It was translated into English by Brecht's friend and admirer Eric Bentley and its world premiere was a student production at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1948.
[citation needed] It reworks Brecht's earlier short story "Der Augsburger Kreidekreis."
It shows a dispute between two communes, the Collective Fruit Farm Galinsk fruit growing commune and the Collective Goat Farmers, over who is to own and manage an area of farm land after the Nazis have retreated from a village and left it abandoned.
The Singer, Arkadi Tcheidse, arrives with his band of musicians, then tells the peasants the parable, which forms the main narrative, and intertwines throughout much of the play.
The Singer's story begins with Governor Georgi Abashwili and his wife Natella blatantly ignoring the citizens on the way to Easter Mass.
Grusha, while carrying a goose for the Easter meal, meets a soldier, Simon Shashava, who reveals he has watched her bathe in the rivers.
The Singer continues the story: as the soldier contacts two architects for the Governor's new mansion, the Ironshirts, gestapo-esque guards, turn on him.
Simon runs off to fulfill his duty to the Governor's wife, who has been foolishly packing clothing for the "trip", caring nothing for the loss of her husband.
Grusha is left with the boy and, after seeing the Governor's head nailed to the church door, takes him with her to the mountains.
Music is often incorporated throughout much of this scene with the aid of the Singer, musicians, and possibly Grusha, as Brecht includes actual "songs" within the text.
Rumours spread in the village, and Lavrenti convinces Grusha to marry a dying peasant, Jussup, in order to quell them.
It is revealed that the Grand Duke is overthrowing the princes and the civil war has finally ended, and no one can be drafted anymore.
At this, the supposedly dead villager Jussup returns to "life", and it becomes clear he was only "ill" when the possibility of being drafted was present.
However, Ironshirts arrive carrying Michael in, and ask Grusha if she is his mother, she says that she is, and Simon leaves distraught.
He later realises that he sheltered the Grand Duke himself; since he thinks the rebellion is an uprising against the government itself, he turns himself in for his "class treason".
We meet Grusha in court, supported by a former cook of the Governor and Simon Shashava, who will swear he is the father of the boy.
The trial, however, does not begin with Grusha and the Governor's wife, but with a very elderly married couple who wishes to divorce.
The test begins but (akin to the Judgment of Solomon) Grusha refuses to pull as she cannot bear to hurt Michael.
Though there is no officially published score, the show is generally played with original music and songs performed by the cast.
One score performed regularly is by American composer Mark Nichols, who based his music on traditional Georgian folk harmonies in polyphony.
Georgian composer Giya Kancheli made an iconic score for the production of Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi.
Most of the characters have Georgian names, and Tiflis and the poet Mayakovsky, who was born and raised in Georgia, are mentioned in the prologue.
[4] However the city where much of the action takes place, Nuka, is in modern Azerbaijan, although it was under Georgian rule for a time in the Middle Ages.