Brecht video notes

Tony Kushner adaptation

- "war feeds her people better"
- "the weak are exterminated. They won't do any better during peace time."
- shocking how Courage didn't learn how terrible war was even after her daughter became disfigured
- "I better be getting back to business"

*last scene where mother courage says "I better be getting back to business" while pulling her own cart is sad and eerie.

- sculpture of the human soul in action
fiona shaw

five truths Bertolt Brecht style
- music is used as a juxtaposition
- happy music but very creepy message
- narrates her own actions
- repetition of song
"He is dead. Lady dead and gone."

Brecht on Stage
- dialectical theatre
- distance between actors and audience = alienation
- wanted to make audience remember that they were watching a play

Vsevolod Meyerhold
- kinaesthetic spectacle
- contemporary of stanislavski and chekov
- theatre should not mirror reality but transcend the everyday
- meyerhold and stanislavsky = releasing the actors emotional potential
- create a theatre for new era
- joined bolshevik revolution
- dance and physical movement = actors awareness of body
- means of expression through action
- biomechanics
- series of exercises that help the actor express emotion
- masks
- japanese influences
kabuki masks
- hated predictable
- explored grotesque

Eric Bentley
- worked with brecht
- brecht was communist
- brecht denied he was communist
- people got angry
- three penny opera
- what does three penny opera say to american society today?
mendacity of the capitalist system
- is it cynical about capitalist system? or just about human nature in general?
^ key question capitalists demanded of Brecht
- brecht = skeptic of mankind