Conversations with my mother

Conversations with my Mother highlights the dysfunctional relationship between mother and son. It often proves impossible to say to your mother what you had intended. The three mothers in the music theater production communicate through listening, singing, crying and complaining. The son talks, stammers, yells and weighs his words. We follow them crisscross through the different stages of his life: child; graying; adolescent; adult. Going back and forth between old and young.

The communication between mother and son never really changes. There is always the yearning for affirmation, the attempt to let go and to show affection at the same time. The rules that govern this communication are unique, as if a separate system applies for the exclusive bond between mother and son. An umbilical cord of language.

The telephone conversations are an incessant balancing act between guilt and annoyance, between reproach and forgiveness, between impatience and tender understanding.

Conversations with my Mother explores the foundations of the relationship between mother and son. In a society where answers to moral and existential issues from a religious or ideological perspective are increasingly difficult to come by, the mother has the last word. She is the moral arbiter of the twenty-first century.Concept: Matthias Mooij and Benedict Weisser

Composition: Benedict Weisser
Direction: Matthias Mooij
Libretto: Matthias Mooij in cooperation with Benedict Weisser
Libretto based on texts by Abdelkader Benali, Oscar van den Boogaard, Herman Brusselmans, Omar Dahmani, Marcel Lenssen, Tommy Wieringa,Jibbe Willems

Cast
Soprano: Young-Hee Kim
Soprano: Keren Motseri
Actress: Tine Cartuyvels
Actor: Bart Klever

Nieuw Amsterdams Peil
Gerard Bouwhuis: Erard-piano, spinet, synthesizer
Heleen Hulst: violin
Pepe Garcia: percussion
Dario Calderone: double bass
Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer: bass clarinet

Set design: Piia Maria
Costumes: Judith de Zwart
Sound design: Clare Gallagher
Electronics: Sybren Danz
Lighting design: Maarten Warmerdam
Dramaturgical advice: Robbert van Heuven
Artistic director: Sylvia Stoetzer

The Lamento combines a fragment in modern Hebrew from Falling Out of Time by David Grossman and the traditional Korean lament Arirang.