Good theatre has a wonderful way of reminding us about the lessons we tend to forget while we’re struggling to survive in the present.
Foremost among these are history lessons. History can teach us so much about ourselves, as a society and as individuals, even when we ignore it. Sometimes the lessons put forth in works of art can be couched in metaphor or symbolism, but if it is written well, the lessons are clear by the end of the performance.
The American Southwest Theatre Company at New Mexico State University holds that “Mother Courage and Her Children” is just such a play.
Written in 1939 in response to the rise of fascism and Nazism, “Mother Courage and Her Children” is an antiwar musical stage play written by exiled German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and German writer and actress Margarete Steffin. Considered by many to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, its lessons never cease to hit close to home, no matter when it is staged, which probably says more about the human condition than is comfortable for some.
Set in seventeenth-century Europe, the play follows Mother Courage, a spirited woman who operates a rolling canteen business during the Thirty Years War. Brecht wrote this play as a demonstration of how war becomes a machine that feeds itself, profiting off those who suffer in the battles. Translated by David Hare, with music by Jonathan Dove, and directed by Associate Professor Larissa Lury, the production includes a cast of 22 and is recommended for audiences ages 14 and up because of references to violence and some adult language.
Translator Hare, whose plays have won prestigious awards including a BAFTA, a Lawrence Olivier Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, adapted a freer version of the language while remaining true to Brecht’s trailblazing style known as Epic Theatre. Full of bitterly humorous lines such as “War is like love, it finds a way,” the translation was described as “a superb version that bristles with paradoxes, irony and skepticism” by the British news outlet Independent on Sunday.
“When we were choosing our season of plays, I resisted the idea of Mother Courage at first, because it seemed too close to home, and I wasn’t sure I could take living in an imaginary world with so many things that were similar to the things that make the real world scary these days,” director Larissa Lury told the Las Cruces Bulletin, “but the play is strikingly funny (until it’s not), and that humor and contemporary dialogue, combined with the distance of its setting—the 17th century’s Thirty Years War—offers exactly the kind of fresh perspective needed, if we’re ever going to head towards a world where cycles of conflict and abuses of power are not the norm.”
Student Athena McPeake, who plays the role of Mother Courage, says “[it] is absolutely the most challenging task I’ve been faced with as an actor, but also the most exciting one. Despite the show being from a different time, the characters and themes are still relevant. The world this show was written for is still our world.”
Costume design for Mother Courage is by Heather Striebel; scenic and lighting design by Aaron Krohn; props design by senior Vance Cook and Aaron Krohn; and sound design by Jim Wilkinson. Technical direction is by Diana Dávila, stage management by students Okalani Ventura and Kendra Sarabia. Music direction is by Sarah Neely. Assistant direction is by student Natallia Sierra.
“Mother Courage” runs 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 8, 9, 15, 16, and 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 17, with an opening reception and performance at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 7, at the ASNMSU Center for the Arts, 1000 E. University Ave., Las Cruces. More information is available at 575-646-4515.