DIE GEWEHRE DER FRAU CARRAR / WÜRGENDES BLEI

In the organizer's words:

A fishing village in Andalusia in 1937 after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. General Franco's troops are getting closer and closer. In the house of Teresa Carrar and her two sons José and Juan, the distant roar of the bombs can already be heard, the hate-filled intimidating slogans of the fascists blaring from the radio. Mrs. Carrar has forbidden her sons to join the fight against Franco. Because they are poor people, as Carrar says, "and poor people can't wage war". She desperately hopes to be spared war and terror. But how much longer can Mrs. Carrar protect herself and her sons? And what should she say to her brother, who demands that she hand over the guns hidden in the house and asks the all-important question: "If the sharks attack you, is it you who will use violence?" Unlike Bertolt Brecht's didactic plays, his play "The Guns of Mrs. Carrar" seems downright realistic. Brecht himself even speaks almost apologetically of "empathetic drama". Yet everything in his short play revolves around the unsettling question of whether there is a right or even a possibility of neutral abstention in the face of a violent attack driven by the will to destroy and subjugate - a frighteningly topical question from today's perspective.