Pia Brezavšček, Barbara Krajnc Avdić, Saška Rakef
Ideal (M)other
ŠKUC Theatre, co-producer City of Women
Crew
Director: Saška Rakef
Sound designer: Damir Avdić
Dramaturg: Pia Brezavšček
Choreographer: Sinja Ožbolt
Lighting designer: Andrej Reza Petrovčič
Spatial and costume designer: Irena Pivka
Consultants: Mila Popović, Nada Sekulić
Language consultant: Tatjana Stanič
Sound designer: Bojana Šaljić Podešva
Sound dramaturgy and improvisation advisor: Bojana Šaljić Podešva
Acknowledgement: Urban Belina, Alojz Pluško (SVŠGL), Eva Pavli (soprano)
Cast
Barbara Krajnc Avdić
About the performance
Impurity, uncontrolled power, mysteriousness, monstrosity, the embodiment of menacing looming forces – the perception of femininity as something that lives on the edge of civilisation is written into the very foundation of the (Western) civilisation. There Scylla dwells, And fills the air with fearful yells; her voice the cry of whelps just littered, but herself a frightful prodigy.
The imaginarium of ancient Greece, inscribed into the unconscious of the Western culture, also testifies that a woman is dangerous, be it for the attractiveness or her horrifying power. She is the embodiment of otherness and can become a part of the culture only as the wife of a man. And as a mother. An angel of the hearth. Embroiders and weaves, knits and crochets. And waits. Waits for him who defeated Circe and Calypso, the impurity and death, night and beyond.
A transformation from a girl into a mother is an initiation ritual with which a woman – not only in the traditional societies, but also in the seemingly more liberal ones – still most certainly verifies her gender and her fate, and truly realises herself through the eyes of the society. With this, Simone de Beauvoir emphasises two commonly accepted prejudices: "The first [is] that motherhood in itself is enough to fulfil a woman: that is certainly not true. /…/ the second, implied in the first, is the conviction that the child will certainly find happiness in her mother’s arms."
Gentle, emotional, kind and mild. Given for happiness and joy. The purest blossom in paradise. This ideal image of motherhood, imbued with the mythology of beauty and grace, dominates and overwrites the often very different reality of mothering. What is interesting in this is that even those who have experienced the brunt of it all keep silent about the hard parts of care-giving and the not-always pretty emotions regarding this often isolated hanging out with their "poppets" and "sunshines". The question poses itself: Why is motherhood one of the most stubborn myths connected to women?
Première: 14 October 2017