Tamara Searle

MOTHERTONGUE is a collaborative workshop process that uses choreographies of communication and the problem of language as the impulse for creation and to approach fear, mistrust, and otherness. 

Relationship is material in aesthetic form and content. It is designed to be delivered in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. 

MOTHERTONGUE extends a process Searle is developing with culturally, linguistically and neurodiverse young performers at the National Theatre of Finland.  Searle is applying extensive practice in disability access to a cultural and linguistically diverse context, working with multilingual productions and methods. She has developed these working methods in Ryhmakoti (group homes in Finland) and in schools in Helsinki for recently arrived young migrants. 

Searle and Voorendt have created work and programming together with Back to Back Theatre for over 10 years. They have collaborated on workshop processes in Rennes at Theatre Du Bretange, in London at Battersea Arts Centre, in Brighton UK at the Attenborough Centre, at Monsortuem centrum for contemporary performance in Frankfurt, and CIFAS in Brussels. 

XXX What does mother tongue mean to you? 

XXX The language we grew up with.

YYY What is yours? 

XXX Kurdish. But we cannot speak it. 

YYY You cannot speak it?

XXX No. We cannot. 

YYY What does that mean? 

XXX For example, when most people left the Kurdish areas, they were imprisoned because they spoke it.  We only use it with our families.

XXX What is the connection between “mother language” and motherhood?

YYY Language is like when you have a child and take care of it. 

XXX Do you know where the term “mother language” comes from?

YYY No

XXX Because children always learn their mother's language first, before their father's.  Because their mother talks to them more.

YYY For me, the mother is the one who gives birth, and she deserves everything to be named after her.