Live Arts will open its production of Amy Freed’s comedy “The Beard of Avon’’ at 8 tonight.

The story of a woman who pins her financial hopes on profiting from war might be called the mother of darkly comic dramas.
Tonight is opening night for Live Arts’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,’’ and director Satch Huizenga said audience members will be struck by the timeliness of the piece.