Aboriginalizing Mother Courage

This article investigates the crucial role of Brechtian aesthetics in representing the voice of Aboriginal Australians. It examines the theatre of Wesley Enoch, an Aboriginal Australian director and playwright, and argues that Enoch's 2013 adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, performed at the Queensland Theatre Company, Brisbane, formed an instance of resistance against epistemic hegemony. The first part of the article examines the device of the heckler, central to the writings of Australian Aboriginals, by focusing on Kevin Gilbert's The Cherry Pickers (1988) and shows how the device functions to articulate the peripheral voices of the Aboriginal Australians. The second part demonstrates how Enoch employed the heckler trope through his dramaturgy to protest against the Australian nation state. Broadly, it illustrates how Enoch's production used Aboriginal aesthetics to voice Aborigines' challenge to established norms, an act that remained independent of Brechtian theatre's previous uses in the Australian context

Courage · Psychoanalysis · Theology · Psychology · Theatre and Performance Studies · History · Philosophy

• Can Non-Europeans Think?

  Hamid Dabashi•Can Non-Europeans Think?•2015

  Añadir item

• Modernity at large

  Arjun Appadurai•Modernity at large•1996

  Añadir item

• Epistemologies of the South

  Boaventura De Sousa Santos•Epistemologies of the South•2015

  Añadir item

• Black Words White Page

  Open Access•Adam Shoemaker•Black words, white page•2004

  Añadir item

• AHR Conversation How Size Matters

  Sebouh David Aslanian, Joyce E Chaplin et al.•The American Historical Review•2013

  Añadir item

• Epistemological fractures

  Rada Iveković•Journal of Postcolonial Writing•2019

  Añadir item