Got courage? The School of Theatre has plenty this month as they perform the Bertolt Brecht play Mother Courage at the Playhouse Theatre.

The play was chosen as a change from the usual Shakespeare drama the School of Theatre presents in the spring.

"I did suggest Mother Courage because I wanted to do something instead of the classic Shakespeare. Brecht's writing has a remarkable place in theatre. Many ideas, including the Brechtian theatre, originated from him," Bill Schroder, director of the play, said.

Mother Courage tells the story of a middle-aged woman with three grown children struggling to survive during the Thirty Years War. Mother Courage pretends to tell her children's fortunes and predicts dire ends for all of them, her intent being to keep them close to her, therefore shielded from danger. Regardless of Mother Courage's heed, terrible things happen to her children every time her back is turned until, in the end, she is left alone.

The cast for the play is made up of both undergraduate and graduate theatre students.

"We had an open call and, as the director, you are entirely at the whim of who shows up. You are either dancing with glee or weeping in a closet, but I was very fortunate for this call. The cast has been doing remarkable, and when you have good actors, the director's work is already half done," Schroder said.

Nika Ericson (graduate-theatre), who plays Mother Courage, said the most challenging aspect of the play was understanding the concept of war and living during war times.

"The character that I play doesn't have luxuries like we know them, so it was difficult for me to grasp the concept of living in a time that she was living," Ericson said.

Schroder has been working on his own adaptation of the script for the past year. He didn't feel that any of the English adaptations properly captured the meaning of the play and the way Brecht wanted it to be performed. By doing this he had to teach himself German. The older translations don't shock today as they would before, he said, so he took some liberties with the script.

"I felt the other translations were not a fitting style; they were chatty and more polite. So I decided to do my own adaptation. I had friends help with the literal translation and then I adapted it to Brecht's stated rules," Schroder said.

Schroder said Mother Courage is a play about tough bargains and confrontations and how society handles them.

"Mother Courage has to decide whether to save her son or save her daughter. Society avoids these confrontations, and Brecht is saying that we need to put our wits together to find solutions. He comes off as depressing, but actually he has enormous faith in human potential," Schroder said.

Ericson said the show is an epic that enlightens you to the horrors of war and what makes war.

"It's a long show, but if you can sit through it you can get new knowledge on how we can improve as society and what capitalism can do. I think the audience can get more aware perceptions of the things gnawing away at our society," Ericson said.

If Schroder had to describe the play in one word, he would say "disturbing."

"Disturbing, profound, aggravating. I would hope a production would be all of these. And it's not the same as reading because there's human interaction, sharing living space with the actors and audience," Schroder said.