Confronting war in Carbondale

CARBONDALE Colorado colorado— It was somewhere near the end of the conversation that Lon Winston balled his fists with intensity. His voice was dramatic, his eye contact even more so.

“I love taking risks,” he said. “I would rather fail at a risk than take the easy way.”

And though these words came after so many others, they set the tone for the whole talk.

Yes, he would say later, this play is a tough one to tackle. But, considering today’s climate of war, it’s also time.

Winston, 61,is Thunder River Theatre Company’s founding executive artistic director — and director of the company’s latest work, “Mother Courage and her Children.” He was sitting near the empty stage with two of his stars, veteran performers Valerie Haugen, 46, and Richard Lyon, 65. The trio was describing playwright Bertolt Brecht and his 1939 piece, a drama/comedy with music about the nature of war, capitalism and religion. It was two days before opening night, and their sentences flew fast and excited, becoming one big, articulate jumble.

“It’s the idea that war can last forever,” said Winston, of the play.

“War creates its own culture,” said Haugen. “It’s a culture of capitalism.”

“This play allows us to see and understand certain truths about war,” added Lyon.

Mother Courage WHAT: “Mother Courage and Her Children,” an anti-war epic by Bertolt Brecht, as seen through the eyes of the Thunder River Theatre Company WHEN: This Friday through Sunday, as well as Feb. 29, March 1, 2, 7 and 8. Curtain goes up at 7:30 p.m. on all days except Sunday, when it lifts at 2:30 p.m. WHERE: TRTC, 67 Promenade in Carbondale COST: For evening shows, $20 for adults and $10 for students. Matinees run $18/$9. WHY? Because, in the words of director Lon Winston, it’s time for this show. More information: www.thunderrivertheatre.com or 963-8200

And on and on it went, every sentence sounding important and thought out.

“He wanted to teach with theater,” said Haugen, of Brecht, who denounced fascism and anti-Semitism, and so many other “-isms” in his time. “He thought the highest goal of theater was to teach.”

For Haugen, the learning isn’t just for the audience; it’s for herself. Playing the title role, she is caught between needing to understand her character’s actions — and wanting to show their consequences. Mother Courage is actually a cowardly woman, she said, one driven by fear and greed to sell goods to both sides of the Thirty Years’ War. The strife, which ravaged what is now Germany between 1618 and 1648, pitted Protestants against Catholics, and involved most of the European powers. So caught up with business, fictional Mother Courage becomes careless with her children and loses them, one by one, to the fighting around her.

If this all sounds heavy and difficult to convey, that’s only because it is. Though written close to World War II, the piece isn’t about that conflict or any conflicts, specifically. It focuses instead on the nature of fighting in general, and what it does to people. Using tragedy, dark comedy and music, Brecht tries to convey the absurd complexity of the situation.

“There’s an atmosphere of sort of strangeness and alienation,” said Lyon, of war. “And the play has all that, doesn’t it?”

With his deep voice, Lyon described his own experience in battle. For him it only took a month in Vietnam to realize his deep rejection of his role in the country.

“You go over there, and you think: ‘What am I doing here?” he said.

Over the course of the piece, his character, a chaplain, also becomes disillusioned by his participation in the conflict. The chaplain sees the ego, the ugliness of his situation, and like all those in the play, this journey isn’t a pretty one.

But still, Brecht must have felt it was important, a story that needed to be told.

To the three talking, that vision seemed to be worth more than anything.

“We want to challenge ourselves and our audiences,” said Haugen and Lyon, almost in unison.

Politics isn’t the point of this whole thing, Winston continued, and in rehearsal it’s never a topic of conversation. The goal, it seems, is to be raising questions, not spoon-feeding answers.

“Our job as theater people is to put that story on the stage and have the audience walk away with whatever experience they have,” he said, to the nods of the actors.

Even after all this, there was still so much to say — and the group kept going, never really slowing. They talked about the magic of living in the moment, the intimacy of their art. One likened the stage to a temple; another called the play sophisticated, a must-see. Winston mentioned the tribal, original music he and composer Marie Gasau had created for the show, and everyone agreed on its power. It seemed as though the play was the biggest thing in the world to them then — if only for a few, select minutes.

And then, for a moment, Haugen broke the conversation. She leaned in and grinned big, as if she was telling a secret.

“So you can tell it’s really important to us, can’t you?” she asked.

Surely, she already knew the answer.

Contact Stina Sieg: 384-9111
ssieg@postindependent.com