Filmmaker John Walter artfully captures Meryl Streep groping for – and then seizing –  the character in her unforgettable portrayal of Mother Courage in Tony Kushner’s adaptation of the Bertold Brecht masterpiece Mother Courage and Her Children, which was presented by The Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in the summer of 2006. As Manohla Dargis in the Times observed, “filmmaker John Walter jumps from art to history and politics and back again, from the theater of the streets to the theater of the stage, without pause. That makes the movie… tough to summarize, which is part of its appeal.”  Though this film could easily have been crafted into a star vehicle for Streep and Kevin Kline, Walter instead digs deeply into Brecht’s motives and politics, unearthing the playwright’s famed and famously clever testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee – the day after which he fled from the United States. THEATER OF WAR is about theater and war, capitalism and Marxism, the postwar anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, and one literary genius’s ability to make art from them all.
 
 

“For those interested in the continuing relevance of theater in a society dominated by
momentary electronic impulses, in the responsibility of artists in wartime and in the
greatest anti-capitalist, anti-government, antiwar and anti-romantic playwright of the 20th
century, Walter’s cool, capable, stimulating exploration is a must.”
-Salon.com

“In his inspired, inspiring essayistic documentary Theater of War, [John
Walter] jumps from art to history and politics and back again, from the theater of the
streets to the theater of the stage, without pause. That makes the movie, which follows a
Public Theater production in Central Park of Bertolt Brecht’s epic play Mother Courage
and Her Children, tough to summarize, which is part of its appeal”
-The New York Times

“THEATER OF WAR is more than a backstage pass. It’s an engrossing and fiercely
intelligent look at war and capitalism, and their regrettable dependence on one another.
But even more, it’s about the power—if not responsibility—of art and artists to cast a
light on that which we prefer not to see.”
-Sky Sitney