Re-imagining Bertolt Brecht, redefining British Theatre: Oladipo Agboluaje's Mother Courage

Since 1979, among significant productions of Mother Courage that have been staged with predominantly black casts are included: Ntozake Shange’s successful American production staged on May 13, 1980 that sets the play at the American frontier during the Reconstruction period of the late nineteenth century; Joanitta Bewulira-Wandera’s Maama Nalukalala Ne’zzade Lye (Mother Courage and Her Children),first staged at the National Theatre, Kampala in 2009, which also toured in United Kingdom, U.S.A and South Africa; and Oladipo Agboluaje’s Mother Courage first produced at Nottingham Playhouse on 6 February 2004. An analysis of these adaptation, each relating to its political and social context, suggests that by constructing a link between the past and present theatrically, the playwrights are demonstrating that memory and political resistance are alive in theatre and continue to inform and shape dramatic works. Agboluaje’s reworked Mother Courage is a good reminder of the ‘classical’ text as a complex shifting concept acknowledged and used in various ways.