" !"

[bcholmes]

"Don't stare so romantically," said Bertolt Brecht.

One of my theatre profs at Waterloo was passionate about Brecht. Me, I liked his ideas; I wasn't as fond of his plays. One of my favourite poems turned out to be a song from one of his plays; it's called "Remembering Marie A.":

And if you ask, how does that love seem now
I must admit, I really can't remember
And yet I know what you are trying to say
But what her face was like, I know no longer
I only know I kissed it on that day

It's a powerful piece, in my opinion. Surprisingly moving, considering Brecht.

Remember I was talking about My Dinner With Andre? Andre talks about how Brecht developed strategies to keep people from being overwhelmed by what they saw. Brecht believed that the ideal audience existed in a perpetual state of emotional distance from the action on the stage.

Brecht was of the opinion that all performances of his plays should be basically the same. No reinterpretation. Many of his plays come with extensive director's notes so that you can stage the plays exactly as he originally staged them. With an emotionally remote audience, not staring very romantically.

There are photographs of his original productions. I remember seeing pictures of the famous silent scream from Mother Courage.

Mother Courage is a merchant in a war. She travels around the countryside with a big wagon, selling wares with her sons. One by one, in the course of the play, her sons are killed, until the last one is arrested by soldiers; he is to be shot soon. Mother Courage offers to trade her wagon (and all of its wares) in exchange for her son's life. The soldiers agree. Mother Courage has doubts. If she gives up her wagon, how will she live. Maybe a counter-offer? Half the wares in exchange for her son's life? But she hesitates too long and her son is shot.

In the original production, Brecht's wife, Helen Weigel came up with a famous "silent scream". Her whole body convulsed in one long, soundless wail to speak to the pathos of the moment when Mother Courage realizes that she's traded her son's life for material possessions.

Sometimes I wonder how one would express the silent scream in ASCII:

"           !"