Facing Mother

Written by Jean-René Lemoine

Translated by Amanda Gann

Directed by Julia Locascio

A mother dies, tragically, in a far-off country, beset by violence and madness. Several years later, her son decides to set a meeting with her, beyond death, to confess to her, in this deferred interview, all that he never knew how, never dared to tell her. Over the course of this love song, a son retraces the tumult of a forty-year relationship. Buried images of the mother resurface and fade one after another, overlaying themselves on snapshots of continents, countries and cities crossed together, to dissolve themselves at last into the cataclysm of the native land. Can we, with the impalpable weapons of poetry, stitch back together the real? Can we still, in the dread of this world, invent mythologies and through them attempt to remain standing in the face of disaster, shed light on the chaos, cast a bridge out toward the other rather than take up the monopoly of sorrow? Such is the fragile and daring challenge of Facing Mother.

This reading is supported by the Institut Français UK, Contxto and Park Theatre.