Mothers (Majke) – Kolektiv Igralke

This is not a play about motherhood. It is a play about the decision about motherhood. The authors from Kolektiv Igralke are in their (mid-)thirties and feel that time is running out for the decision about motherhood. They feel like the first generation of women in their families who truly have the freedom to choose on this question; they are financially independent, unlike their grandmothers, and being a mother is no longer taken for granted as it was for their mothers. Starting from their personal experiences, they searched for this theme in art, theory and history, and the most valuable literature turned out to be the interviews conducted for the play with a number of women who responded to a public call. Listening to the perspectives of mothers, women who decided not to have children, those who cannot have them and those who are undecided, the theme of the decision about motherhood revealed itself as so vast, boundless and eternal that the authors felt it deserves not only a play, but a museum. So, until such a permanent museum exists, this play will bring to life, through confessions, movement, music and visual art, an imaginary museum of (non-)motherhood, woven from often invisible experiences and stories that are at once intimate, social and mythical. Our museum has floating roots. It exists here and now, but as the lights go out it moves, travels in women’s bodies and reveals itself when someone needs it. We needed it. And then it appeared to us. After the plays ‘Grannies’ and ‘Girls’ (dir. Tjaša Črnigoj), Kolektiv Igralke completes a kind of women’s trilogy with ‘Mothers’, joining forces with the director and author Rajna Racz, who is also a young mother. Theatre thus becomes a place of creation and gentle coexistence with a child, and the stage an arena where the performers face their own fears, hopes, and traditional and contemporary ideas and imperatives about woman, artist and mother, and a space for the freedom (of choice). Ticket price: €12 / Discounted price for students and pensioners: €10 (the discount is available exclusively at the Festival Opatija box offices at the Summer Stage and at Centar Gervais).