Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Everybody Loves A Good War: Staging "Mother Courage" In India
thetheatretimes.com: When Quasar Thakore Padamsee first read Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, many years ago in college, he felt empty and drained afterward, as if he had lost his soul to the play. Set during the long and protracted Thirty Years War, the raging catastrophe that ravaged Central Europe in the 1600s, the Brecht masterpiece was one of those “must read” tomes for all budding theatre practitioners. At that time, Padamsee had imagined it to be quite un-stageable in India, due to the sporadic and dispersed quality of the narrative, its epic compass, or even its inalienably European setting.
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This article and production bring up the interesting point of doing plays across cultural and geographical boundaries. In a time when people are more aware then ever about the significance of doing something for a different culture, this play illustrates how a piece can be changed or tweaked to fit it's current time, place, and audience. I especially was intrigued by his statement about Shakespeare - "No one sets Romeo and Juliet in the 1500's anymore" - because of its implications for all of theater. While Shakespeare has been set and reset in more places and times than you can count, other plays often see less imagination when it comes to their settings. This production of Mother Courage breaks that, both to fit in its current location and to experiment with changing the play. I personally love this, and want to see more setting-changed plays in the future, even if it's just to explore how setting and time can change the meanings and implications of character motivations, lines, and even change the motifs and central themes of the play.
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