Europe, Sweet Mother

The word Europe evokes at least three images: the mythological Europe, a beauty abducted and seduced by Zeus in the shape of a white bull; Europe as a geographical territory with all its colourful and bloody recorded history; and Europe as a concept of an economic and political community. Starting from the myth of Europe, the production tells an intimate story of a kidnapped girl who became the mother of the Europe that we know today. Her sons, now judges in the underworld, sired our ancestors. In our veins, there’s the blood of Europe and European blood. What about her? What is there left for her? We follow the chronology of her millennial psychological development that runs from love through loneliness, abandonment and disappointment all the way to revolt, ambition and the will to have a new life. The production personifies the slogan “reviving the European consciousness” as a European leader, a woman leader, to be precise, and questions her psychological motifs and triggers.

The production might be based on the Greek myth, but it also includes fragments of contemporary and less contemporary authors.

“When the smile becomes a mask and optimism behaviour, when communication acquires a self-confident tone characteristic of a person who knows no fear, when complicated things get simplified to the point that only one way remains because ‘there are no other options’, when there is an overpowering belief that every herd needs a shepherd and metaphors from the animal world become a part of the common usage, when haughty looks begin to fly, turned toward far horizons, into the future in which the present is already under control, when submission is something required mostly of others and these others become a mere reflection of one’s own person, which is a reflection of the light that doesn’t cast shadows, we’ve obviously come across a leader; in an appropriate ratio he was formed by nature and culture together.” (U. Galimberti, Myths of Our Time)

This is Tatjana Peršuh’s directorial debut at the SNG Nova Gorica, and our first coproduction with Delak Institute, a research and art production house that researches post-gravity art, post-gravity theatre, culturalisation of space, cosmification of art, and works at the intersection of artistic practices.