Single Mothers

grown-ups

The drama text Single Mothers is not merely a look at the family relationships as they have been changing in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries but is primarily a play about our attitudes towards motherhood, our attitude to what it means to be a mother, what power and force women need to fight for motherhood – historically speaking – what their rights are, regardless of the year we are in – 1940, 2000 or … Only the circumstances are new and different, circumstances that appear and that we have to take into account. Single Mothers is also a look into history, a journey to the inner states of women in wars, under pressure and experiencing abuse. The structure of the play uses film language that introduces dynamics and quick changes of place and time and, at the same time, carefully measures out the surprise. The author has created different characters of mothers in one family or extended family; her characters have depth, which carries the bitterness of the mission that they have chosen for the rest of their lives. The play is not afraid to open difficult topics, behind which we can feel tenderness and, at times, humour, which shows the author’s maturity and her text. The ease with which we move between decades, historical facts and events, modernity and the past opens in front of the reader as a true archaeological detective story.

Grum Award 2024, the jury explanation 

Scene 11

Ester sees Eva in prison.

ESTER: However. You’ve been locked up unjustly for decades. You didn’t kill Avan.

EVA: Not unjustly. I killed her. I didn’t protect her. I was there when Mihael killed her mother. Mihael never knew that Avan wasn’t my daughter. It seemed. It was too complicated for me to tell him. I felt that this way, I was protecting Avan.

Silence, Ester is uneasy. She has no idea what to say. What exactly does one say at this point? Who would know what to say in her place?

EVA: We all think we’re protecting our children when we lie and cover up the truth. But the truth has never killed anyone. The lie, however, has.

Ester tries to comprehend everything she has found out. Because it’s too much to digest, she slides into apathy. The human brain has the ability to survive. It simply turns off all emotions once these emotions become too much to process.

EVA: I reserved my plot at the graveyard years ago. Bury Mihael in it. Bury me next to my beloved Avan. When the time comes. I’ve been praying for years for it to come. But it doesn’t come, it doesn’t … I then called Rafko to help me bury Mihael into an unmarked grave in our garden. I then called the police to confess to killing my own daughter.

Ester is silent.

EVA: You know, Ester, in the end, it matters that life goes on. If life goes on, then one day, it might get better. If it doesn’t go on, it will never get better.