Sunday 3 March 2013

Brecht: The art of his Drama



Brecht's Epic Theatre:follow the link

3 comments:

  1. Life of author:
    Brecht was born Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of a Catholic father, Friedrich Brecht, who worked as a salesman for a paper factory, and a Protestant mother, Sofie. Brecht grew up in a middle-class household and was precociously intelligent in school. He began writing poems while still in secondary school and had several published by 1914. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Instead of continuing on this path, however, he studied science and medicine at university to avoid the draft. It did not work, and he was drafted in 1918 at the end of World War I. He served as an orderly in the military hospital in Augsburg.

    Background :
    Brecht wrote this play during the second world war although the play is set in the 17th century during the famous 30 years war that took place between 1618-1648.

    Though Mother Courage and Her Children is set during the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century,Brecht draws several parallels between that war and the events that were unfolding in Europe as he wrote the play. Uncertainty was a way of life in both eras. Men of all ages were conscripted to fight in the war. In 1930s Germany, every man between the ages of nineteen and forty-five were deemed fit for military service, amounting to more than eight million people in the army alone.

    Audience response to the question :
    From its earliest productions, critics praised the power and complexity of Mother Courage and Her Children, especially its main character. Though Mother Courage was written in the late-1930s, it was not produced until April 19, 1941. The play debuted in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, a major theater, and
    was immediately successful— despite the fact that the country was surrounded by Nazis and invasion was always a possibility. The character of Mother Courage, and what she represents, has been a major point of critical discussion.Many critics, especially of the first production in Zurich, argued that she is a tragic character. In several articles, she is compared to the tragic figure of Niobe, a character from Greek mythology who suffers greatly and turns to stone after all her children are killed.

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  2. Moral and ethical questions :
    Though Mother Courage runs her canteen to support herself and her children, she often makes choices that put her commerce before her family. Each of her children are adversely affected while she is brokering business deals: Eilif is recruited by the Swedish army officer while Mother Courage tries to sell a belt buckle; Swiss Cheese is executed by the Catholics while she haggles over the price of his ransom; Kattrin dies while Mother Courage is in town buying goods.

    Mother Courage is both hero and antihero, each of her positive actions has a negative counterpart. Brecht shows this duality as a negative consequence of war. It is an unnatural perverse state in which common values are challenged at every turn; people are forced to act on both their good and bad impulses, in the hopes that a balance of the two forces will insure success. Mother Courage’s behaviour is driven by a need to survive during wartime, yet by the time the action in the play begins, it is clear her priorities on this matter have become skewed. She has equated the relentless pursuit of profit (her antiheroic side) with success and
    survival; she comes to believe that if she is profitable, it will allow her family to survive the war. She has allowed this side of her to rule each situation, despite what her heroic nature might dictate. Yet in the end her pragmatism and devotion to commerce leaves her emotionally and financially bankrupt. It is this last point that hammers home Brecht’s primary theme in the play: war is pointless, it robs people of their humanity, and, ultimately, everyone involved loses. While gains may be made in geographic terms, humanity is left poorer for the experience.

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  3. TEXT THREE - RIDERS TO THE SEA BY JOHN M. SYNGE
    Man vs Nature – This is the central theme of the play, it is the basis of the play, the power struggle between humans and natural order, to come out on top and take control, that is what this play depicts. It speaks of the inevitability of loss and futility of challenging nature.
    Life vs Death – a recurring theme that repeats throughout the play. The play begins with the possibility of death, that is the prospect of Micheal’s death, the sisters’ are dreading going through the belongings to confirm whether they do after all belong to their brother or not. The constant references to the sea as destructive by Maurya and her daughters, as a cause for death and despair.
    The supernatural elements, god and religion.
    The dominance and power of the sea.
    Life on the Island.
    The unusual reality of parents outliving children/ Old Age
    Grief and Despair.

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