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MOEDER COURAGE

Lisaboa Houbrechts / Toneelhuis & KVS
WORLD PREMIERE
Thu 20.02.2025 - Sun 15.06.2025
20.02.2025
-
15.06.2025

How can you live and survive in a war as a child? As a young woman? As a mother? Using these questions as her guide, Lisaboa Houbrechts presents the play Mother Courage as a moving, confronting fable about the vulnerability and resilience of one of world repertoire’s most iconic female characters.

Mother Courage is a famous anti-war play by Bertolt Brecht about the sutler Anne Fierling. Brecht sets his play during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a European conflict between Catholics and Protestants. A sutler was someone who had permission to travel along with the troops to sell food, drink, and other provisions to the soldiers. In the story, Fierling loses her children to the war she helps sustain. Brecht wants us to condemn her for her opportunism, but at the same time there is something tragic and pitiful about her. 

Lisaboa Houbrechts sees Mother Courage as an ambiguous, complex character. She is all-in-one: perpetrator and victim, profiteer and refugee, mother and tradeswoman. But for Lisaboa, war is not just something between nations and peoples. War also takes place within the family and the intimacy of the female body. She chooses to stage the original text of Mother Courage in its entirety, including songs by Paul Dessau. She wants to investigate how the play, exactly because of its historicism, can become contemporary. With a diverse cast featuring Lubna Azabal, Laura De Geest, Koen De Sutter, Alain Franco, Lisi Estaras, Pietro Quadrino, Joeri Happel, Aydin Isleyen, ea., Lisaboa translates the text to a unique, multilingual, musical and figurative universe, where beauty abounds.

Mother Courage is part of an impressive series of enigmatic female figures in Lisaboa’s body of work, including Dull Gret, Medea, and Yerma. 

Is part of the selection:
Part of

The Battle Against Neglect

We reflect on the sharp edges and soft contours of care in our society. And the battle against neglect. We, theatre creators Lisaboa Houbrechts, Barbara T’Jonck and Martha Balthazar, KVS dramaturge Di…
Interview

Credits

tekst | texte | text BERTOLT BRECHT regie | mise en scène | direction LISABOA HOUBRECHTS dramaturgie | dramaturgy DINA DOOREMAN, ERWIN JANS acteurs | actors LUBNA AZABAL, KOEN DE SUTTER, JOERI HAPPEL, AYDIN ÌşLEYE, ALAIN FRANCO, LAURA DE GEEST, LISI ESTARAS, PIETRO QUADRINO muziek | musique | music PAUL DESSAU & ALAIN FRANCO kostuums | costumes OUMAR DICKO lichtontwerp | conception de lumière | light design FABIANA PICCIOLI scenografie | scénographie | set design LISABOA HOUBRECHTS ADVIES SCENOGRAFIE / CONSEILS SCÈNOGRAPHIQUES / ADVICE SCENOGRAPHIE RALF NONN productie | production KVS & TONEELHUIS coproductie | coproduction THÉÂTRE DE LIÈGE, LE PHÉNIX-SCÈNE NATIONALE DE VALENCIENNES, THÉÂTRE DE LA VILLE PARIS, PERPODIUM met de steun van | avec le soutien de | with the support THE TAXSHELTER OF THE BELGIAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT VIA CRONOS INVEST, THE FLEMISH COMMUNITY & REGIO HAUTS-DE-FRANCE