Lengua madre

Is motherhood a wish? Is procreation work? What would happen if we held a uterus strike?
Today the right to decide when and how to become a mother is contentious. In many places, there is still a struggle to allow legal abortion, while in others where it has been legalised there are efforts to roll back the law. Discourses around low birth rates, the possibilities of assisted fertility, the legalisation of surrogate pregnancy and adoption by single people or homosexual couples are becoming polarised. A veritable political battle is being waged in the terrain of procreation.

Lengua madre (Mother Tongue) is an encyclopaedia on reproduction in the twenty-first century based on the stories of migrant mothers, trans mothers and fathers, mothers who resorted to assisted fertilisation, lesbian mothers, gay fathers, teen mothers, women who have had an abortion, mothers who have adopted, women who don’t want to have children and many other people who are wondering how to reinvent the word mother.

The performers reconstruct the past and debate the future in a hybrid space somewhere between a library and a cabinet of curiosities, where documents, films and music are shared.

Lengua madre will be put on in different places in the world with different communities, as a kind of mobile laboratory. Lingua madre, the Bologna edition, was a production of the Emilia Romagna Teatro (ERT) and is the first performance in a series which will be held at the Centro Dramático Nacional in Madrid (premiere on March 11), Berlin and other cities.


Lola Arias (Argentina 1976) is a writer, theater and film director and performer. She collaborates with people from different fields (war veterans, former communists, Bulgarian children, etc.) in projects of theatre, literature, music, cinema and visual arts. Her works cross the border between fiction and reality and were presented at the most prestigious theatres and festivals in the world, such as: Lift Festival (London), Sterischer Herbst (Graz), Festival d'Avignon, Theater Spektakel (Zurich) and Under the Radar (New York). At the Teatre Lliure, she presented Mi vida después on Season 09/10, as a part of the Radicals Lliure cycle.