MOTHERS - A SONG FOR WARTIME | PERFORMING DEMOCRACY

The performance on 15.06. will be followed by an audience discussion. The performance will be in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish with English and German surtitles.

Violence against women is a terrible constant in times of war: Together with 21 Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian women aged between 9 and 72, Marta Górnicka arranges a powerful choral performance. They are mothers and children who fled war and persecution from Mariupol, Kiev, Irpin and Kharkiv and the people who took them in. They all have their own experiences and stories, but together they use the power of their voices in a CHORUS OF MOTHERS FOR WARTIME.

In their search for a new voice, the choir mixes traditional folk songs, Ukrainian nursery rhymes, incantations and political statements. The choral speaking of the women and children becomes an accusation, a plea and a warning to all European people. At the same time, they advocate a new solidarity and new rituals of humanity.

Marta Górnicka is the founder of CHORUS OF WOMEN and the Political Voice Institute at the Gorki Theater in Berlin. She develops a unique choral theater in which voices and bodies are transformed into political instruments to examine mechanisms of control, exclusion and violence, but also to give each individual their own expression.

"They have seen and experienced things for which there are no words. They speak and sing about them here, together, in a clear and strict form. With an attitude that moves and shakes. (...) Górnicka's ensemble finds words for the collective memory. For the fear, the loss, the grief, the anger. For the dreams of peace and the aftermath."

- Rüdiger Schaper, Der Tagesspiegel