Motherbaby
‘Everyone has a relationship with a mother’, thinks theatre duo Marieke&Sophia. As (young) women who will (or not) someday become mothers, they uncover their own expectations and fears around motherhood. What are we concealing when we inundate ‘the mother’ with sentimentality? And why does she become the scapegoat when society fails?
Together with theatre maker and actress Kristien De Proost, the duo spoke to mothers in the broadest sense of the word, wanting to get to know them in their most capricious form. In doing so, those who society labels as ‘failed’ mothers, or those who described themselves as such, were most fascinating. Through their so-called flaws, they try to dismantle what society expects of mothers.
The result of their investigation is Motherbaby, a ‘DIY musical’, in which the players sing about the relationship between mother and child in all its contradictory facets. They alternate homemade songs – a kind of modern lullabies or folk tales – with spoken text. From the Holy Mother-Madonna to the evil stepmother to the man-eater: all the clichéd visual culture surrounding mothers is addressed and may (ultimately) be thrown out.
In just a handful of sentences, the trio exposes the oppressive dynamics and destructive dependency between mothers and daughters.
— Charlotte De Somviele, Etcetera
• The leitmotif throughout the work of Marieke&Sophia is a fascination with the (female) body and the imagination and meaning ascribed to it. They go looking for the cultural scripts that mould and discipline our bodies, and the possible opposition within those scripts. They previously created Guilty of Love, a piece about the imagination of the raped body and the clichés about it. In Motherbaby, Kristien De Proost joins them on the stage. She is a theatre-maker and actress, who has worked at, among other venues, Bronks, Het Toneelhuis, and Victoria, and was part of the artistic heart of Tristero from 2004 to 2017. She is currently focusing on writing, solo work, and encounters with new artists.
concept Marieke&Sophia | play Marieke Schraepen, Sophia Bauer, Kristien De Proost | dramaturgie Bauke Lievens | music Alan Van Rompuy | scenography Ferre Marnef | light and sound Wout Clarysse | light design Jamy Hollebeke | costumes Lieselot Siddiki | subtitles Dries Gijsels | production KWP Kunstenwerkplaats | co-production Monty, Kunstencentrum BUDA, workspacebrussels, CAMPO | with the support of van De Grote Post, Kaaitheater, Theater Aan Zee, Kunstencentrum nona with the finanical support of van Vlaamse Gemeenschap en Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie met dank aan Geert Belpaeme en Jonas Baeke
