Best Translation of MOTHER COURAGE?
Best Translation of MOTHER COURAGE?
#1Best Translation of MOTHER COURAGE?
Posted: 11/29/06 at 2:28pmWith authors like Ibsen, Chekhov, and Brecht the translation makes or breaks an enjoyable reading experience for me. Does anyone have any opinion on what the best translation available for MOTHER COURAGE is?
#1re: Best Translation of MOTHER COURAGE?
Posted: 11/29/06 at 4:03pmEric Bentley's translation is considered the standard translation, and is the one used most often, but I'm rather partial to David Hare's.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
philcrosby
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/17/04
#2re: Best Translation of MOTHER COURAGE?
Posted: 11/30/06 at 9:54am
A theatre company I worked for in the late 70s commissioned a new adaptation which set the play during the American Civil War, with the songs set to melodies of the period. Mother Courage and her children were portrayed as freed slaves, and the prostitute Yvette was transformed into "high-yellow" Big Eva. It premiered in Richmond, VA, and was quite controversial. It was also a wonderful adaptation.
A year later, a company in California asked to borrow all our materials to produce this version there. When they returned everything, they included production photos and playing Mother Courage was a woman with what I thought was a very improbable name ... Whoopi Goldberg.
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