"Mother's Heart: Children Keep All Our Tears";
Credit: Chronicle.lu
On Wednesday 11 October 2023, the Escher Theatre in Esch-sur-Alzette hosted a performance of "Mother's Heart: Children Keep All Our Tears", performed by the Ukrainian theatre group "Dakh".
The performance was held as part of UA Days 2023 in Esch-sur-Alzette, taking place from 9 to 20 October 2023, organised by LUkraine and co-hosted with the Ville d'Esch council; those attending were demonstrating a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine.
The 75-minute documentary and musical piece featured two performers, one singer whose voice was haunting, and an actor who was imagining talking to her son on the front line who sadly had perished in an attack. The audience followed her as she lived through her memories of love, birth, childhood and the anticipation of what may not happen due to the war, using adaptable props that she herself moved, arranged and assembled as part of her performance. The poignant dialogue brought the audience on a journey exploring the depths of human emotion and referenced both Hitler and Nazi Germany as well as Putin and the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The narrative is based on personal texts written by Ukrainian mothers to their sons during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including letters from women in a bomb shelter in Mariupol and a woman from Lviv whose two sons died on the front line.
The theatre director Vladyslav Troitskyi - the founder of an independent theatre and contemporary art centre in Ukraine - was in attendance; talking with Chronicle.lu after the performance, he discussed the merging of documentary footage, real-time projections, animation and song into the visibly moving piece of theatre just performed. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Vladyslav Troitskyi and his team have used art as a form of resistance, taking the spirit of Ukrainian art to the global stage and dispelling the illusion of Russian cultural dominance.
He also confirmed that he will be returning to Luxembourg in January with two more theatre performances.
The performance is part of UA Days in Esch-sur-Alzette, co-hosted with the city council. UA Days welcomes the public to enjoy Ukrainian art and culture in its different kinds. UA Days brings the vibrant culture, history and creative industries of Ukraine to Luxembourg. This year, it marks the first anniversary of the twinning between Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg and Stryi, a city in the Lviv region of Ukraine.
For details, see https://uadays.lu/.
