic army enter the camp looking for Swiss Cheese. They encounter Kattrin, who runs back to her brother and warns him someone is looking for him. He doesn’t understand her signaling and, not perceiving the danger, takes the regimental cash box and goes off to hide it somewhere down by the river. Kattrin then frantically warns her

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mother, who becomes angry when she understands what Swiss Cheese was doing. Courage raises the Catholic flag just as the Soldiers return with a captured Swiss Cheese.3

What’s Different About Today? Courage and her children have been following the Second Finnish Regiment, but they have conspicuously not taken sides in the war. Swiss Cheese’s new role as a paymaster has gotten him in trouble: here he’s on the wrong side and has put his whole family in danger.

What Are the Characters’ Objectives? • The Sergeant must get Courage to identify her son by threatening him. • The Soldiers must put pressure on Courage by intimidating her and hurting Swiss Cheese in front of her. • Swiss Cheese must try to deceive the Sergeant by pretending to be Courage’s customer. • Courage must get Swiss Cheese to give up the cash box without seeming to care for him. She must also get the Sergeant on her side by bribing him with liquor, putting him on her footing by treating him as a customer. • The Chaplain must support Swiss Cheese and the family by improvising along with them.

What Are the Characters’ Psychological Obstacles? • The Sergeant has no real obstacle here, although he doesn’t understand Swiss Cheese’s loyalty and Courage’s stubbornness. • The Soldiers must defer to the Sergeant and keep their mouths shut. • Swiss Cheese realizes the Sergeant doesn’t believe him and has seen him before. • Courage is afraid for Swiss Cheese because he is too dutiful and feels his responsibilities.

3  Brecht doesn’t mention Kattrin’s actions throughout this section, and though I believe she operates under the same principles, I’ve excluded her from this discussion.

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• The Chaplain is a terrible improvisor, especially because he is afraid.

What Are the Figures’ Sociological Constraints? • The Sergeant must look after himself: he knows where he stands in the military hierarchy. His superior officer might not appreciate failure. The Soldiers do as they’re told according to their military duty. They dislike Protestants because they’ve been told to. • Despite the example Courage has set of staying alive by looking out for number one, Swiss Cheese believes in loyalty and duty, which will get him killed. • Courage cannot admit Swiss Cheese is hers and has steeled herself from showing emotion based on prior experience with other soldiers. War causes certain behaviors that wouldn’t exist in peacetime. • Courage has placed herself in an economic system that isn’t sustainable—she hasn’t given herself an alternative to protecting her business. • The Chaplain knows where his bread is buttered. He won’t give away Courage or Swiss Cheese, but he is not asked to. He has no authority as clergy, but he’s also pretending to be a Catholic (like the enemy). He doesn’t seem to have any qualms about betraying his own Protestant faith.

How High Are the Stakes? (Scale of 1–10) • The Sergeant could arrest all of them for aiding and abetting and get a bigger reward; the cost is high, nine on a scale of one to ten. • The Soldiers will be in trouble with the Sergeant if he doesn’t succeed in his mission, but court martial is not really on the table; the cost is eight. • Swiss Cheese would be responsible if his whole family were arrested, and the enemy could recover the cash box; the cost is ten. • Courage could lose her son to the enemy; the cost is ten. • The Chaplain could be seen as a collaborator; the cost is ten.

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What Are the Implications of the Previous Circumstances? • The Sergeant has been spying on Swiss Cheese with the one-eyed man and waited for Swiss Cheese to hide the cash box. The Sergeant had thought Swiss Cheese looked suspicious, even from a distance. • The Soldiers have been fighting for a long time and do their jobs without question. • Swiss Cheese and his family have been traveling with the Second Finnish Regiment, and he feels some loyalty to them. He has collaborated by hiding their cash box down by the river. Swiss Cheese is afraid the Sergeant or his Soldiers may have seen him. He’s watched how his mother has survived by using the war to her advantage. As the son of Courage, he has “marketing” skills. • Courage has outsmarted her enemies and survived. She loves Swiss Cheese. They have been through some hard times together. She is much more familiar with the Protestant Second Finnish Regiment than she is with the newly arrived Catholic army, and they don’t know her either. • The Chaplain has shown he is neither brave nor capable. At the present, the Courage family is his means of subsistence. He is really a Protestant, the enemy.

What Are the Figures’ Attachments? • The Sergeant has two possible attachments based on whether he believes he is fighting in a holy cause: if not, he is bitter and attached to saving himself while performing his duty; if he still believes, he is a fanatic. As for constraints, it is eleven years into a war—very few resources exist outside the military structure. Obeying any order, no matter how distasteful, is better than starving. • Swiss Cheese’s attachment is his ethics. When he decides to join the Second Finnish Regiment, he has a new sense of purpose. One constraint for him is, since the sides are arbitrary and both are part of his family’s customer base, loyalty to one would seem to be pointless. Courage’s philosophy is not one he has seen working in the real world. • Mother Courage regards herself as an entrepreneur, and her identity is wrapped up in her profession. She has an inflated opinion of her reputation. She believes she never has to take sides. But the fact she

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is a tiny cog in a big machine constrains her. Her business is a miniature version of a failed model, which leads to disaster. • The Chaplain’s identity is wrapped up in the trappings of his faith. But constraining him are the opinions of others that his beliefs are of no use at all—they are fighting a war for property and wealth, not religion. • The Soldiers are attached to survival. The enemy is the “other,” and anything can be done to them. A constraint is that they are beginning to realize their superiors are creating that sense of the “other” to prolong the war. And the small honors they receive for their dangerous work, such as medals or ribbons, are of little value.

What Are the Characters’ Beat Changes? • Courage tries to deceive the Sergeant. Beat change: she attempts to bribe him. Beat change: the cost rises when the Sergeant doesn’t believe any of them but can’t prove it. Beat change: Courage seeks to impress the Sergeant by mentioning her reputation among the soldiers. Beat change: she appeals to Swiss Cheese’s common sense. Beat change: she entreats the Sergeant to stop hurting her son. • The Sergeant accuses the family of knowing Swiss Cheese. Beat change: he turns his attention to the Chaplain and accuses him because he seems weaker. Beat change: the Sergeant dismisses Courage when she offers him booze. Beat change: he tries to convince Swiss Cheese by laying out the evidence against him. Beat change: he threatens to kill Swiss Cheese, which immediately raises the cost.

What Are the Figures’ Status/Haltung Changes? • The Sergeant maintains his high status/Haltung. He is a real threat to Courage and her family. Nothing seems to faze him. • The Soldiers support the Sergeant. They maintain their positions above the family but below the Sergeant. • Swiss Cheese moves from lower to higher—from a victim of the soldiers to an indignant customer of Mother Courage—but it doesn’t work. As he is dragged away, his status lowers.

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• Courage’s gruff, higher-status behavior masks her worry; she wants Swiss Cheese to admit he is behaving foolishly. She raises herself again by bragging. When the soldiers leave with Swiss Cheese, she lowers herself further through her concern for her son’s wrenched shoulder, but the soldiers don’t see this. • The Chaplain’s status begins low and lowers even further when his improvisation fails.

How Do the Figures Use “Not…But”? • The Sergeant does not immediately arrest Swiss Cheese but instead uses him to try to implicate the whole family or use the family to get the cash box back. A possible reason for his “Not…but” decision is, by postponing the arrest, he has the opportunity for a bigger financial score (not to mention, with the arrest, he could commandeer the wagon for himself and sell off the contents). • The Sergeant does not accept the bribe of alcohol but reminds Courage he is on duty. He realizes she is trying to distract him. Besides, he has to serve as an example to his inferiors, who are guarding Swiss Cheese. • The Sergeant does not arrest the family but instead decides they are too much trouble. He delays, possibly because he can’t prove Courage and Kattrin know Swiss Cheese. They are not begging the Sergeant to let him go but playing innocent. The Sergeant needs to force Swiss Cheese to find the box before someone else does. • Swiss Cheese does not betray his family but denies them. His sense of duty overrides his concern for himself, which will get him killed. He still tries to save his family. He doesn’t trust the Sergeant not to arrest them all. • Swiss Cheese does not give up the cash box despite being threatened with death but maintains his innocence. His is a noble sacrifice, the kind of thing his mother has taught him not to do. • Swiss Cheese does not ask his mother to help him but pretends not to know her. He does not give in to the Sergeant but defies him. It’s surprising how good he is at playing a customer so unlike himself. His action can be compared to that of his brother, Eilif, who used his bargaining skills with farmers to buy their cattle, only to then kill the sellers. Business is what Courage’s sons know.

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• Mother Couragedoesn’t beg for leniency but allows Swiss Cheese to maintain his innocence. She isn’t impressed with his loyalty but believes it is misguided. She doesn’t tell Swiss Cheese to confess but subtly suggests not to do so would be stupid if he is the guilty party. The point is the decisions not made also imply something. The contradictions reveal the Courage family is hardened by war, yet Swiss Cheese, despite his upbringing, isn’t hard enough. While an audience would be upset for Courage and the family, spectators would engage in their own “Not…but”—they would not identify with her but instead be upset with her for causing this situation in the first place.

Using the “Not … But” to Determine the Verfremdungseffekte • It is clear the Sergeant expects the Courage family to react in completely different ways than they do. He should be able to frighten them into giving each other up. He should be able to appeal to Courage’s motherly instincts—she should want to save her son more than herself. Neither of these predictions comes true. • The spectators may be surprised by the way Swiss Cheese tries to solve the problem through acting as though he is his mother’s customer. When his status/Haltung rises, this is a surprise: he has never acted this way before. His behavior shows how dangerous the situation is.

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White, John J. Bertolt Brecht’s Dramatic Theory. New York: Camden House, 2004. Willett, John. Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches. London: Methuen, 1984. Willett, John. Caspar Neher: Brecht’s Designer. London: Methuen, 1986. Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Witt, Hubert. Brecht, As They Knew Him. Translated by John Peet. New  York: International Publishers, 1974. Yarrow, Ralph. Jana Sanskriti: Performance as New Politics. London: Routledge, 2022. Zarrilli, Phillip B., ed. Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practices. London: Routledge, 1995. Zoob, David. Brecht: A Practical Handbook. London: Nick Hern Books, 2018.

Index1

A Abendberichte (evening reports), 206 Action verbs, 175–177 Adams, Eddie, 82 Als, Hilton, 41n38, 45, 45n64, 45n65, 45n66 Andreasen, Darmar, 204 Antigone, 121, 210 Antigone Model 1948, 121 Applied Theatre, 1, 2n2 Aristotle, 9, 75, 75n2, 171 The Poetics, 9 Arrangement, 21, 95, 95n36, 99n7, 117, 119–127, 129–143, 124n18, 146, 152n44, 179, 180, 186, 191, 196n8, 198, 206, 211, 222, 225, 227 Arrangementskizzen, 21, 121, 124 Attachment, 178n36, 184, 186–187, 251–252 Aurthur, Robert Alan, 85n19

B Badley, Linda, 94, 94n33, 94n34, 94n35 Barnett, David, v, 8n21, 9, 9n27, 10n28, 20n69, 40, 40n35, 53–56, 53n13, 55n18, 55n19, 55n20, 56n26, 56n29, 78n14, 92, 92n29, 98n3, 111n32, 122n14, 125n20, 125n21, 130n36, 140n48, 144, 146, 146n10, 150n33, 152n41, 152n44, 154n54, 187, 187n60, 193n2, 194n3, 196n8, 201n26, 206n46, 206n48, 224, 224n24 Barthes, Roland, 62, 120, 120n8, 121n9 Belehrung, 17 Belling, Rudolf, 50 Benedetti, Jean, 110n29, 154n50, 176n32, 177, 177n34, 182n46

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Gelber, Engaging with Brecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20394-7

265

266 

INDEX

Benjamin, Walter, 5n14, 147, 147n18, 149n25, 149n26 Bentley, Eric, 25n1, 26, 41–43, 41n38, 42n39, 42n41, 43n50, 76n9, 77n12, 95n37 Berlau, Ruth, 36, 155, 204, 206, 210 Berliner Ensemble, The (BE), 6, 8, 19, 21, 25, 26, 35, 47, 59, 68n54, 70, 70n60, 75, 76, 78, 88, 125, 125n22, 127, 130n36, 138, 145, 155, 155n58, 156n59, 159, 163, 167, 173n19, 183, 191, 194–198, 200, 200n23, 207, 210, 215, 218, 218n6 Bertolt Brecht’s Me-Ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things, 62, 64n45, 113, 113n42 Bildt, Paul, 34 Billington, Michael, 46, 46n71 Birch, Brad, 227 Boal, Augusto, 227 Boyd, Andrew, 230, 230n42, 230n43, 230n44, 231n45 Bradley, Laura, v, 64n48, 140n48, 152n41, 165, 165n80, 221n12 Brockmann, Stephen, 8n19, 98n2 Bronnen, Arnolt, 5n15, 50n5, 144 Brook, Peter, 36n25, 52n8, 117n52, 227 Brooker, Peter, 52n8 Bruder, Melissa, 175, 175n28, 176n29, 177n33, 178n35 Bruegel, Peter the Elder, 81, 127–130, 128n26, 128n27, 129n31, 129n32, 129n33, 129n34 Bunge, Hans, 12n41, 115, 116n48, 144n4 Burton, Anthony, 69, 212 Busch, Ernst, 36, 64n49, 210

C Capital, 4 Carra, Lawrence, 124n19, 132n39 Caucasian Chalk Circle, The, 115, 144n4, 155n58, 159, 209, 217 Chaikin, Joseph, 163 Chaplain, Charlie, 111 Churchill, Caryl, 227 Clark, Travis, 77, 78n15, 80, 80n18, 82, 86, 106, 106n22, 219 Cole, Toby, 148n22 Composition, 127, 129–130, 132–135, 223 Conner, John, 88, 88n22 Connotation, 132–135 Connotative staging, see Connotation Couragemodell 1949, 36n23, 54, 59, 69–71, 116, 151, 152n44, 196, 196n8, 198, 204n33, 213 Crandall, Leigh Anne, 85–87, 87n20, 95 Critical stance, 9 D Dean, Alexander, v, 124n19, 132n39 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 120 Dessau, Paul, 34, 34n19, 39n32, 88, 89 Deutsches Theater, The, 34, 36, 76, 217 Dialectic, 9n23, 9n26 Dickson, Keith, 55n18, 66, 66n52, 171n8 Dieckmann, Frederich, 122n14 Dix, Otto, 50 Doll, William, 222, 223, 223n17, 223n19 Drehpunkte, 20, 68–69, 119, 127, 139, 188 Driver, The, 103, 140n48, 166, 184, 186, 248 Dudow, Slatan, 53

 INDEX 

E Elam, Keir, 120n6, 120n7 Engel, Eric, 26, 34 Epicization, 148–149, 200 Epic theatre, 77n14, 149n25, 161–165 Ever-thus, 8, 11, 12, 17, 20, 55, 61–63, 71, 110, 111, 162, 169, 183, 216, 228 F Fabel, 8–10, 10n29, 13, 17, 20, 21, 37n27, 47, 49, 50, 52–55, 54n17, 58–60, 66–71, 73, 74, 94, 97, 100, 104, 117, 120–122, 124, 125, 134, 141, 146, 148, 158, 160, 168, 180, 183, 190, 194, 198n16, 199, 200, 202, 204, 206–208, 211, 216, 219, 225, 225n26, 227, 235–247 Felnagle, Richard, 175, 175n26, 175n27 Ferran, Peter W., 164, 164n76, 164n77, 164n78 Figure, 2, 8–10, 13, 14, 20, 21, 28, 38, 40, 49, 52, 53, 56, 60, 61, 64–68, 70, 74, 77, 78, 80, 87, 90, 92, 95, 97–104, 107, 110–115, 117, 121, 123, 124, 129–133, 134n41, 135, 135n42, 138, 139, 141–143, 146–149, 151, 154, 155, 157–173, 162n73, 173n19, 179, 180n40, 181–184, 187, 189–191, 204, 210, 212, 216, 219–222, 250–254 Fisher-Waits, Kelsey, 65, 113, 113n44, 158, 158n66, 163, 180, 180n41, 213, 219, 220, 222, 222n15 Freytag, Gustav, 54

267

Fuegi, John, 7, 7n18, 104n17, 116n48, 116n49, 116n50, 116n51, 144n4 Fursland, Romy, 3n3, 78n14 G Ganguly, Sanjoy, 227, 227n32 Gaskill, William, 195 German Democratic Republic, 23, 34, 140n48, 145, 152n41, 217 Gesamtkunstwerk, 14, 16, 74 Geschonneck, Erwin, 36 Gestic, 10, 10n30, 13, 14, 20, 49, 52–56, 58, 73, 94, 98, 110, 117, 123, 128n26, 146, 147, 152, 191, 196, 216, 225, 225n26, 235 Gestus, 8, 8n20, 10n30, 12–13, 13n46, 17, 20, 21, 95, 95n36, 98–103, 98n2, 98n4, 98n5, 105, 110n30, 112, 113, 115–117, 119, 120, 128, 130–133, 141, 146, 147n15, 149, 149n27, 149n28, 154, 163, 167, 183n50, 187, 198, 203, 206, 208 Giehse, Therese, 18, 26, 32, 35–36, 100, 173n19 Giles, Steve, v, 3n3, 3n4, 6, 15n52, 18n65, 50n6, 55n21, 92n29 Given Circumstances, 182, 182n47, 184–185, 185n57, 247–248 Good Person of Szechwan, The, 29, 121n12 Gorchakov, Nikolai, 174n22 Goya, Francisco, 81, 82 Gramsci, Antonio, 62, 228 Grieg, Nordhal, 225 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel, 27, 27n4, 28n5 Grundgestus, 20, 56, 98

268 

INDEX

H Haltung, 8, 9n22, 13–14, 13n47, 17, 20, 21, 37n30, 68n55, 95, 95n36, 97–117, 98n2, 98n3, 120, 130–132, 130n37, 134, 149, 157, 176, 179, 182, 184, 188–191, 197, 197n11, 198, 200, 202–204, 206, 207, 216, 220, 222n16, 252–254 Hašek, Jaroslav, 44, 114 Hauptmann, Elisabeth, 50, 225 Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm, 3, 3n5, 41n37, 55, 112 Hendrix, Jimi, 90 Hinz, Werner, 34 Historicization, 11–15, 64–66, 181, 183, 184, 215 Hurwicz, Angelika, 18, 34, 36, 111, 123, 123n16, 130n36, 144n5, 153n47, 173 I Ibsen, Henrik, 225, 227 Imbrigotta, Kristopher, 17n61, 17n62, 119n2, 152n44, 196n8 Interventionist thinking, 10, 16, 23 J Jameson, Frederic, 154, 154n53, 172n15 Joe Fleischhacker, 3 Johnstone, Keith, 14, 20, 97–99, 97n1, 101–107, 101n11, 101n12, 103n15, 105n19, 105n20, 107n24, 107n25, 108n26, 110–112, 110n27, 111n34, 216 Johst, Hanns, 225 Jones, David Richard, 36n25, 116, 117n52, 151, 198n17

K Katz, Pamela, 138n44 Katzgraben Notes, 4n10, 144, 144n2, 144n4 Kaufman, Moisés, 227, 228, 228n33, 228n34 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), 222, 223 Kleber, Pia, 49n1, 121n12, 151n36 Knipper-Chekhova, Olga, 173 Küchenmeister, Claus, 194n3, 206 Kuckhahn, Heinz, 33 Kuhle Wampe (Who Owns the World), 53 Kuhn, Tom, v, 3n3, 3n4, 6, 50n6, 51, 52n7, 55n21, 127, 128, 128n26, 128n27, 129, 129n31, 129n32, 129n33, 129n34, 155n55, 157n63 Kushner, Tony, 19, 26, 39, 41–47, 41n38, 42n40, 42n42, 43n45, 43n46, 43n47, 43n48, 43n49, 43n51, 45n59, 45n60, 45n61, 45n63, 46n67, 53n14, 59n33, 62n43, 70n58, 71n64, 88n23, 89, 104n18, 113n43, 115n47, 134n41, 137n43, 157n64, 163n74, 165n79, 188n61, 213n67, 219, 219n9, 221n11, 221n13, 227 L Lang, Joachim, 121n12, 194n3 Leafing back, 16, 38, 57, 139 Lenin, Vladimir, 3, 3n5 Lenya, Lotte, 138, 138n44 Lenz, J.M.R., 225 Life of Galileo, 210 Literarization, 8, 15–17, 20, 73–95, 166, 202, 216, 219

 INDEX 

Luckhurst, Mary, 95, 95n38, 95n39, 195n5, 195n6, 200n24 Lutz, Regine, 57n30, 220 Lyon, James K., 3n6, 7n18 M Macy, William H., 175 Main Event, The, 186 Mamet, David, 175 Martin, Clay, 212 Marx, Karl, 4, 41n37, 55, 56 Marxism, 2–5, 7, 10, 41, 41n36, 60, 62, 94, 111, 113, 140n48, 152n41 Meisel, Edmund, 50 Method of Physical Actions, The (MPA), 174n25, 175, 178, 184, 186–189, 247 Miller, Arthur, 20n69 Miller, Jonathan, 208, 209n55 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 227 Model books, 6, 22, 26, 36n22, 144, 195–200, 196n8, 206n47, 210, 211, 213, 216 Moliere, 34n20, 164, 225 Monk, Egon, 100, 119, 119n1, 194n3 Moscow Art Theatre, The (MAT), 36, 191 Mother Courage and Her Children, vi, 2, 7, 8, 14, 16–20, 22, 23, 25–47, 25n1, 28n5, 28n6, 33n16, 39n32, 39n34, 41n38, 42n39, 42n40, 42n41, 42n42, 43n45, 43n47, 43n48, 43n49, 43n50, 43n51, 44n58, 45n59, 45n60, 45n61, 45n64, 46n68, 46n70, 46n71, 49, 53–59, 53n14, 59n33, 61–71, 62n43, 64n47, 64n48, 70n58, 71n64, 73, 75–76, 76n7, 76n8, 77n13, 78, 78n15, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86,

269

88–90, 88n23, 91n28, 94, 95, 97, 99–106, 100n9, 108, 111–117, 111n31, 113n43, 115n47, 119, 119n1, 125, 125n22, 127, 129, 131, 134–137, 135n42, 137n43, 139, 140, 148, 149n23, 150–153, 153n45, 156, 157n64, 158–163, 163n74, 165, 165n79, 167–169, 174–176, 178–180, 182, 183, 185–191, 188n61, 193, 195n6, 196–198, 196n8, 198n15, 199n18, 201–204, 204n33, 206–215, 213n67, 217–224, 219n9, 221n11, 221n12, 221n13, 223n17, 224n21, 224n23, 225n26, 227, 235–254 Mother, The, 26, 27, 49, 113, 155, 204, 220n10 Mr Puntila and His Man Matti, 34n20, 102, 103n14, 125 Müller, Heiner, 232 Mumford, Meg, v, 8n20, 98n3, 110, 110n30, 144, 144n4, 147, 147n15 Münsterer, Hanns Otto, 51, 52n7 N Neher, Caspar, 15, 15n54, 75, 77, 77n14, 91, 92, 100n10, 119, 119n1, 121, 122n13, 122n14, 125, 127, 129 Nightingale, Benedict, 46, 47n72 Notate, 193n2, 196n8, 200–204, 201n25, 207, 210, 211 “Not…But,” 8, 14, 17, 20, 103, 147, 148n22, 149, 160–162, 164, 165, 180, 184, 189, 253–254 Nullpunkt (Zero Point), 21, 121n9, 147, 147n17

270 

INDEX

O Objective, 121, 158, 175–178, 183, 187, 249 Obstacle, 68, 176–179, 176n30, 176n31, 178n38, 186, 187, 191, 249–250 Ostermeier, Thomas, 227 Otto, Teo, 32n11, 34, 50, 51, 52n7, 76, 76n10, 77, 95n37, 119n1 Over-egging, 8, 16–17 P Palm, Kurt, 70n60 Parker, Stephen, vi, 5n12, 6, 29n8, 34n20, 41n36, 113n41, 145n6, 145n7, 218n5 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 120 Piscator, Erwin, 44, 154n54, 173 Plot, 9, 10n29, 14, 20, 37, 37n27, 49, 52, 54–55, 57, 58, 67, 71n63, 75, 97, 130, 139, 147, 197, 198, 198n16 Pre-empting is precluding, 16–17 Presentism, 55, 65, 69, 184, 202, 226 Previous circumstances, 37, 54, 179, 182, 184, 185, 248–249, 251 Private Life of the Master Race, The, 204 See also Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The R Rehearsals, 2, 8, 17, 18, 21, 37, 37n28, 45, 50, 52, 54, 71, 74, 79, 88, 91, 93, 97–117, 119–121, 121n12, 122n14, 123–125, 129–132, 135, 138–140, 143, 144, 144n4, 146–148, 149n23, 150,

152–157, 154n50, 155n58, 156n59, 156n60, 159, 161, 164, 167, 171, 173, 176, 179–181, 184n55, 186, 189, 191, 194–197, 199–202, 204–209, 205n37, 211, 213, 219, 222, 225 Reichel, Käthe, 115, 116n49 Reid, Josylyn, 153, 158, 164, 221 Reinhardt, Max, 50, 173 Reinsborough, Patrick, 229n36, 229n37, 229n38, 229n40, 231, 231n46, 231n47, 232n48, 232n49, 232n50 Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The, 182n49 Round Heads and Pointed Heads, 171 Rouse, John, 50, 50n2, 50n3, 50n4, 53, 53n15, 58n31 Rülicke-Weiler, Käthe, 34, 35n21, 37n27, 88, 88n23, 149n23, 218n6, 220n10 Runeberg, Johan Ludvig, 28, 28n7 S Saint Joan of the Stockyards, 114 Samson-Körner, Paul, 50 Santesson, Ninnan, 29 Schall, Ekkehard, 61n40, 163, 182n49 Scheider, Roy, 83 Schiller, Friedrich, 28 Seeler, Moritz, 50n5 Sellars, Peter, 227 Señora Carrar’s Rifles, 29, 204 Separation of the Elements, The, 8, 14–15, 17, 20, 73, 74, 95, 217 Shakespeare, William, 5n14, 20n69, 53n15, 89, 178n37, 194n4, 225 Silberman, Marc, v, 3n3, 3n4, 6, 7n18, 8n19, 98, 98n2, 98n4, 98n5, 149, 149n27, 149n28, 183n50

 INDEX 

Smith, Anna Deavere, 166, 167n83 Smith, Christopher, 89–91, 89n24, 90n25, 91n27, 166, 167, 167n83, 203, 212 Special, Duke, 46, 89 Squiers, Anthony, v, 4, 4n11, 62, 62n44, 225, 225n26 Staats, Amanda, 86 Stafford-Clark, Max, 106, 106n22 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 18–23, 18n67, 36, 36n25, 58, 107n25, 110, 110n29, 117n52, 131n38, 144, 144n4, 145, 149, 153–158, 154n50, 154n51, 154n52, 157n65, 163, 168–174, 170n6, 174n22, 176n32, 180n40, 181–184, 182n46, 182n47, 182n48, 184n54, 191, 216, 217, 247–254 Status, 4, 14, 20, 38, 43, 97–117, 101n11, 106n22, 107n25, 120, 121n9, 130–132, 130n37, 131n38, 134, 135, 157, 179, 188, 190, 191, 197, 197n11, 198, 202, 203, 207, 216, 220, 226, 226n29, 228, 252–254 Steffin, Margarete, 29 Stellproben, 123, 124, 140, 143, 207, 211 Sternberg, Fritz, 5 Stevens, Laura, 228, 228n35, 230, 230n41 Stoppard, Tom, 227 Streep, Meryl, 45 Strittmatter, Erwin, 144n4 T Tableaux, 140–142, 179–183 See also Arrangements

271

Tesori, Jeanine, 46, 89 Texas Tech University (TTU), v, vi, 1, 14, 17, 19, 39 Theaterarbeit (Theatre Work), 19, 26, 36, 52, 68n54, 144, 151, 152, 173n18, 173n19, 196, 198, 198n17, 199n18, 201n26, 204, 205, 207, 207n50 Thirty Years War, The, 30, 59, 70, 129n30, 223 Thomson, Peter, 18n68, 28n6, 120n3, 164n75, 225n27 Threepenny Opera, The, 6, 36, 59n35, 138, 172, 217 Toporkov, Vasili, 154, 154n50, 154n52 Trevis, Di, 227 Turning points, 68–69 See also Drehpunkt Tynan, Kenneth, 22, 193–195, 193n1, 194n4, 195n6, 197, 218n5 V van Dijk, Maarten, 7n18, 52n7, 151, 151n36 Van Lieu, Ron, 184, 184n55, 185n56, 186, 187n58, 187n59 Verfremdung, 8, 10–11, 13–15, 17, 19, 20, 56, 59, 63–64, 74, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 128, 128n26, 129, 159, 166, 172n14, 174n24, 182, 184, 189, 203, 213, 216, 219, 222n14, 230–232, 254 Versuche (Experiments), 196, 196n8, 215, 215n2 Völker, Klaus, 4n7, 4n8, 5, 5n13 von Appen, Karl, 119n1, 121, 122n14 von Trier, Lars, 93, 94n33

272 

INDEX

W Wagner, Richard, 14 Wardle, Irving, 138n44 Warner, Deborah, 46, 46n69, 47, 89 Warren-Crow, Seth, 82 Washburn, Anne, 93, 93n30 Weber, Carl, v, 3, 3n6, 18n68, 44, 57n30, 88n21, 91n28, 100n9, 104, 104n17, 123n15, 141, 141n49, 144n5, 145n8, 148, 148n20, 152n43, 155n58, 156n59, 166, 167, 167n83, 167n84, 167n85, 167n86, 167n87, 173, 173n20, 173n21, 181, 181n44, 200n23, 205, 205n42, 209, 209n58 Wedgwood, C.V., 129n30 Weigel, Helene, 6, 29, 34, 35n21, 36, 52, 79n16, 99, 100n9, 115, 127, 136, 148, 150, 153n45, 159, 161, 163, 166–167, 173n19, 199n18, 204, 208, 209n58, 220n10 Weill, Kurt, 138, 138n44 Weinhoffer, Madison, 223, 224n21, 224n22, 224n23

Wekwerth, Manfred, 8, 9n22, 9n24, 9n25, 11n34, 13, 13n48, 14, 14n50, 14n51, 16, 16n58, 16n59, 16n60, 38n31, 49, 49n1, 61n41, 73, 73n1, 112, 112n40, 143, 144n5, 148n19, 150, 150n30, 150n31, 150n32, 150n34, 158, 158n67, 158n68, 173, 174n22, 174n23, 200, 201n25, 209, 210, 210n60, 210n61, 210n62, 210n63, 210n64, 210n65, 211n66 Westbrook, Tawny, 104, 140, 220 Wifstrand, Naima, 28, 29 Willett, John, 3n3, 5n15, 6, 6n17, 7n18, 10, 10n31, 26n2, 33n14, 42, 43n44, 44, 44n56, 45, 54, 59n35, 100n10, 103n14, 104n17, 119n1, 148n22, 154n51, 155n55, 157n63, 167n83, 200n22 Wineburg, Sam, 65, 65n51 Wolfe, George C., 45, 46 Z Zoob, David, v, 20n69, 224, 224n24