Here is an image of a scene of Mother Courage that was performed in front of a live audience
Mother Courage and her Children is a play that belongs to the genre of epic theatre. According to Bertroit Brecht, author of Mother Courage and her Children, epic theater was supposed to provoke self-reflection and a critical view of the actions happening on stage instead of having the audience relate on an emotional level with the characters. Taking that into account, the purpose of Mother Courage was to serve as an anti-war piece of literature that served in informing the public of just how much wars affect the people involved in them both socially and economically.
With an evident and correct interpretation available the question that arises is whether Mother Courage can be considered art? But, what is art? It is difficult to define and capture the essence of art in just a couple of words however one thing that is certain is that art is open with interpretation. A piece of art that is interpreted in one way by someone can be interpreted in a completely different way by someone else. With that said, it can be argued that Mother Courage can still be considered art although it has a correct way to interpret it. This is because someone completely unaware of the correct interpretation of Mother Courage can interpret it in a new way. Just because there is one way to interpret Mother Courage does not mean that all other interpretations don’t exist.
Furthermore, the fact that art can be interpreted in many different ways is not the sole thing that defines or characterizes art. Art has also almost always managed to evoke emotion and responses from its audience and the same can be said about Mother Courage. There are certain instances in the play in which the audience could be emotionally affected by the events occurring at the moment even though this was not the purpose of epic theater in the first place. In conclusion, art is not just defined by if its able to be interpreted in many different ways but if it was I would still argue that Mother Courage is still art since people can interpret the message of the play differently if they had no prior knowledge of the correct interpretation.
Image source: google images
A UCI Student and his Blog 