A love story with war

When Quasar Thakore Padamsee decided to take up German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht’s classic Mother Courage and Her Children to adapt for the Aadyam stage, some senior directors told him that he’s a brave fellow.  “I was like, what? Now, I know! It’s a tough play to do. I could be rehearsing it for a year and not open it! Of course, Aadyam would kill me,” he laughs. The director admits that he’s having a lot of fun with the play that premiers tonight at 7.30 pm at NCPA and will travel to Delhi in September. “We are discovering something new and different with the text every day,” he says. 

Mother Courage and Her Children is a biting satirical play about survival, entrepreneurship and the absurdity of war. “It’s very contemporary in terms of what it talks about, partly to our situation, but also to a larger global narrative. Even though the play was written in the 1930s, the ideas are still completely relevant,” adds Quasar.

Another reason to pick the play, he reveals is that he finds very few plays where the protagonist is a woman and is not defined by her role in the home, or whose wife she is. “This is one of those few plays which is all about this woman’s relationship with war. It’s a love story with war. There is a lovely line in the play that goes, ‘War is like love, it always finds a way.’ Also, in spite of it being about war, some of the comments about corruption, about the way religion influences people, the way politics works, made me think that this story is about us.” he says.

With theatre doyen Arundhati Nag returning to the Mumbai stage after 38 years with this play and a bunch of other talented actors, Quasar is happy that he’s managed to get actors who are generous with their skills and are willing to push the boundaries.