How can you live and survive in a war as a child? As a young woman? As a mother? Using these questions as her guide, Lisaboa Houbrechts presents the play Mother Courage as a moving, confronting fable about the vulnerability and resilience of one of world repertoire’s most iconic female characters.

Mother Courage is a famous anti-war play by Bertolt Brecht about the sutler Anne Fierling. Brecht sets his play during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a European conflict between Catholics and Protestants. A sutler was someone who had permission to travel along with the troops to sell food, drink, and other provisions to the soldiers. In the story, Fierling loses her children to the war she helps sustain. Brecht wants us to condemn her for her opportunism, but at the same time there is something tragic and pitiful about her. 

Lisaboa Houbrechts sees Mother Courage as an ambiguous, complex character. She is all-in-one: perpetrator and victim, profiteer and refugee, mother and tradeswoman. But for Lisaboa, war is not just something between nations and peoples. War also takes place within the family and the intimacy of the female body. She chooses to stage the original text of Mother Courage in its entirety, including songs by Paul Dessau. She wants to investigate how the play, exactly because of its historicism, can become contemporary. With a diverse cast featuring Laetitia Dosch, Koen De Sutter, Alain Franco, Lisi Estaras, Pietro Quadrino, Joeri Happel, Aydin Isleyen, ea., Lisaboa translates the text to a unique, multilingual, musical and figurative universe, where beauty abounds. Remarkably, starting from the 2025–2026 season, Lisaboa Houbrechts will herself take on the role of one of Mother Courage’s daughters — a rare opportunity to see the director once again on stage.

Mother Courage is part of an impressive series of enigmatic female figures in Lisaboa’s body of work, including Dull Gret, Medea, and Yerma. 

The press about Moeder Courage

"Houbrechts excels at creating minimalist scenes with maximum impact." - Focus Knack

"A cutting reinterpretation of Bertolt Brecht, a determined aesthetic, a trust in the poetics of theatre: with her staging of Mother Courage (adapted from Mother Courage and Her Children), Lisaboa Houbrechts steps into the big league." – Le Monde 

"Lisaboa Houbrechts brings a notably radiant Mother Courage to the stage." – Le Soir (****)