Kattrin, Drummer for Peace: a peace drum story

Adapted from scene eleven in Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage by Leo Hartshorn. I tell this story using the drumming group to create sounds that go with the narration.


The full story of Mother Courage and her children is set in 1624 in Sweden during the Thirty Year’s War. Mother Courage follows the Swedish army with a canteen wagon selling the soldiers drink and clothing, benefiting from war. She is accompanied by her younger son Swiss Cheese, who ends up being killed as a payroll master for the army, and by her daughter Kattrin, who cannot speak. Her other son, Eilif, is recruited in the army and is eventually honored for killing peasants and stealing cattle, but is executed for stealing cattle in peacetime.

As our drumming scene begins Mother Courage is outside the town of Halle buying supplies. The soldiers plan to destroy the whole town by killing all the people during a night attack. A Lieutenant in the army tells his soldiers to be absolutely quiet. They knock on a door and capture the peasants who live there. They tell the soldiers that Kattrin cannot speak. A soldier orders a peasant to guide them to town. He refuses until they threaten to kill his cattle. An older peasant climbs on a rooftop and sees the soldiers heading toward the town on all sides. He tells a woman that all the people will be killed in their beds.

The peasants say to themselves, “There is nothing we can do. “ The old man and woman kneel to pray. Kattrin hears them praying for their families and children. When Kattrin hears that the children will be killed, she doesn‘t think that they should do nothing in the face of war and violence. She gets up and takes her drum out of the wagon. She climbs up on the roof and starts to beat on her drum . Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom. Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom. The drum becomes an instrument of peace, a voice calling out to the people in the village warning them of the approaching soldiers.

Some soldiers corn e running back an city to stop her. She pulls the ladder up on the roof and keeps beating on her drum. Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom. The soldiers promise to spare her mother if she will stop. But she keeps beating the drum. Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom. They try to drown out the sound of the drum by ha ring a peasant chop wood as loud as he can. Chop-chop-chop-chop. The drum of peace keeps pounding a way. Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom. The Lieutenant yells a t her, “Stop that drumming! If you do not stop beating that drum the soldiers will shoot you.” The peasants, knowing she is saving the town, scream for Kattrin to keep on drumming. “Go on-go on-go-on-go on.” Kattrin beats her drum as hard as she can . Boom-boom-bap-bap-boom (the story teller can use each of the sounds to create a polyrhythm that ends with the ‘Pow!)
The soldiers take aim at Kattrin. The Lieutenant screams, ‘Fire!” Then . . . . Pow! (silence) As her last beats on the drum fade away and she collapses to die, Kattrin hears the town waking up in the distance. Her drum, a voice for peace, has saved the lives of the people in the village.