Mother Tongue

In 2022, the right to decide when and how to become a mother is still a controversial one. In many places they are fighting to legalise abortion, while it is about to be made illegal again in others. The discourse is polarised around birth rates that are too high or too low, fertility treatments, the legalisation of surrogacy, adoption by single people and homosexual couples. Motherhood is political. Written from the narratives of mothers with histories of migration, of trans fathers, of heterosexual mothers who resort to fertility treatments, of gay fathers with children in co-parenting systems, of women who have had abortions, of women who are childfree by choice.

Mother Tongue is an encyclopaedia of reproduction in the twenty-first century. In a hybrid space between a library and a cabinet of curiosities, where documents, films and music are shared, the performers reconstruct the past and discuss the future. 


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Premiere on 11/September 2022

In German, English and French

The first edition of the play was produced by ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro and had its opening at Teatro Arena del Sole (Bologna) in 2021. The second edition was co-produced by Centro Dramático Nacional (Madrid) and Teatre Lliure (Barcelona) and premiered in Madrid in 2022.


Supported by funds from the State of Berlin, Senate Department for Culture and Europe

Aufführungsrechte: Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main


Photo: Esra Rotthoff
Stage Photos: Ute Langkafel MAIFOTO