War of Art

*If you saw my notes for this video, you would probably be petrified at how unorganized they are. This blog post will focus on the main aspects that I deemed to be important in the video and will not include copious detail or coherent thought.*

• Meryl Streep on acting - she is the "interpreter of lost songs." She has to discover, feel then translate the information and the writing into a character.
• Mother courage from her experiences learns nothing at all. She gains nothing, but loses everything.  Brecht however wants the audience to learn.
• "We all live off of the war."
• "What they carry on their backs will kill them."
• One of Mother Courage's biggest mistakes and regrets: letting her sorrow and despair interfere and kill the young man's rebellious spirit.
• Brecht's goal wasn't only to get the audience to think. He wanted the audience to respond emotionally AND think.
• Enormous attention to detail in design.
• Interesting moment: Swiss Cheese dies and Mother Courage is silent screaming whilst the set is moving behind her. Such a beautiful moment and conveys so much.
• Fatal virtues. Mother Courage addresses her children's virtues in the beginning of the play and that's what ends up killing them.
• Mother Courage is looking for the war - the money of the war. It's this endless search that results in the death of her children.
• Duality - setting, characters, themes.
• Image: contrast between everyone pulling the wagon at the beginning of the play to only Mother Courage pulling.
• What attracts is to what destroys.
• "These people live by/from the har they do, not by the good."
• "It is not the virtues that get you through in this world, but wickedness."
• Mother Courage if you think about it has a wonderful character and resilient attitude, though a bit rough around her sides. "It's not the characters that have to change, but the context."
• "My personality doesn't matter" 
• Collective action
• A good Brechtian moment: A very sad emotional moment when Kattrin dies, but there's a twist: the soldier is exaggerating his movements in a humorous fashion. Brings it back to the audience's attention for them to think. In this moment, she is only "mother."
• People are malleable enough.
• Brecht put himself in the service of something else - something bigger than himself - Marxism. (2 years of Marxist study before Marx was even famous.)