There are people out there who think Mother Courage and Her Children is, hands down, the best play of the last hundred years. We know, we know—you loved Mamma Mia! Don't worry, you can still love Mamma Mia! All we're saying is: give this mama a chance. She might change your mind in more ways than one.

Written in Sweden in 1939 at the height of World War II by exiled German playwright Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage has an important thing or two to say about war. And if that doesn't sound like fun, well that's the point. Brecht isn't interested in making us feel all warm and fuzzy. Brecht's motto is, "war teaches people nothing" (source). There are no heroes in Mother Courage.

The play follows the adventures of Anna Fierling, a.k.a. Mother Courage, who runs a canteen business during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). She tours Europe with a covered wagon of wares for sale, booze for soldiers and her three children in tow. Though determined to make money off the war and keep her children out of harm's way, she ends up alone and penniless before the whole thing is over.

With its weird language, off-kilter songs (did we mention it's a musical?), and truly abrasive protagonist, Mother Courage makes no excuses for not being your typical war drama. It's hard not to leave Mother Courage with an image of war as an ultimately meaningless venture, in which no one ever wins. But in the end, that's why Mother Courage is one of the best anti-war plays we can think of. And let's face it: war is not exactly a minor character in our lives.

Looking for a great way to make a statement with your Subaru? Well, then check out this bumper sticker. It reads "Endless War," only the "less" is crossed out and replaced with "this," so "Endless War" also reads as "End this War." Clever, right?

C'mon. Being anti-war is in.

We've all heard a lot about opposing a war that seems to have no end in sight. Well, guess what: it turns out it isn't a new thing. For Germans like Brecht, who witnessed the rise of Nazism in Germany, the threat of permanent war was keenly felt. No one knew when or if World War II would ever stop. Many were terrified to know what would happen if it ever did. In fact, the fear that war could become an endless part of our lives was as present throughout the twentieth century as it is in the twenty-first.

As the quintessential play about endless war, written during World War II, Mother Courage very much belongs to this era. Sure, some of the themes in this play, like the idea that war is more about profit than principles, don't sound all that new. But we can still learn something about the way Brecht provokes his audience to agree or disagree with him.

Brecht mixes up comedy with tragedy, poetry, and musical theater, not worrying too much if he contradicts himself along the way. These quirks and contradictions are there to amuse, puzzle, or even frustrate us. But most of all, not unlike that clever bumper sticker, it's all there to make us stop and think: will the war outlive us all?