There was not a cloud in the sky that day in August 1944, when in the center of Budapest, two policemen detained an elegant woman who was on her way to her weekly meeting to play rumi at her sister's house.
Elsa Tabori was wearing her best black coat, where she herself had sewn the yellow star forced by the Nazi troops that had invaded Hungary months before.
On that same day, another 4,000 Jews were arrested, in an operation in which only this 60-year-old woman, whose husband was already detained and her two children exiled in London, managed to escape the Auschwitz concentration camp, thanks to the unusual intervention of a Nazi soldier.
The story of that day was written, years later, by the Hungarian author George Tabori (Budapest, 1914-Berlin 2007), the son of that woman.
mother courage
, a brilliant text that mixes reality and fiction, with humor as a weapon of resistance, and in which the mother herself amends and corrects her son's words on stage, opens for the first time in Spain at the Teatro de la Abadía, in a determined attempt to bring the work of this influential author, creator of a complex and profoundly humanist theater out of silence and oblivion.
The work, directed by Helena Pimenta, and interpreted in their leading roles by Isabel Ordaz and Pere Ponce, is represented in this Madrid venue until March 19, the date on which a long tour will begin.
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“Europe did not defend its Jewish citizens.
At the center of this work lies the loneliness of European Jews, how some men with enormous power hunted down some poor innocents in the face of the inaction and complicity of many”, says Juan Mayorga, playwright and artistic director of La Abadía, who inscribes the choice of Georges Tabori and his work
Mother's Courage
in the aspiration of this theater center to offer shows by important creators who, for some mysterious reason, have not been sufficiently represented, in addition to focusing on the so-called theater of memory.
"Tabori is an enormous author with a special creative lucidity and
Mother's Courage
is the perfect example of a paradoxically luminous and beautiful text about a dark and tragic event" explains Mayorga.
In order to bring this author out of silence and oblivion, whose work focuses mainly on recounting the German genocide against European Jews, La Abadía has organized parallel activities to the premiere of Courage of a Mother
with
a series of events and meetings in collaboration with other institutions. , an exhibition in the same theater and the screening of a documentary about the author (
The writer as a foreigner
) and the film
I confess
, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and whose script was written by Tabori himself.
The actor Pere Ponce, during the screening of the play 'Coraje de madre', directed by Helena Pimienta, on Tuesday, February 22, at the Teatro La Abadía, in Madrid.FERNANDO ALVARADO (EFE)
Hanna Schygulla in the role of Elsa Tabori and Georges Tabori himself as his son, were the stars of the premiere of
Mother's Courage
in Munich (Germany) in May 1979, in a function that the author also directed and whose poster, a real photo of mother and son, can be seen in the exhibition at La Abadía.
Also there the German actress wore that beautiful black coat with the yellow star on her chest.
"It was Elsa herself who sewed the star on herself and from that day on, that luminous woman stopped singing," explains Helena Pimenta (Salamanca, 67 years old), former director of the National Classic Theater Company and National Theater Award winner in 1993. , absolutely captivated by the personal and theatrical world of the Hungarian author.
Both of them already in exile, it was Tabori himself who invited his mother to write some notes about his experience and with these papers he was encouraged to recount "that mysterious encounter with a German officer" that saved him life,
and for the one who brings out the most corrosive humor and the most brilliant irony as a way of confronting horror and atrocity.
“The anecdote that the work tells is unusual, but authentic.
Miraculously, this luminous woman, with courage and a very particular dignity, as described by her son, manages to be forgiven and released.
Tabori transcends the story from the personal story of an anonymous heroine and does so with humor as a way to avoid pain”, adds Pimenta.
A reflection to which Mayorga adds: "Every Tabori laugh is a victory against National Socialism and against Hitler."
as described by her son, she manages to be forgiven and released.
Tabori transcends the story from the personal story of an anonymous heroine and does so with humor as a way to avoid pain”, adds Pimenta.
A reflection to which Mayorga adds: "Every Tabori laugh is a victory against National Socialism and against Hitler."
as described by her son, she manages to be forgiven and released.
Tabori transcends the story from the personal story of an anonymous heroine and does so with humor as a way to avoid pain”, adds Pimenta.
A reflection to which Mayorga adds: "Every Tabori laugh is a victory against National Socialism and against Hitler."
Somehow,
in
Mother's Courage , two stories of the same story coexist, that of the son who makes fiction and literature in the face of the reality that his mother lived.
“The mother represents the concern of the survivors and she sees the need to bear witness to what she has experienced, something that she asks of her son, her writer.
Somehow, the two stories leak out.
Mother and son allow themselves to be stained by each other.
On the one hand, the mother allows herself to be filtered by the life experience of her son, and the son, recalling his mother's story, is filtering the harsh reality lived that summer day under Nazi rule in which this simple woman face fear and horror.
Mother's Courage
is an immense act of love”, concludes Pimenta.
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