Bertolt Brecht–Paul Dessau
Mother Courage and Her Children
A car, three children and a mother. Courage and her children. They have to drive through war: battlefields, camps, front lines, plundered and devastated landscapes. But they make a living from war. The car is their home, their business, their only possession, the motif of wandering, the constant element of the scenes, the real and symbolic scene of life on the road. And Courage is a tough businesswoman, a hyena of the battlefield, a resourceful character driven by the survival instinct. Destroying others and herself, learning nothing from successive disasters, she races through the 12-scene road movie, accompanied by Paul Dessau’s songs.
One of Brecht’s best and most complex works is Mother Courage and her Children. The historical backdrop is the 17th century, the Thirty Years` War, also known as ‘the great religious war’ – all important to show that in war, one’s goal is survival, anywhere, anytime. In Brecht’s work there are no heroes, only little men who are vulnerable, helpless or even blind. Some people are able to recognize situations and adapt, so that they have a chance to survive. Some are unable to do so and die. And there are those who rebel alone, but they too perish.
The performance was produced with the consent of the Suhrkamp Verlag AG through th Hofra Agency.
