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Brecht's Mother Courage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Extract

Why Mother Courage and why still the Manheim translation over the Bentley? “Because Brecht was dead and Manheim was in Paris

—Richard Schechner, tongue in cheek, coming off Tooth.

There were other reasons, too, why The Performance Group elected to stage Brecht's Mother Courage, which opened in late February, 1975, at the Performing Garage on Wooster Street in New York City after almost a year in rehearsal. The women in the group — Elizabeth Le Compte, Joan Macintosh, and Leeny Sack — had called for a play with large roles for women since the group's last production, Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime, had revolved around male rock ‘n’ roll recording artists. So, after Richard Schechner, a co-director of the group, brought the play by the garage and there was a reading in which members simultaneously used three translations — Manheim, Bentley, and Hays — because there were not enough copies of one version available, the group unaminously settled on Mother Courage and the Manheim translation, which they felt was the most “modern.”

Type
Three Brecht Productions
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Drama Review

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Footnotes

The photograph at left is of Swiss Cheese after execution. At right, Mother Courage at end of play.