Hans Otto Theater / PREMIERE 12-JAN-2024 / REITHALLE
Directed by Anna – Elisabeth Frick
Stage: Sophie Lichtenberg
Costume: Mariam Haas
Music: Hannes Strobl
Choreography: Ted Stoffer
Dramaturgy: Christopher Hanf
At the beginning of all human life there is always a mother. In myths, art and literature, the mother becomes an idealised, iconic figure. From the holy Madonna to powerful fertility goddesses to the evil stepmother from fairy tales, there is an arc of models for exemplary, but also supposedly misguided motherhood. Against the backdrop of such role models, however, real mothers are usually primarily concerned with somehow managing their everyday lives – torn between the demands of self-sacrifice and self-realisation, between the optimisation project of parenthood and their own ambivalent feelings such as love, tenderness, doubt, fear and excessive demands. At the same time, the actually intimate experience of motherhood today also has a controversial socio-political dimension: think of terms such as ‚herd premium‘ or ‚helicopter mother‘. In view of the neo-Biedermeier tendency that many mothers are currently reverting to traditional role models, the question arises: what social framework would make life easier for mothers without having to give up the hard-won progress of feminism and emancipation?
On this theatre evening, the actors transform themselves into „mother animals“ and take a trial approach to the multifaceted, dazzling phenomenon of motherhood. Playfully, associatively, sensually, concretely and not without humour, they explore a wide variety of everyday situations, political constellations, archetypal dimensions and contradictory emotions. The starting points are personal experiences and literary, documentary and informative texts.