How Does Your Performance Use the Techniques and Conventions Similar to Mother Courage in Order to Portray a Political Performance?

How does your performance use the techniques and conventions similar                                                               to mother courage in order to portray a political performance?

Berthold Brecht a well-known theatre director brought many new dynamics to the theatre world in his life time from 1898-1956. Through the plays he developed were meant to make people think and become proactive about certain situations rather just accepting societies the way are. He was Inspired from the writings of Karl Marx, soon becoming a Marxist himself and believing in equality amongst everyone not the political stature then the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer with societies.

Brecht’s has created a use of political theatre within performances showing the different types of societies upfront political issues that are right in front of them. In our group performance ‘Mr Joy’s Funtime Toys’ portrays a political theatre, hence using similar kind of techniques and conventions to Brecht’s play ‘Mother Courage’ in the use of our characterization and stagecraft. Our performance focuses on the very heavy topic in the issue of human trafficking within children from around the world. The play ‘Mother Courage’ also focuses on heavy topic in political issues of war and surviving the struggle which demonstrates the developments of Brecht’s techniques and conventions. When we look at the progress of Brechtian theatre techniques and conventions within the use of characters and that of stage a political performance is developed which is clearly portrayed through the similarities being shaped within our group performance and ‘Mother Courage’.

One of the key techniques to Brechtian theatre is the use of song which is largely used in many of his plays. Song is a way to detach the audience from characters and story to ensure they know that in fact watching a play not a real life event that has occur like ‘Mother Courage’ survival in war. ‘Mother Courage’ song used in the play is sung by the characters themselves, in most of seventh scene is dedicated to mother courage singing. Song can also be another way to narrating the play. In our group performance we use song and it is almost sung by every character in individual lines each, in return this distances the characters from the audience giving them the realisation how horrifying trafficking is and it happens in our backyard. This in hope will make them take social action upon the issue.

In many Brecht plays we see the used of generic names being used, this convention has been clearly done to create a more realistic detachment from the audience to the play and a loss of identity. In ‘Mother Courage’ generic names are used for example soldier, Clerk and Chaplin. This is used to highlight the indifferences each ‘character has according to their name which leads to different opinions they may have especially about the occurring war. In our group performance generic names are used such as ‘soldier’ and ‘ballerina’ to help create a detachment from the characters to help bring out the condemning issue of human trafficking leading to a loss if identity within children whom suffer from this.