Theatre South Carolina to present ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ April 17-26

Theatre South Carolina at the University of South Carolina will perform Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” April 17 - 26 in Drayton Hall.

Curtain times are 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are available at the Drayton Hall box office beginning April 10 and are $16 for the public; $14 for military, seniors, faculty and staff; and $10 for students. The box office opens two hours before every show.

Steven Pearson, professor of acting and directing and head of the MFA Acting Program, will direct the production, a 1995 adaptation by British playwright David Hare of the 1939 original play.

The play centers on the anti-heroine, Mother Courage, a wily canteen woman who makes a living for herself and her three children in Europe by selling goods to troops in the 1600s during the Thirty Years War. Instead of profiting from the war, however, she finds herself and her children the victims of it.

Theater professor Robyn Hunt, in her third public performance of the role, will play the main character. Pearson directed her in a production at the University of Washington, and, as a visiting actress at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, she played the role in a production directed by Theatre South Carolina’s Jim O’Connor.

“Mother Courage and Her Children” is an example of Brecht’s achievement in “epic theater,” a movement that sought to evoke critical thinking rather than emotion, using episodic plot construction and musical interludes that provide running commentary.

Considered one of Germany’s greatest playwrights, Brecht (1898-1956), also is remembered as controversial, both for the revolutionary dramatic technique he employed and for his political beliefs. He coined the term, “epic theater,” to characterize his use of drama as an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional experience.

“Doing this play at this time is especially appropriate, as we find ourselves dealing with concurrent and, arguably, interrelated wars and global economic crises,” said Pearson. “There’s a great quote by Peter Hanke, which I think is perfect: ‘Real life should be the afterimage of the theatre.’ I hope that, after seeing this production, audience members have that moment of recognition where their real life reminds them of Brecht’s message that we cannot participate in the commerce of war and not be touched by it; we cannot rub up against war and not get hurt by it.”

For more information on the play or Theatre South Carolina, call Kevin Bush at 803-777-9353 or go on the Web site: www.cas.sc.edu/THEA.