Bertolt Brecht sporting the new fall fashion.
File Under: Brecht style, Washington lobbyist, defense contractor, war of American suppression
I’m very excited to finally introduce my latest play Mary Courage & Her Children. It’s been about two years in the making, albeit off and on, and although the “music” side of this musical comedy about funding the Iraq war isn’t quite completed, the book and lyrics are ready for general consumption.
I tend to not talk at length about my work, but I wanted to make an exception for this piece. Here is a little bit of how Mary Courage & Her Children came about.
Having lived in Germany for over a year, I was feeling a little like a small-minded douche because I hadn’t read many (or any) German authors. So I grabbed a couple books and plays, one of which was Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children.” Because I’m a lazy American, I didn’t know Brecht at all, and apparently by the reaction of my German boss, Germans don’t actually read Brecht anymore, either, as he wondered what the hell I was doing with THAT book. (Or maybe it was that I was an American and what the hell was I doing with THAT book.)
I was sitting in the tub, the only place where I can’t take my laptop (realistically) which forces me to go analog and read, and I cracked open Mother Courage. I think I was about 10 pages into it when I was completely hooked on the play and Brecht’s style, plus the gears of my mind were turning. Within that tub reading session, a parody of Brecht’s play just clicked with me. If Mother Courage were American, she would be a Washington lobbyist for a defense contractor, I thought. She’s a smooth talker who knows how to work all the angles to get what she wants in the end, which is money for herself. Success or failure, she will find a way to survive because that’s what she does. She’s both confident and vulnerable to realities that are bigger than her and has an uncanny ability to accept that and fight it at the same time. Thus, Mary Courage was born.
More than just trying to parody one of the top plays of the 20th century or trying to emulate (if only a little bit) Brecht’s style, which I enjoy so much, this is my protest. The Iraq war is the war of American suppression where the people lost their voices. The country was swept into a war based on emotion, with anti-war sentiment shushed down and shamed by name calling, where dissenters were unAmerican people who didn’t “support the troops.”
A lot of people made a lot of money on this war (still making it), and a lot of people, the American people, lost a lot of money on this war (still losing it). Yet, the people were persuaded that this was a necessary war, and really a pretty “safe” war, in relative terms, because of our advanced military. It’s like your children will be playing a video game, which is what they’d be sitting home doing anyway.
As the war progressed, I started watching news specials about how our advanced medical technology was helping wounded soldiers live “normal” lives again. It was pretty obvious that the media was missing the point (possibly because they got such exclusive “access” to such a great “story” from the military). The story was “look at this brave soldier with no arms and how these new multimillion-dollar artificial limbs make it so that he can pick things up again and have a normal life. Isn’t that great?” The story should have been “holy fuck, this guy doesn’t have arms anymore! There are how many more people like this? No shit?”
When the Walter Reed Medical Center (and the Veterans Administration, in general) came under fire for shoddy care, the story was “Why can’t we spend more money to give these wounded soldiers better care? What a scandal!” The story should have been “This is ridiculous. No war means no wounded soldiers.” Is it really that simple? Yes.
And here we are, 2010, fighting a war (in a different country) while we’re paying millions to keep the “peace” in Iraq. Meanwhile, people remain relatively blind or at ease with the fascism in their daily lives where, slowly over time, everyone’s become a suspect of doing something wrong.
Mary Courage is the one responsible for making sure the money keeps flowing in so that we can better “support the troops” overseas and keep the peace to protect the innocent, and she must do so in the face of war fatigue and general unrest in the public, which is putting pressure on the elected officials to stop funding the war.
I think Brecht’s Mother Courage is a great character, and I definitely modeled Mary Courage after her. I don’t like to be too descriptive with my characters because I prefer that people imagine for themselves what the characters look like, but I must admit that Mother Courage reminds me exactly of my former drama teacher Carol Quandt. She IS Mother Courage (and by extension Mary).
Can anything related to the Iraq war be made into a comedy? Sure. Lord knows the politicians made it a comedy of errors in an effort to start the war machine back up in the first place. When reading Mary Courage, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry (or get a couple unsettling chills which I think is close enough), you’ll be angry, you’ll be sad, and hopefully, you’ll be inspired.
Is this play antiwar? You bet your ass it is, but what it really is is anti-Senate.
