Madda Courage braves Jamaica’s ‘civil war’

Bertolt Brecht’s famous anti-war play, Mother Courage and Her Children, has been re-imagined, re-contextualised and produced by the Edna Manley College of the Performing Arts’ School of Drama as Madda Courage an Har Pickney Dem. Unfortunately, the production works. True, this is a tribute to the dramaturge, Yvonne Webber, who did the re-imagining, and the director, Pierre Lemaire, and his large team of actors and technicians who staged the work over the past two weekends. But it is also an indictment of the warlike nature of Jamaican society. Therein lies the irony.

Brecht’s play, which was written in 1939, the year of the start of World War II, is set during the Thirty Years’ War in 17th Century Europe. Regrettably, the play fits neatly into the context of Jamaica’s continuous “civil war” since the 1970s, which has resulted in the slaughter of Jamaicans by their countrymen in war-time numbers. The play is regarded by some as not only the greatest anti-war play ever written, but the greatest play of the 20th century. Much of its power is because its central character is a mother, the most powerful of our archetypal figures.

Add to that another irony: Brecht’s brilliant idea, on which the action of the play turns, is that the mother, Mother Courage, is struggling to survive in a war that ultimately kills her children but which she needs to survive. She is a higgler, selling goods from a huge cart, which doubles as sleeping quarters, and finds that business is best when there is conflict.

As Madda Courage, Carolyn Allen leads a uniformly convincing cast. While Allen shines as the star, her children – Eilif (Kibwe Lawrence), Swiss Cheese (Jesse McClure), and Kattrin (Ajayla Brown) – are all realistic in their distinct roles, Eilif as a warrior, Swiss Cheese as an office clerk type, and Kattrin, so far along the autism spectrum, is non-verbal. There are 11 other actors/actresses, with most of them in more than one role. The exceptions are Michael Nicholson (Chaplain), Nicholas Amore (Cook), Jean-Paul Menou (Boss), Latoya Newman (Yvette) and Carl Davis (Older Man).

The remaining characters, a motley group, add authenticity to the setting. We meet soldiers, of course, with Horace Gordon playing three, along with a customer and a farmer; Lennox Richards portraying a man with a patch, a policeman, and a puppet; Jordan Brown as a young man, young soldier, puppet, and injured man; Dean Smith as Smitty, a customer, and a soldier; Jada Merchant as an older woman and a farmer’s wife; and Kemar Haughton as a servant and a policeman.

Special mention goes to narrators Kizzy Hope and Jonathan McLaughlin, who, in the prologue, guide the audience through a quick journey of Jamaican history relevant to the play’s setting. McLaughlin, on stilts, towers above the audience as he leads us into the Dennis Scott Drama Studio. This dramatic addition to Brecht’s play has a match in a puppet scene within the drama. It involves two puppeteers manipulating the two marionettes named above in the way that the Jamaican public is arguably manipulated by politicians.

Brecht is famous for his attempt to “alienate” his audience from getting emotionally involved with the story and characters of his plays. Instead, he wants audiences to remain aware that they are watching a play, not events in real life, and to think about the characters’ problems rather than empathise with them. In Jamaica, apart from their approach in Roots theatre – which is Brechtian in that it, too, alienates its audiences – our actors generally try to embody their characters, not keep them at arm’s length. I asked the director what he asked of his actors.

He told me that getting them to use the Brechtian approach was “challenging”. The alienation effect was also achieved, he said, “through the traditional Brecht stage techniques, updated to today’s stage (songs, poems, slides, radio announcements), as well as some we added–puppet segment, narrators’ intervention, Kattrin’s costume going to folk reference when she proceeds to the revolt and her death, etc).

He continued, “The idea for me was to use the Brechtian approach of carrying a social/political message, using a story and characters the audience can socially recognise, but still using [other] techniques that the Jamaican audience is accustomed to.”

In his producer’s notes in the programme, Marvin George, the dean of the School of Drama, contextualises the play as not just another entertainment, but as an existential lesson for Jamaicans. The school’s version of the original play, he writes, “is critical for us, as we find ways through theatre for confronting the shape of the violence, made ordinary by our history, to repair ourselves and our communities. This process is as important for the cast, as it is for the audiences. We have borders to cross, for our women and our children – essentially ourselves.”

entertainment@gleanerjm.com