M Butterfly or "The Art of Spinning Amadeus, Joe Turner, all my sons, and Mother Courage into Doubt about thier buried child"

In class Professor Newby asked us how "M Butterfly" was similar to the other plays we watched. I decided to start from the beginning:

Art: The elements of theatricality in both the plays adds to their meaning. In both plays characters stop in the middle of a conversation turn to the audience and speak to them. This adds to the story because you get the first hand feelings of the characters.

Spinning into Butter: Both Spinning into Butter and M Butterfly have another story that is prevalent within the main story. In Spinning into Butter the story of the Little Samba was an older story that had a plot similar to that of what happened in Spinning into Butter. In M Butterfly the story of Madame Butterfly is brought up.

Amadeus: This one is simple, and we talked about it in class, the simple fact that both stories start with the main character talking to the audience then tell their story of how that got to where they were at the start of the play. Also both end with the main character attempting to kill themselves, the difference is that in M Butterfly Rene succeeds.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone: This one is a little more difficult to draw a relation unless you think of the idea of coming and going. In Asia there was a lot of coming and going from Europeans and Americans. One of the ideas is that Rene gets his higher up position because of the movement of people and if he fails he to will be moved back to France.

All My Sons: Both plays have the idea that during non-peace time you need to do whatever is possible to survive, whether moral or not. This is what both Joe and Song have to do, it doesn't matter who it hurts as long as they survive.

Mother Courage: This one is the same as All My Sons.

Doubt: Now I had to absolute hardest time with this one; Just like Sister Aloysius, Chin questions how Song is going about doing her job.

Did I miss any ideas? Or can you think of linking ideas that are better then the ones I came up with?

The Lullaby

The song I decided to take a look at was the Lullaby sung by Mother Courage at the end of the play. She is singing this song to her dead daughter Kattrin. The irony of the song is that she is singing about how wonderful Kattrin's life is, as if she were still alive and just a crying baby. The second line is: "The neighbor's kids cry but mine are gay". I think that Brecht put this line in there to show that Mother Courage thoroughly believes that she did the best thing in carrying her kids through the war, despite the fact that she lost all three of her kids. This song shows the strength of a women in her darkest hour. It made me feel sad for her, when I wouldn't have because I kind of think she deserves it.

Lullaby:
"Lullaby, baby, what's that in the hay?
The neighbor's kids cry but mine are gay.
The neighbor's kids are dressed in dirt:
Your silks were cut from an angel's skirt.
They are all starving: you have pie.
If it's to stale, you need only cry.
Lullaby, baby, what's that in the hay?
One lad fell in Poland. The other, who can say?"

Does any find anything else in here that I missed?

Buried Child

Okay, between the way Sam Shepard was presented and people who had read the play were talking about it in class I was once again not happy to have to read this play. The only difference was I had no clue what the play was about, so I read the back of the script and still had no clue what the play was about. Then I read the play and still had no clue what the play was about. Here's the strange thing about this all, despite the fact that I had and still have no clue what happened I liked that play. I feel like with this play Professor Newby said it all in her comment that Sam Shepard's plays are all about the "experience of the play."

I really would like to see this play done on stage because I feel like the majority of it is lost in reading. Like the scene where Tilden covers Dodge with the corn husks, in reading it you're thinking about how long and ridiculous this section of stage directions is. But, I think that if you're to see this action the feeling would be different, I'd probably laugh because I wouldn't know what else to do; I mean if you think about it, it is a kind of ridiculous thing to do. This script had a LOT more stage directions then anything else we've read which means a lot of the experience of the play is in watching the characters and their movements on the stage.

The play doesn't really make sense but I don't think that matters, does anyone else feel like it doesn't matter that there is no rhyme or reason to this play?