AAS (7) - Brecht

To begin this lesson we got back into our pairs and presented our findings on Brecht to the rest of the class. After doing this, we got into pairs and stood on the opposite side of the class to our partners. We then had to think of a nursery rhyme and mime it to our partner using gestures. The partner had to guess what nursery rhyme it was and then we would swap. The purpose of this exercise was to get used to using exaggerated gestures.

We were then told that the next play we would look at was "Mother Courage and her children".  Brecht wrote this play at the height of World War 2. The play is about Anna Fierling (a.k.a. "Mother Courage") who is trying to make money from the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648). However, from the very war she is trying to make money from, her three children lose their lives and she ends up losing her money. Angered by the war, Brecht wanted to write an anti-war play, but knew it would be stupid to write about the current war (as this would result in him being arrested or even killed) so he wrote about a previous war in Sweden.

We were given the script for the scene we will be working on at the end of the lesson. The characters in this scene are as follows:

• Recruiter
• Sergeant
• Mother Courage
• The Elder Son
• The Younger Son
• Eilif
• Swiss Cheese
• Kattrin

There are eight characters and nine of us in the class so we decided that someone would be the director. We all had a vote and ended up deciding that Charlie would be the director as he really wanted to direct, he comes up with a lot of good ideas and he knows a lot about Brecht. Next lesson we shall work on this scene.