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What is often hailed as Brecht’s best work, MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN uses the Thirty Years’ War as a backdrop for this cautionary tale, written in 1939, as WWII was beginning to erupt in Europe. Anna Fierling, also known as Mother Courage, hauls her canteen across and around the European continent, following the battles, selling the soldiers necessities for their lives while she supports herself and her family of three children. As the war goes on and on, Courage switches from one side to the next, first supporting the Protestants, then the Catholics, in her efforts to keep business alive. Even as the war claims the lives of her three children, she persists in her struggle to make a profit—at the expense of her humanity. Annie Enneking tackles the title role of Anna Fierling in MOTHER COURAGE, after stopping the show in her last Frank appearance as Helenin THE WOMEN OF TROY, as well as spicing things up in THE LOVE SONG OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER and SICILIAN NIGHTS. She’s supported by Frank newcomer Heather Bunch, who plays her mute daughter Kattrin; Emil Herrera, who ruled the A Mill as The Mayor in Suzan-Lori Parks’ “A” play; and Grant Richey, who blesses us with his role as The Chaplain, after having scared the beejesus out of us as the creepy government guy in THE GOD OF HELL last fall. Longtime Frank fixture John Riedlinger returns from Los Angeles to rejoin his collaborators from THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, our 2001 Brecht adventure. Tom Sherohman, Robert-Bruce Brake, and Maria Asp, who has barely recovered from her Mother-Showman experience in VENUS last spring. Dana Munson, who is building quite a Frank rap sheet, and Taous Khazem return after appearing in VENUS, and Leif Jurgensen was seen during our last A Mill extravaganza,THE WOMEN OF TROY. Ariel Dumas, Jake Endres, Eva Nelson, Jennifer Phillips, and Eric Sharp are getting their first “Badge of Courage” from Frank with this production. The guy who has done scenery for all of our site-specific projects, John Bueche, is at it again, alongside costumer Kathy Kohl (who has more Frank offenses than any other artist except Wendy Knox), and lighting designer Michael Wangen, who is lighting his first Frank show. Michael Croswell chimes in as the musical director and Marya Hart provides live accompaniment with Croswell and Endres (who also provides vocal coaching). Gluttons for punishment, or lovers of whipcracking, Spencer Putney and Katie Burger tackle the stage management of the whole darn crew. Frank Artistic Director Wendy Knox directs the show, with dramaturgical assistance from Beth Cleary and Steve Matuszak. BERTOLT BRECHT’s MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN Translated by David Hare, with music by Jonathan Dove Directed by Wendy Knox, Musical Direction by Michael Croswell, Set Design by John Bueche, Costume Design by Kathy Kohl, Lighting Design by Michael Wangen, Stage Managed by Spencer Putney Featuring Annie Enneking as “Mother Courage” October 20 - Nov. 12, 2006 612.724.3760 PERFORMANCE TIMES AND TICKET PRICES: ABOUT THE PLAY: “The BEST anti-war play of the 20th Century!” “Nobody try and tell me this is different DIRECTIONS TO THE THEATRE: The Machine Shop is located right next to St. Anthony Main, 300 SE 2nd St., at the intersection of 3rd Ave. S. and 2nd St. SE. There is plenty of off-street parking, and there is a public lot diagonally across from the performance space. (There is NO PARKING in the small lot next to the performance space.) See the Mapquest.com map. FROM THE SOUTH: Take 35W north to the University Ave/4th St. exit. Turn left on 4th street, and go about 6 blocks to 3rd Avenue. Turn left, go 2 blocks to the stop sign at 2nd St., and the Machine Shop will be on your left, across the intersection. FROM THE NORTH: Get on University Ave, and follow it to 3rd Ave. Turn right, go one block and there you are, on the left. FROM THE WEST: Coming in on 94, take the 4th St N exit into downtown, and follow it to 3rd Ave. S. Turn left, cross the river, and take the first right on to 2nd St. SE. The Machine Shop will be on your right side, about 2 blocks away. OR on 394, follow the downtown exit, turn right on Washington Ave., go to 3rd Ave S., turn left, cross river, and turn right on 2nd St. SE. Go two blocks. FROM THE EAST: Take 94, exit on Huron Blvd., which becomes 4th St SE. Go to 3rd Ave. S., turn left, go two blocks, and there you are. PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK ON MAPQUEST! 'Mother Courage' emerges victorious The opening moment of Frank Theatre's production of "Mother Courage and Her Children" is an inspired blend of design, music, performance and spectacle. "Mother Courage and Her Children" is perhaps Bertolt Brecht's most famous play, written in 1939 just as World War II was beginning to erupt. The epic story takes place in the 17th century during the Thirty Years' War and is fairly simple: as displaced citizens are left to fend for themselves, Mother Courage and her three children hit the road in their dilapidated canteen and try to eke out a living in the grimmest of circumstances. Mother Courage's life-sized canteen wagon rambles onto the stage, made of bicycle parts and pulled by her two exhausted sons. White sheets double as projection screens and scrims, behind which battles are won and lost. The cavernous A Mill Machine Shop — itself reminiscent of an abandoned war zone — serves as the jumping off point for John Bueche's evocative set. Jonathan Dove's lush songs, which are played live by Michael Croswell, Jake Endres and Marya Hart, are a perfect complement to David Hare's wry and funny translation. Along their journey, Mother Courage and her children meet the dying and the already dead, former neighbors and calculating generals. "Without a war," the armed men ask rhetorically, "Where do people get their moral standards from?" It's clear from their tone that initiating a pan-continental religious conflict isn't that much more complicated than implementing a business strategy. Director Wendy Knox's production is thought provoking and immensely entertaining. The company is as tight as a war drum. Standouts include Grant Richey as the opportunistic Chaplain and his rival in love, The Cook, played by Emil Herrera. The two men vie for Courage's affections even as she's busy calculating her meager profits. When asked how she got her moniker, Mother Courage quips, "What's courage? Failure of planning," and goes back hawking clothing, belt buckles and brandy. But her implacable facade hides the fact that, like everyone else on the bottom of the food chain, she's running as fast as she can from the invisible monster of war. Courage, as played by Annie Enneking, is a gritty dynamo whose heart is buried under layers of dirty rags, parsimony and ruthlessness. After her two sons, Eilif and Swiss Cheese, join the war effort, she is left to fend for herself and her deaf and mute daughter, Kattrin (Heather Bunch). Struggling to survive, the two travel throughout Europe, switching sides from Protestant to Catholic and back again, plundering corpses and selling goods to doomed soldiers. It's hard to imagine anyone other than Enneking in the part. Her voice undulates between an echoing roar and a meaty mezzo-soprano, and her ability to interpret the vocally and emotionally demanding material is astounding. Enneking sinks her teeth into her character and doesn't let go, right up to the play's — but not the war's — shocking end. Mother Courage and her children do not emerge victorious, but Frank Theatre's production does. An astute commentary on the art of war — what Courage calls business as usual — "Mother Courage" remains provocative, relevant and terrifying. Minneapolis theater gets a nudge from Wendy Knox Frank Theatre in Minneapolis is launching its 17th season with Bertolt Brecht's indictment of war profiteers, MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN. Like Brecht's plays, Frank Theatre productions have a reputation for being difficult, challenging works, often with a political point of view. That's because Frank's artistic director, Wendy Knox, wouldn't have it any other way. Minneapolis — Throughout Wendy Knox's professional life, there's been a primary, guiding question. She puts it this way: "How do I find a way to infuse the work that I do with the values I have?" Knox describes herself as a practical, unpretentious Midwesterner. She grew up in St. Cloud and started out majoring in chemistry in college, but then became interested in theater. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to study theater in Finland. At home and at work, Knox considers herself an activist who's not afraid to share her opinions. She regards putting a piece of theater on a stage as a political act. She wants to confront people's everyday perceptions of modern life. Many Frank plays try to look unflinchingly at all the forms of oppression operating in society. Knox believes people need more of a critical discourse in their lives, and she thinks theater is an effective tool. "In this country in particular we don't do much critical thinking about what we see, what we do, and I think it's important that we do that," she says. And the reason for that? "We're not asked to," Knox says. Frank Theatre has a penchant for producing plays other theaters avoid, either because of their subject matter, complexity or both. In recent years, it's turned increasingly to the work of the Obie Award-winning--yet controversial--playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. A couple of years ago, Frank mounted Parks' edgy adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, with a title too profane to mention on the radio. But Wendy Knox's favorite writer, whose work she believes best defines the spirit of Frank Theatre, is Bertolt Brecht. Frank Theatre is presenting Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE in an empty old Pillsbury mill building in Minneapolis. The post-industrial ambience of the space is something Brecht probably would have approved of. Knox calls him the most influential playwright of the 20th century who, in her words, aimed his pieces at the intersection of art and social consciousness. Knox says Brecht's dense and difficult plays are like an excavation. "I read a Brecht play and I feel really stupid," she says. "And then it's like a giant archeological mission to sort of dig through and figure out what does he mean, what's this? And that really doesn't happen until you get the actors around the table." One of those actors is Maria Asp. Asp refers to herself as a "repeat Frank offender." She's been with the company for 12 years. "I think Wendy Knox is the most ambitious woman I know," Asp says. Ambitious, but not power-hungry. Frank Theatre plays are extremely collaborative. Asp says Knox has created an atmosphere where all of the participants share ownership of the production, even if at first, they don't have the slightest idea what it's about. "'What's up with that?' That's the Frank quote," says Asp. It's Knox's favorite catch phrase, as in, "What's up with that? That scene over there--what's up with that?" It's a question that gives the entire cast and crew permission to help supply the answer. "We sit there," Asp says, "and we pick through the play, and we find something that's a little complicated or confusing and she'll give the 'What's up with that?' Then she'll nudge and prod and use a questioning process, not to find 'the meaning,' but to find a meaning together." The Pillsbury A Mill machine garage is one of several non-traditional spaces Frank Theatre has transformed into a temporary playhouse. It staged the musical THE CRADLE WILL ROCK in the old Sears Building in Minneapolis, and another Brecht play at a former munitions plant in St. Paul. Star Tribune Theater Critic Graydon Royce says Knox has shown incredible imagination with her use of what he calls "found spaces." "It's almost like a homeless theater," he says. "I mean she finds places where nobody else is and says, 'Let's do a show here.' And it really becomes part of the experience." While Royce lauds Knox's adventurousness as an artistic director, he says Frank productions don't always meet the challenge of the material. He says when he's made that argument it irritates Knox. She thinks she deserves credit just for taking the risk. "Kind of like I'm a teacher and she handed in an essay and it might have been messy," Royce explains. "And she says, 'Well, you know, I wrote that with my left hand.' Well, that's great, and for left-handed work it is great. But the fact of the matter is, I can't read it." Still, Royce says without Knox and Frank Theatre, the local theater scene would be far less interesting. Knox herself says theater was never a career path for her. She's slightly amazed her company is still around. That could partly be due to the fact that, despite her ambition, Knox has realistic expectations about its impact. "I don't think I can change the world with Frank Theatre," she says. "I can't. But, if you can change how someone thinks about something, if the experience of seeing the work that we put on stage nudges them toward something, then we've done our job." Knox says as long as Frank Theatre's work isn't being duplicated anywhere else in the Twin Cities, it'll keep going. There's an emblematic moment midway through Frank Theatre's excellent staging of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, when the titular mom (Annie Enneking) learns that one of her sons has been slain. Enneking steps into the spotlight, contorts her features, and emits a scream of exaggerated anguish—in total silence. Mother Courage's pain, like everything else in this show, exists at arm's length, stylized, and dissected for the audience's analysis. Brecht's 1939 play was a major component in his project of throttling western drama to within an inch of its life, then granting it new breath after it promised to live up to the challenges of its age. Writing on the eve of World War II, he set his play amid the 17th-century's Thirty Years' War. And he provides elements that tear to tatters any notion of war's grandeur (or even necessity): greed, carnage, betrayal, rape, venality, and, most crucially, hypocrisy. The story is relatively straight-ahead: Mother Courage embarks on a long European tour with her ramshackle wagon and store of wares, striving to make her living amid a continent ripping itself apart. She drags along her three children, Eilif (John Riedlinger), Swiss Cheese (Eric Sharp), and the mute Kattrin (Heather Bunch). Along the way she suffers setbacks and enjoys success. And all of her children die. Cue up a final cynical tune about the ineluctable inequities of life. One need not worry about spoiling the suspense in this show: Brecht wrote it in the form of a dozen vignettes that begin with a projected banner that informs the audience what is about to happen. It's a tactic designed to distance the audience from oversympathizing with the characters, or embracing suspension of disbelief as an anodyne to the realities on display. Tolstoy asked: Do individual great men drive history, or great communal forces? Screw that, Mother Courage might have replied. Is that a half-sandwich sitting on that reeking pile of garbage? By now it must be clear that this is a difficult work to pull off, and Wendy Knox's direction is perfectly suited to the task. I've often found that her go-for-the-gut style produces a fascinatingly paradoxical sense of brainy distance. And this play is right in her wheelhouse. Knox's foot soldier in this campaign is Enneking, who makes almost no false steps as she stalks around the stage dispensing wisecracks, bickering, bartering, and convincingly embracing the cracked logic of the battlefield. Grant Richey's Chaplain is another standout. He's in love with Mother Courage, and helps drag her cart through the muck of existence while trying to cling to the shreds of his prissy dignity. Brecht makes the Chaplain carry all kinds of rhetorical weight (which Richey lifts with apparent ease). At one point he extols the virtues of war; at another he vividly recounts Christ's crucifixion as a metaphor for the crushing effect of bellicose empires on the fortunes of ordinary people. (This was the story's original point, if I'm not mistaken.) The devil gets his due in the musical accompaniment, led by Michael Croswell, which mixes keyboards, percussion, and horns into a sort of satanic cabaret. And while some lyrics get lost in the mix, the cast generally pulls it off. Polish, in any case, isn't the point here. And when Enneking hisses and roars through Mother Courage's statement of purpose ("Song of Great Capitulation"), the heart fairly soars, then crashes, then tries to get up again. This is a brutal, profane piece ("You're all trouser shitters!" a soldier shouts at one point), a sordid match for its subject—the murderous spree of history, in which war has rarely done much to improve the life of the average person. Best make a buck if you can, Mother Courage concludes, even though it destroys her. After all, war, as Brecht once formulated, is business as usual conducted by different means. And he'd never even heard of the Carlyle Group. · · Vol 27 · Issue 1351 · PUBLISHED 10/25/2006 "Hot Pick" Pulse of the Twin Cities
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