In the play “Music Lessons” three women meet. They dance, tell stories, dance, seek understanding, dance, learn from each other, dance, die, dance. Among them are a real mother and daughter. Performers explore the processes of care, upbringing and education. In joint acts of creativity, they try to transform the dramatic experiences of the “mother-child” relationship into practices of tenderness and care and find new forms of mutual recognition.
In the play “Music Lessons” three women meet. They dance, tell stories, dance, seek understanding, dance, learn from each other, dance, die, dance. Among them are a real mother and daughter who are trying to talk about their shared past, analyze the processes of care, upbringing and education in order to impair the hidden asymmetric motives of dominance and submission.
The relationship between mother and child is sacralized in traditional societies and therefore silenced. In a joint performance the actresses explore the question: is it possible to stop producing images of the traditional system? Can codependency transform into passionate acts of creativity? Is it possible to free yourself from the figure of the woman you love more than anything? Free yourself and find a space of autonomy and tenderness.
The object that forms the relationship between mothers and daughters here is art which is, at the same time, an act of pacification and a tool of emancipation. A woman in a post-reproductive age takes the stage and with her creative act undermines the defining role of motherhood, while professional female performers expose the violent mechanisms of artistic education. Embodying their own dramatic experience, they rediscover delicacy and care. We don’t know whether the authors of the performance manage to find answers to the outlined questions, but they really had a good time.
Based on the family and private mythologies of Mariia Salo, Oksana and Olha Cherkashyna.
TEAM
Director – Oksana Cherkashyna
Playwright – Liuba Ilnytska
Performers – Mariia Salo, Olha Cherkashyna, Oksana Cherkashyna
Composer – Olesia Onykiienko
Set designer – Olena Turianska
Costumes – Olena Turianska, Yuliia Rybka-Koval
Lighting artist – Nadiia Dihalevych
Sound director and technical director – Dmytro Chyryk
Production manager – Vladyslav Bilonenko
Project manager – Mariia Kosiichuk
Photos from the rehearsal
