MUTTERS COURAGE - pre-show introduction at 19:30

George Tabori had a rare gift for finding dark humour in the midst of horror - for locating the absurd punchline inside the realm of evil. In Mutters Courage he tells the impossible - and true - story of a sixty-year-old Jewish woman arrested on a Budapest street in 1944, deported with 4,030 others in a cattle car to Auschwitz, and the only one to survive. Elsa Tabori lived it; her son wrote it down. The story has since become a fixture of oral history - for those who believe that history cannot simply be "left behind". According to a 2015 survey, 81% of Germans would like to do exactly that when it comes to the Holocaust. "It's obvious: the Germans will never forgive us Jews for Auschwitz" - as Israeli psychoanalyst Zwi Rex put it.

Tabori's tribute to his mother is, in a broader sense, a tribute to all mothers whose courage, wit, and will to live gave their children the means to come to terms with their own trauma. The production has seen over 170 performances in the past 30 years, including runs in New York and Los Angeles.

Direction: Thomas Bockelmann - Set design: Pia Janssen - Costumes: Ursina Zürcher - Music: Erich Radke - Dramaturgy: Michael Volk

Elsa Tabori: Sigrun Schneider-Kaethner / Georg Tabori: Thomas Bockelmann

Pre-show introduction at 19:30 - Venue: Zimmertheater Gewölbe, Bursagasse 16 - Running time: 65 minutes, no interval

Revival: 17 September 2026 - Premiere: 13 September 2025, 20:00