Moeder Courage

Theatre: Moeder Courage

Sun 18. & Mon 19.05., 19.30h, Halle E, Wiener Festwochen 2025

Artist Talk: Mon 19.05., following the performance

War takes place not only between nations and people, but it also violently enters the realm of the family and of the female body. How does one live and survive in a war as a child? As a young woman? As a mother? The exceptional young, Belgian director Lisaboa Houbrechts stages Bertolt Brecht's anti-war play "Mother Courage" as a moving and confrontational fable about vulnerability and resistance of one of the most iconic female figures in the global theatre repertoire. Mother Courage is everyone at once: perpetrator and victim, mother and businesswoman. Houbrechts stages Brecht's play, which he wrote in response to the start of the Second World War, faithfully to the text and with songs by Paul Dessau. Nevertheless – or because of that – she achieves a stunning currency. What emerges is a multi-lingual universe of music and images full of beauty and humanity.

Dutch, French, Hebrew and Kurdish with German and English surtitles.