Mother Courage aims to astonish and invigorate

Seasoned University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Director, Scott Alderdice, aims to revitalise political and social awareness and astonish and invigorate theatre-goers when the USQ Performance Centre presents Mother Courage and Her Children.

Written by German dramatist and poet, Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage follows the fortunes of Anna Frieling – a canteen woman with the Swedish Army who is determined to make her living from the Thirty Years' War.

Scott said despite the plot, Mother Courage is not an historical piece.

'For people who have never seen Brecht it is very hard for them to get their head around what he was trying to convey.

'Imagine if all we had seen in our experience was Home and Away and BBC-style dramas and then this bold concept called the Simpsons came along.

'So using that example, in Home and Away Homer would be a fat, lazy man, but in the Simpsons, Homer is a fat, lazy, yellow (cartoon) man.

'So he (Brecht) said ‘let's admit we are putting on a play', and he used masks and puppets and songs and the characters were great, big, grotesque charactuers (caricatures).

'By doing this Brecht flipped the entertainment world on its head.'

Scott said the play also has a deeper level of meaning.

'Mother Courage is also a metaphor for our life's journey. The decisions we make, the balance between the personal and the pragmatic and the inevitable burden or celebration of living with the decisions we have made.

'I hope at the end of this performance the audience is astonished, invigorated and a little more aware of what it means to have and to value life.'

This is the third time the USQ Performance Centre have tackled Brechtian theatre in recent years.

'We produced The Good Woman of Szechwan in 2003 and the Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1996,' Scott said.

Mother Courage will run at the USQ Performance Centre from Wednesday 30 August to Sunday 10 September 2006. There will also be an open rehearsal of the play at the Toowoomba Open Day on Sunday 20 August 2006.

Tickets are available from the USQ Box Office on 4631 1111

Media Contact: Amy Cass, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 2092 or +61 412 097 326