Where to Buy
Affiliate links coming soon. Purchases will help support this project.
Mother Courage and Her Children
8Bertolt Brecht
Brecht's 1941 epic theatre masterwork — the anti-war play that invented the alienation effect and shaped twentieth-century drama, film, and political rhetoric.
GBM Assessment (Score: 8/10)
Mother Courage and Her Children is the masterwork of the most important dramatist of the twentieth century after Beckett. Bertolt Brecht invented epic theater and the Verfremdungseffekt, the alienation effect, which transformed how theater, film, and political rhetoric function. Mother Courage uses the Thirty Years' War to expose how ordinary people are simultaneously victims of and collaborators with the systems that destroy them, a theme that resonates in every era of conflict.
Drafted in Scandinavian exile as the Second World War began, Mother Courage premiered in Zurich in 1941. Brecht later founded the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin, whose productions became theater history. Meryl Streep starred in the New York production in 2006, and Brecht's techniques were adopted by Godard, Lars von Trier, and Fassbinder, forming the foundation of political theater worldwide.
Europe in Exile, 1941
The Second World War engulfs the globe. Germany invades the Soviet Union. Pearl Harbor draws America into the conflict. Brecht writes in Scandinavian exile, one of many European artists scattered by fascism. Mother Courage premieres in Zurich while the continent burns. Joyce dies in Zurich. Woolf drowns herself in Sussex. The cultural world of prewar Europe is destroyed, and its survivors create from exile.
Awards & Adaptations
Berliner Ensemble productions are theater history. Meryl Streep starred in NYC (2006). Brecht's techniques adopted by Godard, Lars von Trier, Fassbinder. Foundation of political theater worldwide.
Recommended Edition
Ralph Manheim trans. (Methuen, 1972); Tony Kushner adaptation (2006); David Hare trans. (2009)
