Mother Courage Alone –
Fermat’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children
Cast and Crew
- Mother Courage Greer Dubois
- Narrator Steffen Silvis
- Musician Diana Wheeler
- Script & Director David Simmons
- Graphic & web design Wendy Vardaman
- Stage Manager Alex Hancock
Thank you to our patrons and members Dr James Wise, Sam Katz, Sarah Siskind, Dr Jay Gold & Sabrina Gold, Kaye & Samuel Cooke, Dr John Frey III, Peter Anderson, Orange & Dean Schroeder, Hans Adler, Dave Lathrop, Dr Andrew Putney, Joan Urban, Greg Hudson, Jennifer Riley, Dr Calvin Bruce, Bruce Tulloch, Bruce Gould, Dr Frank Stein, Jan Levine Thal, Susan Millar, Parry Karp & Katrin Talbot. Special thanks to Jonny Hunter and Underground Food Collective, Marie Schulte and the Madison Theater Guild, and Marc Silberman, Sabine Gross and Hans Adler from the UW Department of Germanic/Nordic and Slavic Languages.
(photo of Diana by Hans Adler, all others by Marie Schulte)
Director’s Note – David Simmons
“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
Bertolt Brecht
And what are these if not dark times. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 66 million people are refugees from armed conflict around the globe, more than at any other time in recorded history. So our decision to start our year and a half Brecht Project began with a workshop we call Mother Courage Alone. One actress, one narrator, one musician, all highly talented. We have taken a play that runs for more than three hours and has twenty six roles and condensed it to ~50 minutes while trying to preserve the message, humor and horror of the original Mother Courage and Her Children. The success of this effort is for you, the audience, to judge.
Photo Gallery from Mother Courage Alone
Hans Adler, the Halls-Bascom Professor for Modern Literature Studies at UW-Madison, is a noted Kafka scholar and was principal advisor for our original adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial in summer of 2016. He is also a very talented photographer and was kind enough to document our dress rehearsal for Mother Courage Alone, the wonderful results of which are below.
