“Mother Courage and her Children”, Theater Trier
Dana Rufolo in Germany
18 January 2025
Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder – Mother Courage and Her Children – at the Theater Trier in Germany is an extraordinarily successful interpretive revival of the Bertolt Brecht classic epic drama. Directed by Christina Gegenbauer, it introduces new production concepts that illuminate the tragedy of the drama: that for the sake of maintaining herself as an entrepreneur who sells goods to army troops, Mother Courage sees each of her children shot dead by soldiers.
Photo credit: Benjamin Westhoff.
Already the entrance of Mother Courage at the opening of the play is startlingly evocative and yet faithful to the spirit of the play. The family don’t arrive in a wagon, and there is no revolving stage. Instead, the stage space is decorated with angular shapes that most likely represent natural landmarks like trees and boulders, but their abstractness turns them into obstacles and places of refuge.
Mother Courage enters on the back of one of her sons; her grown children are each carrying a bag filled with merchandise such as boots and alcoholic drink sold to soldiers engaged in fighting for religious reasons – Brecht set the play in 1624, during the Thirty Years’ War. The family members are all dressed in flamboyant costumes of orange, yellow and red designed by Julia Klug. Courage is played by the slight but strong-voiced and matter-of-fact tough Stephanie Theiss, whose farcical expressions tell stories.
Photo credit: Benjamin Westhoff.
It is the daughter Kattrin (Jana Tali Auburger) who is dumb (but not deaf) who is the narrator. Stepping out of her role as Kattrin, she holds a ball resembling the kind a fortune teller uses only this ball is glowing white and opaque, and she announces what will happen in the upcoming scene. Then, she becomes silent Kattrin again. She stays with her family when they sing the Paul Dessau songs with everyone else, but she only mouths the words. Thus, we see Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect), used to keep us aware that Auburger is merely playing a role. It was important to Brecht that we never fall into a trap of imagining that what we are seeing on stage is reality.
When soldiers entice her son Eilif (Marvin Groh) to join the army, Courage is distraught but she keeps her head and assumes he will be victorious. She never finds out that he is eventually executed by his own regiment, but she wonders why she never runs into him in her travels as a sutler.
When her second son Swiss Cheese (Florian Voigt) could be saved if she offers a bribe of 200 guilders, Courage hesitates and tries to bargain; the firing squad won’t wait and her son is shot. When he is brought to her dead, she knows she must not risk admitting that she recognizes him; instead of giving the traditional silent scream after disclaiming a relationship to her son, this Courage uses facial expressions to convey her deeply conflicted grief. Courage realizes that her inherent pecuniary greed cost her son his life, but circumstances mean she can’t prevent herself from considering the process of selling and earning money to be more vital than love and family ties.
It is only when Kattrin’s safety is in jeopardy that Courage stops herself from choosing money over human life. The Cook who befriends her (Giovanni Rupp) says he has inherited a tavern in his hometown, and he invites her to join him in running the place. She is ecstatic. She kisses the Cook, and so does Kattrin – which is unusual stage business for this play. So, not with premeditation but because he cleverly anticipates a conflict if both mother and daughter join up with him, the Cook tells Courage that Kattrin must be left behind. This time around, Courage sticks to her child and tells the Cook he must leave.
Nonetheless, Mother Courage does not succeed in saving her daughter’s life. As Courage herself predicted at the beginning of the play, her daughter dies because she is kind and soft-hearted. If she lets villagers know somehow of a surprise attack from the enemy, she can save them from being bombed in their homes. Kattrin climbs onto one of the jagged shapes on stage and instead of the traditional drumming, she miraculously finds her voice and screams and screams; the villagers are alerted and defend themselves.
Kattrin, however, is struck by a bullet – an anachronism that pulls us out of the seventeenth century –and she dies. The lighting designed by Sascha Zauner plays colours and shadows all over the stage set, transforming the abstract objects of Andrej Rutar’s design into strange shapes. The final scene shows mother and child in a pieta, Courage kissing her daughter and smoothing her hair, grieving over the death of her child. But her entrepreneurial nature will take over again, and she will continue alone.
The simultaneous groupings and conversations on stage are well timed and a pleasure to watch in this era where usually dramas have one action ongoing at a time. Also, the secondary roles are well acted. The army priest who initially defrocks himself to hide with Mother Courage is played as an awkward, harmless elderly man (Klaus-Michael Nix) whom Courage tolerates with her good-natured humour, and she and confident jolly Yvette the prostitute (Carolin Freund) are best friends who laugh together and enjoy each other’s company, thinking little of morality.
I make much of Gegenbauer’s alterations to the original Brechtian drama, even though they are respectful and thoughtful, because Brecht was insistent that his productions be played and set in the fashion he had dictated. He called the script a “Modellbuch” and requested that directors follow the original “model” closely. In this Theater Trier production, the changes that weaken the play’s ties to history transform the drama into a dirge reflecting on how people are powerless, unable to determine their own fates. But death is definitive. We have no power over life and death. The focus is no longer on materialism. Instead, we see a play about fatalism.