December 6th, 2023 Lea-Maria Kneisel
„We want to invite our dead grandmothers to be part of this piece“
When Nagao Akemi, Bettina Mileta, Evelyn Saylor and Johanna Ackva meet for rehearsal, the Grandmothers are back in action. This is the nickname the four artists have given themselves since they started working on their joint performance "Grandmothers".
The joint work starts already in the fall of 2021 as part of the performance series Dirty Debut. The team, which at that time consists of Akemi, Evelyn and Johanna, intensively deals with their own grandmothers Takako, Elisabeth and Virginia for the performance shown at that time. In the end, they encounter the memories of their grandmothers on the stage of Ballhaus Ost in December 2021.
While Akemi and Johanna, who are both choreographer and dancer, perform for this on stage, singer and composer Evelyn creates the voices from this world and the next through electronic distortion and manipulation as part of a live composition.
Then, as part of the application for the "Vertiefungen" (deepenings) residency at Uferstudios, there are concrete plans for the further development of the piece. The self-proclaimed Grandmothers want to bring costume designer Bettina onto the team. The foursome wants to work on a longer version of "Grandmothers" for the revival. "We felt like we'd like to expand the theme even more, including by taking another step back and digging deeper - sort of zooming in and out at the same time," Johanna explains. "Also," Akemi adds, "we now wanted to involve all our grandmothers in the working process. In the first phase of the work, we only dealt with three grandmothers in total. This time, we want to invite all eight into the creation process."
As they continue work on their performance in the course of the Berlin residency program beginning in July 2023, they change their working structure. "I felt like being on stage as well, which is why I suggested to the others that we find a form where we all get involved in the performance," Bettina says. From then on, there starts an open research phase in which they share their individual domains with each other and include the corresponding practices in their performance.
"Through our work, we are also constantly reminded of how naïve and uncritical the discourse in our society is about the role of the grandmother."
During the rehearsal process, the artists repeatedly tell each other about their grandmothers. About the lives these women led, the different cultures they grew up in, and also about the relationship they themselves have to them as granddaughters. And although none of the grandmothers is still alive today, they become present in this way in the rehearsal process through documentary testimonies, among other things. Evelyn, who had a very close relationship with her grandmothers, still has letters and WhatsApp messages from them, which she shares with the others during the project. In some cases, Akemi, Bettina and Johanna, on the other hand, never even met their grandmothers during their lifetime. They now meet them through photographs and through stories that have been passed down in their respective families. It becomes clear: The grandmothers have shaped the lives of the artists in very different ways. Through the exchange, the four artists get to know each other once again on another level. Complex and multifaceted connections become clear, and additional layers of their own identity gradually reveal themselves that no one had noticed before.
Regarding the social dimension of the topic, Johanna says: "Through our work, we are also constantly reminded of how naïve and uncritical the discourse in our society is about the role of the grandmother. It's almost like in a Disney movie: People imagining a grandmother as an old woman who bakes cookies non-stop, who is characterized by her overflowing love for her grandchildren and occupies a maternal position within the patriarchal family structure - a structure by the way, in which care work is still predominantly performed by women." However, the fact that it is also okay for elderly women not to conform to this image, that not every woman who is a grandmother must always sacrifice herself for others, and that if this is the case, it should not be taken for granted - all of this is the topic at Grandmothers.
As part of the Berlin Residency Program 2023 of the Senate Department for Culture and Community, Nagao Akemi, Bettina Mileta, Evelyn Saylor and Johanna Ackva have been rehearsing at Uferstudios for a total of three weeks in July and August 2023 through the program "Vertiefungen". The artists presented their work "Grandmothers" on November 4 and 5, 2023 at Theater Vierte Welt. (https://viertewelt.de/