Should Have Been My Mother Tongue - I. Community

In the three-part lecture series Should Have Been My Mother Tongue, Ahilan Ratnamohan examines the impact of language on society, based on his own learning of the Tamil language. For this he switched the language he spoke with his 71-year-old mother. The theme of the first lecture is 'community': how does a shared language influence mutual relationships among the Tamil diaspora? Could these relationships exist if there is no shared language? Ahilan also looks at his relationship with his own children whom he is raising in English but really wants to speak Tamil with them.

Part II (Culture) and III (Pedagogy) of the lecture series will take place at the Passa Porta festival and Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

• Ahilan Ratnamohan, born in Australia to a Sri Lankan and Tamil family, is a theatre maker with an obsession for language. His interdisciplinary work explores language acquisition as a form of performance and vice versa.  His performances have surprising, unconventional forms. In 2021, together with Sulaiman Addonia, he kicked off the series the Wonders of Multilingualism (together with Passa Porta). His solo Alle woorden die ik nog niet kende premiered at Kaaitheater in 2021. For the next three years, we will welcome him as artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater.