It features a choir of twenty-one Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish women - survivors and witnesses of violence resulting from armed conflicts.
Górnicka has compiled the performance from the testimonies of mothers and children who have fled war and persecution. Traditional music is the key component of the production, with women’s voices echoing the chtchedrivkas, the popular Ukrainian songs which celebrate renewal.
In an interview for the Festival d’Avignon website, Górnicka said that the women “use the power of their voices to name the unnamable: violence against women. Violence and rape—both political and individual—are the greatest weapons of the Russian army. It is a tool of torture consciously used in this war, one of the most powerful weapons—more effective than murder—because it remains permanently with the surviving victim”.
Górnicka added that the performance, which is a form of ritual rooted in ancestral traditions, is “a way of recovering memory, language, and voice: not the voice of women as silent victims but, on the contrary, as protagonists of the war”.
In an interview for the Polish Press Agency, Górnicka said that her performance also poses questions about ”own responsibilities in the face of war, our reactions to the war in Europe, a war that has been going on for such a long time that we have become tired of it”.
Mothers. A Song for Wartime is a joint project by the Warsaw-based Chorus of Women Foundation and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. It had its premiere in September 2023.
The production will be shown at the Festival d’Avignon also on Wednesday and Thursday, July 10 and 11.
(mk/jh)
Source: PAP