Review: Mother Tongues from Farther Lands

At Doncaster the event brought Mother Tongues from Farther Lands to the stage. Conceived by writer and comedian Sajeela Kershi, this verbatim theatre piece is a celebration of the strong women either born in the subcontinent, or whose forebears came from there. Kershi ran workshops around the country to discover the stories of some remarkable women, made all the more impressive by their cloaks of ordinariness. The power these women, who give their families and their children stability in the most precarious of situations is staggering and rightly celebrated in this wonderfully moving piece of work. Kershi acts as MC to the event while Shobna Gulati, Shyama Perera and Shobu Kapoor relate the women’s stories.

Kapoor, born and raised in India, lends more of an authenticity to the story she relates with her homegrown accent, but Gulati and Perera are well cast and their stories of women who straddle cultures equally powerful. An important set of stories powerfully told, but most importantly, stories that will have empowered the women whose stories they tell.