Unrelenting courage: Sydney Festival’s UKCHUK-GA: Pansori Mother Courage

Mother Courage and Her Children is perhaps Brecht’s most well-known play, written immediately prior to the Second World War in 1939, and first performed in 1941. Set in the seventeeth century, it is the story of ‘Mother Courage’ as she follows the Swedish Army during the Thirty Year War, eking out a living selling food and provisions to the soldiers. Like Brecht’s story, the Korean pansori also originated in the seventeenth century as an oral tradition of storytelling. Now a rigorous artform, pansori involves a singer and a drum, and combines a strong emotional stories with the ethereal vocal gymnastics of highly dedicated and highly trained singers. Currently playing as part of the Sydney Festival is UKCHUK-GA: Pansori Mother Courage, directed by In Woo Nam and written, composed and performed by Jaram Lee.