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, Koen De Sutter, Alain Franco, Joeri Happel and Aydin Isleyen, 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 Griet, Medea, and Yerma.